Andrew Steele
My feedback
92 results found
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146 votes
Evgeny Zaritovskiy
responded
Old design proposal, not working on it yet and can be changed if we start working on it – https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B0f9kMyQqlBsZ3FQOWRiMERRNkk/view?usp=sharing
An error occurred while saving the comment An error occurred while saving the comment Andrew Steele
commented
I concur that a partial solution would be to make searches on radio button fields allow multiple selected. Combo AND/OR searches could be added later if that's more complicated to implement.
An error occurred while saving the comment Andrew Steele
commented
The proposed solution to allow nested criteria would work well for our reporting needs.
I also agree with Walt who posted previously. In advanced search, radio button fields should be treated the same as check boxes. Although the member has to choose only one radio button, admins should be able to specify a single search criterion to select several alternatives (any of selected, all, or none). The proposed solution would allow a workaround by nesting and then listing that criteria multiple times, but is inefficient for this purpose.
An error occurred while saving the comment Andrew Steele
commented
I recently started a trial and was surprised to find the limitations on the Advanced Search logic. To pull a mailing list, I'd like to have a saved search: Any of multiple, but not all, Member Levels AND my custom field Newsletter Preference set to Mail or Email & Mail. We also have a lot of reporting that we have to do, and I'm sure I will run into other instances where this is needed.
Andrew Steele
supported this idea
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23 votes
An error occurred while saving the comment Andrew Steele
commented
While it's possible that what Evgeny suggested is true - that people are unsubscribing from your emails via the unsubscribe link - I too think it's important to name things appropriately for your organization within the Profile pages on the website. There's no direct way to change the text, but here's a workaround. It's not the ideal solution, but it gets the job done. Every theme may be different, but you can use custom CSS to hide the original text and replace it with your own. This example is for the Whiteboard theme. You may have to figure out what the particular CSS selectors are in your theme.
/* Mod: Email Subscriptions Text: "Manual email blasts" */
/*Hide the original text*/
#subscribeToNewsContainer h4 span {
display:none;
}
/* Replace with your text in between the single quotes */
#subscribeToNewsContainer h4:after {
content: 'Newsletter, News & Updates';
}/* Mod: Email Subscriptions Description Text: "Mass emails from administrators, such as newsletters and other important notifications" */
/* Hide the original text */
#idEmailNewsContainer .fieldBody span {
display:none;
}/* Replace with your text in between the single quotes */
#idEmailNewsContainer .fieldBody:after {
content: 'Occasional updates, news, event notices, and the monthly newsletter';
} -
39 votes
An error occurred while saving the comment Andrew Steele
commented
1. What kind of newsletters/campaigns do you have?
Monthly newsletter, event announcement/reminder/thank you for attending, news and updates.2. How often do you send emails via Wild Apricot?
We currently don’t send any emails via Wild Apricot (WA) because we still use Constant Contact (CC). Our goal is to eventually use WA, but I’m not looking forward to the eventual switchover. We send about 2-4 emails per month.3. What is the starting point of creating a recipient list?
In CC, if we want to send to a subset, we typically have that list of emails in an Excel file. It’s easy to import those emails and add them to an Email List or to Tag them with an identifier. CC automatically looks for duplicates. We are then able to add individuals – or multiple individuals using searching and checkboxes next to records – to that Email List or Tag through CC’s interface.In WA, if we want to send to our “whole” list, I would select the custom Members Saved Search I created for “Email List.” This includes criteria for two custom fields and one WA system field: Newsletter Preference (set to any of: “Email and Mail” or “Email Only”), Do Not Email (set to none of: “Individual Requested” or “Bad Email” or “Organization Requested”), and Email preferences (set to none of: “Email delivery disabled”). Although I just realized that I can’t use this to then send to a subset who have attended an event, as I’ve set it up as a Members Saved Search and not a Contacts Saved Search...
I would like to be able to send “Thank You for Attending” type emails to those who attended an event. Rather than email all event registrants, I would like to be able to email only those who checked in. I can’t find any way to do this in the system.
See my answer to question #5 for more on recipient lists.
4. What parts/modules of the system do you usually send emails from?
We don’t currently send any of the WA automatic emails (which were a real pain to hunt down and turn off!). Our member self-service area is not fully prepared yet. Eventually we would like to send membership renewal notices and event reminders through the system. It would be nice to actually be able to fully customize these emails – not just the text, but the HTML too, like is possible for the email blasts. Until that becomes available, we’ll likely only use WA to send our 2-4 email blasts per month from the “Emails” section of Admin.5. What are the pros and cons of the current "add recipient" dialog?
