Net managers
This path is for whoever is responsible for a net existing: the person who set up the weekly club net, keeps the rotation full, chases the people who did not show, and sends the report to the emergency coordinator afterward.
It is a different job from running a net, and mostly happens on a different day. Net control is a job you do for ninety minutes on a Tuesday. Managing a net is a job you do on the other six days.
The distinction that makes everything else make sense
A net is one session. A schedule is the plan that produces them.
A schedule holds everything that does not change week to week: the name, the frequencies, the script, the standing announcements, the custom fields, the staff who are allowed to run it, the Net Control rotation, and the settings for when the lobby opens and whether the net closes itself. It creates its own nets on its own recurrence, and each one inherits all of it.
Change the schedule and next week’s net gets the change. Change tonight’s net and only tonight’s net gets it. Almost every “how do I make this happen every week” question is answered by putting it on the schedule rather than on the net.
A one-time net is perfectly normal for a one-off: a drill, a public service event, a storm that is not going to wait. The dashboard’s + button makes one, and it still gets a schedule of its own, set to run once. If the one-off turns into a regular thing, you can change that schedule to repeat instead of starting over.
What you will be able to do
Create a net or a recurring schedule, decide who is allowed to run it and in what order, give Net Control a script to read and something to announce, have the lobby open before anyone arrives and the net close itself if everyone forgets, cancel a week without the schedule quietly putting it back, and get a report out the door that somebody else’s paperwork will accept.
The pages
Creating a net — The net form field by field: frequencies, required check-in fields, self check-in, poll questions, the topic of the week, and the logo.
Recurring schedules — Turning a net into a schedule, the recurrence options, what gets inherited by each net it creates, and how subscriptions work.
Net staff and the NCS rotation — Who is allowed to run your net, co-managers, the rotation, and why an auto-created net deliberately starts with nobody assigned.
Scripts, notes, and announcements — The formatted script Net Control reads from, standing announcements that apply every week, notes that apply to one night only, and the printable version of all of it.
Lobby and auto-close settings — Opening the lobby early so stations can arrive before Net Control, and closing a net that everyone walked away from. Both are off by default, and both have a reason for it.
Cancelling, archiving, and restoring — Calling off a week without the schedule recreating it, archiving what is finished, and getting something back that should not have gone.
Reports, ICS-309, and exports — The net report, the PDF, the ICS-309 Communications Log, the individual images, and who automatically receives what.
Importing check-ins — Bringing a net that ran on paper or in another program into ECTLogger, row by row, with its real times, so it counts toward everyone’s attendance.
Schedule statistics and leaderboards — Participation over time, the four leaderboards, the net history, and the schedule report.
A word on importing
If your net has been running on paper or in another program for years, you do not have to leave that history behind, and you do not have to start ECTLogger with an empty record. A finished net can be created and backfilled from a check-in list with its real start and end times, so everyone who took part gets attendance credit. That is covered in importing check-ins.
Not here
Running the net on the night is net control. Settings that apply to the whole instance rather than to your net, like the custom field definitions themselves and the user list, are administrators.