I noticed that the contact fields automatically get loaded to event registration forms which is a nice feature and saves the user time when registering.

I'd like to request that updates made to contact field information by individuals who are "recognized" users of WA be back loaded to their permanent contact record.

For instance, if someone sees an error in their contact field information (like mailing address) while registering for an event and they update that field (like their mailing address or phone number) while registering for an event, I'd like that change updated to their permanent contact profile record instead of just getting saved with the event record.

If you add this function, it would be a good idea to add a warning message as they page through the registration form to ask "You have made changes to a profile field, do you want those changes to update your profile?". Then given them a yes or no option. Yes means you allow the update to the profile, no means the change only gets stored with the event registration form as you do now.

Hopefully other will like this idea and encourage this to be added. I would anticipate that end users would think that an update made while registering for an event would carry back to their permanent contact file record, when in fact it is not. It would be a nice capability. We will see what other say.

As an administrator I would find it really helpful to be able to make bulk changes online. Two reasons:

1. Import/export is clumsy, and foces me to use Excel's interface, which I find quite awkward.

2. There is no "lock" on the data while I am changing it. Members can change data while I am making changes to the exported file.
To give an idea of the sort of problems #2 generates: if I do an export and a member comes along and changes his/her data while I am playing with the exported file, then there's a problem. The way that WA seems to handle this is by generating an error on reimport. I now have to download the error file to see what the error is (since of course I don't know what caused the error -- as a separate request, I'd really like it if these errors were shown live on the webpage), make the fix or export yet another file, make my changes all over again, and re-import -- hoping that no *further* changes were made so that I don't have to go through the process yet again!

As a side note, the advanced search feature is fantastic! If bulk changes could be incorporated into that, I'd be very, very happy.

Hi,

Great software – life just got easier ;-)

If you’re looking for new things to add then my suggestion would be something for Achievements/Courses. Basically they would work a lot like events except they go against a “Member’s Achievement History” (new concept).

So, some of the function points might be:

· New Functional web page type with a Page Template of “Achievements Calendar”

o Access to Selected Groups

· Achievement Settings

o Achievement E-mails

§ Email Event Triggers (Registration, Approval, Rejection – to Member and/or Mentor/Trainer, Achievement End Date – to Mentor/Trainer)

· Achievements

o Add Achievement

§ Registration Types

· Availability

o Selected Groups

§ Mentor/Trainer (New)

· Select Member

· Register

o Add to Member Achievement History with Status of Pending

o Add to Mentor/Trainer Approvals Section

· Achievement Confirmation

o On logon and after the Achievement End Date, prompt Mentor/Trainer to approve pending Achievements

§ Approve, update date and status to “Achieved” on Member Achievement History

§ Reject, update date and status to “Not Achieved” on Member Achievement History

o Logon Links

§ “View Approvals” underneath “View Profile” (only for Mentors/Trainers with Approve/Reject buttons)

§ “View Member Achievement History List” (only for Mentors/Trainers – see Members point below with the ability for Mentors/Trainers to “Save” their own searches, the list would be filtered to only those Achievements that they are a Mentor/Trainer for)

§ “View Achievements” (only for Member)

· Members

o Member Achievement History List

§ Allow same functionality as per Member List except Level will be Member Group as opposed to Membership Level

This would really round out what is already a functionally rich product. Most of the above are just extensions of existing objects, the only really new object is the Member Achievement History.

Regards,

Richard

I am posting this suggestion based on email exchange with a client - so that we can get more feedback from others.

Even though we don't normally refer to Wild Apricot as a CRM system, it has many things in common with CRM:

- database of contacts

- tracking of various transactions with each contact

the suggestion is to take this further:

- Add 'Communications tab' to track all communications/actions with each contact: contact date & contact type, follow-up date & type, a note, tracking of emails (opens, links) and links to related correspondence records (email blasts). Among other major benefits, the system could be used for service and sales (fundraising) tracking and reporting, including the all important “tickler file”.

- Add Outlook integration: include a copy of Outlook (client) inbox and sent items in the communications history for each member, to provide a complete picture of correspondence.

I would appreciate input from others.

I just sent my first email blast to a group of contacts to follow up on a promotion, and found that there is not a way to assign a contact to a group. I just wanted to send an email to a very specific group of contacts (those that had attended a recent ski show, and entered our raffle). I thought I'd be able to assign them to a new group "ski show" so that I could send them a separate mailing. (What I ended up doing, was temporarily disabling mailing on other contacts, which thankfully right now we have very few, since we just started this year, sending the blast, then re-enabling the email).

It would be great if there were some way to define a subset of contacts for mailing.

We had an old discussion about adding new type for a custom field - numbers:
http://forums.wildapricot.com/forums/308920-archive/suggestions/8834458-create-numeric-fields-7304

When we started our analysis work on this problem, we realized that we have no clear vision of what is underlying problem that our clients want to resolve with this new field type.

Most comments were about export into Excel, so it can properly recognize numbers. But from our point of view, export itself is a workaround to another problem - something is missing in Wild Apricot functionality and you try to substitute it with export. This means that adding new field type will not truly resolve initial problem, so at some level it's not a real system improvement and we usually try to avoid such system changes.

On the other hand, we might miss something important and Numeric field type can really be useful and fulfill some of an organization necessities (please, do not mix Numeric type with dates and other field types - for dates we can clearly see scenarios). For example, to validate user input when your members apply for membership (but in this case what in particular the field is about?)

So can you please help us:

1) We need your reasons and examples of why your particular organization would benefit from having Numeric field - ideally, not as a workaround of a bigger problem.
2) Do you need to have ability to search on this numbers like "less" or "greater" or "between"?
3) Do you need integer type, decimal or both?
4) Do you need special validation rules for the field like "cannot be less than..." or "not greater than"?

We are a new user and have uploaded the member lists from data in our desktop database. Now we need to be sure that all our users have reset their passwords (senior group, some with limited computer skills).

We did find a way to see everyone who had logged in at least once. Admin area > Members > Advanced Search criteria: Last login date. This suited our situation because if they were able to login, that meant they had reset their passwords.

What we couldn’t get, however, was a search list of those who had never logged in. We worked around it by creating a Logged In = Yes or No field and populated it with yes for those who had logged in, then created search on No to find the others. Doable, but requires manual manipulation to keep it up to date.

One solution is to have 'Never logged in’ and ‘Not logged in as of <date>’ in the search criteria choices.

Even better would be a general search feature that excludes the searched records. You have AND & OR - it would be nice to have NOT for all searches.

I should like some flexibility to be able to change field types for existing database fields.

For example I have fields which are current defined as text. However members give different responses to the question in terms of capitalisation, abbreviations etc which make the behaviour of the search on data in that field erractic.

I'd like to be able to change such a text field to a picklist.

The database would still store a text value but the choice available to new members would be restricted by the list. Existing membership records would continue to hold the existing data until the member chose to edit their record or renew their membership (if not previously edited) at which point the user would be required to replace the old non-compliant data value with a new one from the pick list.