We need a way to add “recipients” plural at one time (how about some checkboxes next to records?). And we need a way to save custom lists that have had recipients added to or removed from them. This is important to store exceptions to a Saved Search. There’s currently no way to create a custom saved list that is not based purely on search criteria. This equates to adding/removing recipients every time you’re trying to target a particular group.Rather than just pulling from the Contact and Member Advanced Searches (although those can still be included as options), it would be nice to have “Email Lists” to keep this separate and organized. Members could be added to Email Lists on an individual basis, or by an Administrator adding all of those from a search to the Email List.
If the Administrator allows it, the members from their profile could then opt to add or remove themselves from various interest lists. For example, an animal rescue organization may send out emails about cats and separate emails about dogs – the member could choose which email lists to be on: dogs, cats, both, or neither. Allowing each individual Email List to have the option “For Administrator Use Only” would still allow for Email Lists that the Admins don’t want the members to have control over.
Right now, the only way to achieve this is to have a custom Contact Field called Mailing List that is a checkbox field, but even this isn’t a great solution, as the items can’t be shown/hidden on an individual basis. And then, in order to actually email those folks, a custom Saved Search has to be made for each selection on that checkbox list…not very user-friendly. Plus, the settings for the member to change their preferences would be under the member’s main profile tab, instead of the “Email subscriptions” tab…again, not user-friendly.
Other
Please allow better customization of the “Email subscriptions” tab of the member profile. Our organization doesn’t use forums and I don’t want members to be able to opt in/out of event reminders, just emails in general. I also wanted to change the text of the “email blasts” line (our members may not know what this means). I’ve accomplished these changes with CSS, but that’s not an ideal solution; if anything changes this gadget in an update, I’ll have to revisit and ensure everything is still hidden and altered appropriately.Thank you for your time and consideration on these matters!
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20 votes
An error occurred while saving the comment Andrew Steele
commented
Hi Oleg,
I think it would be more useful to have this on an invoice level, ideally being able to do a more "advanced" search of invoices, e.g. those with an open balance AND only member renewals. This way if a member also has an open invoice for an event, it's not necessarily applying it to that (and vice versa if you're entering a lot of payments for an event). Although I still think the checkboxes would help in case you needed to exclude any from the search results. The bulk payment would fully settle the selected invoices.
Thanks,
LizAn error occurred while saving the comment Andrew Steele
commented
Thank you for your response Oleg. The key part of what you mentioned is "It's not intended for working with multiple contacts, though." This is precisely what I need it for. Otherwise I'd have to enter a payment and then go into literally thousands of individual accounts to settle the open invoices on them.
I still think a bulk "mark as paid" feature could be implemented and keep the accounting accurate. Perhaps be able to run a search to find the desired outstanding invoices, have a checkbox in each row, and have an option to bulk mark as paid. You would then enter the payment details once, e.g. Fully Paid and Tender Type. This would also be helpful if a large number of people renew their membership by cash or check, as you could mark them all at once as fully paid.
An error occurred while saving the comment Andrew Steele
commented
It would be useful to have this option for multiple persons' invoices. Many of our members pay their dues through a type of payroll deduction, so we get a lump sum and notification of payment for all of them once per month. Currently we have their membership level as "free" in WA because there's no good way to track this kind of payment in the system; we don't want to have to open thousands of accounts to mark them as paid each month, and exporting and re-importing would be a messy business. It would be nice to have the accounting in WA be accurate. Allowing the quick bulk marking of many invoices under different member accounts as paid would solve this issue.
Andrew Steele
supported this idea
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16 votes
An error occurred while saving the comment Andrew Steele
commented
I agree that the setup of Common vs Membership Fields needs to be simplified. Fields such as address, phone, phone type, and a few that are unique to our organization such as department, need to be applicable to all contacts. They need to be read-only in the contacts' profiles...something that can only be done with Member Fields. But these fields also need to be included in event registrations...something that can only be done with Common Fields. There's no winning here.
We're already entering everyone - even our contacts - as WA members with a member level of "Non-Member Contact." It's confusing to our Admins, but is the only way that I can see to give all of our business and professional contacts the full capabilities needed (e.g. group participation, access to restricted event registration, view-only fields in their accounts, etc.). But then some info is on a separate tab from all their other info in the admin side of things. Member Fields also can't currently be sorted in with Common Fields on the signup form.
I truly wish Contacts and Members were merged, such that everyone is a contact and they can optionally have a Membership Level assigned. If they don't have a level assigned, then you know they're only a contact. All the fields for Contacts and Members would be the same, with the option to make each individually a Common Field as suggested by this Wishlist item. This would be so much simpler!
Andrew Steele
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46 votesAndrew Steele
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50 votesAndrew Steele
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5 votesAndrew Steele
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An error occurred while saving the comment Andrew Steele
commented
We currently register everyone for our events manually. We typically only have one ticket type. This would save a lot of clicks! Or alternatively, it would be nice to be able to set a default registration type. So even if there are multiple options, you can choose which it should select by default by which type is most commonly used.
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89 votesEvgeny Zaritovskiy
responded
I’m making this not just about events, but other lists too – this is a common usability problem.
Andrew Steele
supported this idea
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3 votes
An error occurred while saving the comment Andrew Steele
commented
I'm assuming you want to fix the horizontal scroll issue? Wild Apricot uses iFrames to embed content on other websites. Think of it as a window on your website that you look through to see a different website - in this case, a Wild Apricot page. Because the Wild Apricot page is wider than your window, you end up with a horizontal scroll bar. You would need to use CSS within Wild Apricot to change the width of the actual content, such that it never expands past your desired width for your website. The Wild Apricot support team may be able to assist you in coming up with the custom CSS (i.e. which selector(s) to target) to reduce the width of the event display area. You will likely always have a vertical scroll bar, since the height of the content varies from event to event. You could make the iFrame very tall, but then you may have a lot of white space on events that are shorter. I hope this helps!
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36 votes
We're currently working on customizing level change emails.
Andrew Steele
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47 votesEvgeny Zaritovskiy
responded
I have merged several similar suggestion together – they all about previewing various site functions from members perspective. For example, wen pages, registration and application forms, etc.
Andrew Steele
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3 votes
An error occurred while saving the comment Andrew Steele
commented
I concur that the Notes field needs to be listed as a System Field on the Common Fields page. This would ensure it would appear at least on the manual Add Member form for administrators to use as they're adding a member. It would also give the ability, like any other field, to be reordered within the Common Fields.
Andrew Steele
supported this idea
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486 votes
Team Husky
responded
Sorry for the late update.
The first step was finished and emails can now be carbon copied to contact’s alternative emails. To do so the contact fields which store the alternative emails must be explicitly marked on the email setting page.
Unsubscribing will unsubscribe all alternative emails simultaneously because they all belong to the very same account. The person clicking “unsubscribe” is warned about this on the unsubscribe page.
For now we paused the development of this feature. but not for good. :) So I’m changing this wish status back to “collecting comments”.
Thank you everyone for a valuable feedback.
Andrew Steele
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65 votesAndrew Steele
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104 votesEvgeny Zaritovskiy
responded
We’re looking into this request in much broader context – we want to simplify overall management of contacts, lists, saved searches. Saved search should be perceived as smart lists and provide quick access to various contact and member groups.
An error occurred while saving the comment Andrew Steele
commented
I agree with combining the Contact and Member tabs. We track many people that are not members of ours - local company contacts, government contacts, other association contacts, etc. - and in order to group them, we had to create a Member Level called Non-Member Contact, and then create Member Groups to sort them into. This is really confusing for our admins, but is the only way I can see to get that extra functionality for these contacts. Splitting the fields and the saved searches between contacts and members only further complicates matters, as admins may unwittingly end up in the wrong place. If you navigate from the Member List to an individual account, it automatically switches you to the Contact tab in the main menu (even while on the Membership tab in the user's individual account), making it confusing to get back to the Member List. Ideally, a Contact should simply be a lowest-permission, $0, endless-until-changed "Member Level." Then the Contact and Member tabs could be merged. People in the specific Member Level of "Contact" would not count toward the total number of members for WA billing purposes.
Andrew Steele
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101 votesAndrew Steele
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An error occurred while saving the comment Andrew Steele
commented
Field validation is important to our organization to keep our data clean and organized. Common fields (e.g. phone, zip code) would be a great start, but I agree with Evgeny - giving the administrator a way to input custom validation via regular expressions or js is the way to go. Then a help page could be created that shows a list of common expressions/code snippets that Admins can enter. And if an Admin needs a validation that's not on the list, they can ask the community for assistance creating the code they need. This way the WA coders aren't baking in every possible validation to all instances of WA.
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137 votesAndrew Steele
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215 votesAndrew Steele
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93 votesAndrew Steele
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There's a new topic that's similar to this one. It suggests that dropdowns should also allow multiple selected in search, which makes a lot of sense. E.g. If you have a dropdown for states, and you want to find members in set of specific states, you currently have to add a new criteria for every single state. https://forums.wildapricot.com/forums/308932-wishlist/suggestions/15719559-filter-for-multiple-items-within-a-single-advanced