Kim Skimmons
My feedback
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180 votesKim Skimmons
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An error occurred while saving the comment An error occurred while saving the comment Kim Skimmons
commented
Thanks for the candor -- much appreciated. So... regarding the ~70 easier features... I wish/hope/plead that these are included (?):http://forums.wildapricot.com/forums/308920-archive/suggestions/8833867-ability-to-select-recipients-for-event-announcemen
http://forums.wildapricot.com/forums/308932-wishlist/suggestions/8825956-late-fees-on-renewals-4846
Just askin'... :-)
~ Kim
An error occurred while saving the comment Kim Skimmons
commented
Hi Dmitry. Just wondering where the idea of linking family members' WA accounts stands, if anything has changed or is planned to change anytime soon? Here is a recent question I received from a client regarding this that demonstrates one aspect of the problem of not being able to link accounts together:
This is for a boy scout troop. There are two membership levels: adult memberships and scout memberships that are at different price points. A typical family will have one or two registered adult members and one or two scout members (4 independent WA accounts). There is not a single "family" price option -- each scout must be paid for each year as well as each adult, and a portion of each of their dues gets passed onto the regional organization. [Same is true of PTA organizations, btw, which also has the same parent/child problem as far as WA is concerned since kids' WA accounts are not linked to their parent's WA account.]
I've considered using bundles, but I don't think membership bundles works for this scenario since there are two different membership level prices and the total pricing for the membership is not at the bundle level but at the bundle member level (a summative calculation based on the number of individual members in the bundle and their respective pricing (scout or adult).) Unless I'm not understanding something about bundles.
To summarize, the outstanding issues with the current configuration are:
1. Communication/emails/invoices -- go to each individual WA account, therefore parents aren't always aware of the status of their kids' accounts unless they login as their kid.
2. Account administration -- No birds-eye view of the whole family for the parent or the WA site administrators. Parent name/address/phone/emergency contact info duplicated for each child's WA record.
3. Registrations and payments -- Not easy to register multiple family members in one step without using "guest" registrations feature.
Thanks,
Kim
An error occurred while saving the comment Kim Skimmons
commented
I strongly support this idea. I control multiple Wild Apricot websites for family-based organizations (PTAs, Boy Scouts, etc.) All of them have a need for what is essentially a "family membership" where one person, usually the parent, is the primary account contact for email purposes. The others are associated with the parents account (either contained within it or as separate "sub-accounts" that are linked/tied to the parent account).
There may be an event such as a camping trip that requires registration. For this event, any of the children can attend (usually at a discounted rate), plus either of the parents may attend (possibly at a different price/rate). We need to know exactly who is attending and their membership type so that we can send appropriate information (adults chaperones get special information, the scouts have information pertaining to them). Of course, we'd like to pay for all of this in one transaction.
Right now, what we do is create separate accounts for each adult and scout at different membership levels. When a parent registers their kid for an event, they need to login as the scout and register. Then they repeat this for each kid. Finally, to register themself, they then need to logout and login as themself to register. It's very tedious and confusing to them. Furthermore, since unique email addresses are required for each account and most of the kids don't have email accounts, we've had to make up phony email addresses for the scouts and create email forwarders to forward those emails to the appropriate parent. Big hassle.
So, yes, several of my clients would greatly benefit by being able to register multiple members at one time. Doesn't solve the unique email address problem, but maybe you could somehow incorporate the "main account/sub-account" concept into planning this by allowing one member's email to point to another's.
Kim
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129 votesKim Skimmons
supported this idea
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An error occurred while saving the comment Kim Skimmons
commented
I'd like two things:
* A "(View map)" link to the right of or below the event Location field on the event details screen that links to Google maps in a new browser tab. By default, this link should pre-fill the address input in the Location field into a properly formatted Google maps URL string.* Ability to insert a Google Maps gadget into the event details Description field. Again, if the gadget could automatically use the address in the Location field that would be nice, but not required.
Kim
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26 votesKim Skimmons
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An error occurred while saving the comment Kim Skimmons
commented
The calendar gadget that is on web pages. Not the admin side.
An error occurred while saving the comment Kim Skimmons
commented
Quick Filter: Similar to in WA directories, allow option to show quick filters based on tags, date, free vs. paid events, member vs. public events, and other deterministic fields. This would make for a much more robust and interactive way to quickly see only the events you want to see.
General Search: Free-form search would be nice too, but quick filter is better if I have to choose which one gets implemented first. Both are useful for different scenarios. Quick Filter is a more powerful user interface element.
- Kim
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102 votesKim Skimmons
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An error occurred while saving the comment Kim Skimmons
commented
I kinda figured that, but wasn't sure if I'd just missed it in the long Roadmap list or something. Since your answer referred me to the list, I thought maybe there was some reference to it there.
An error occurred while saving the comment Kim Skimmons
commented
I don't see this listed there at all. Am I supposed to?
An error occurred while saving the comment Kim Skimmons
commented
Anything on this yet? Been another year and we are entering our renewal period again and are faced with the same problem again. A checkbox with a space to enter the late fee amount on the admin's renewals panel would be terrific:
"If not renewed in ___ days, add $___ late fee."
~ Kim
An error occurred while saving the comment Kim Skimmons
commented
I think this is a very useful feature to have. Whether it is considered punitive or not is a subjective matter and not really relevant to whether or not the feature should be available. Some organizations definitely have a legitimate use for it.
Having said that, using different membership levels really doesn't work well because there is not way to automatically switch them back to a member in good standing once they've paid their late member dues. The admins would need to remember to do this (which they don't) otherwise the next renewal they will be prompted to renew at the late member level, even if they are not late.
Manually turning on an extra fee field is too labor intensive and error prone. Plus it carries the same problem with remembering to turn it off once the member has renewed so that they don't automatically get charged again next year.
From an implementation point of view, I think having one more option on the admin's renewals panel where you check a box if you want to add a late fee once you enter the grace period and another option for a late fee (possibly a different amount than the grace period fee) for when they enter the Lapsed status.
I think this is very common and useful to encourage timely renewals.
Kim Skimmons
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215 votesKim Skimmons
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An error occurred while saving the comment Kim Skimmons
commented
Conditional fields would be awesome too -- and not just for event registrations but for the membership application as well!
But it will not solve my complex, multi-day, multi-type registration problem.
Kim Skimmons
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180 votes
Evgeny Zaritovskiy
responded
Merged together several closely related by meaning ideas – so we can properly resolve them all together, in different live scenarios
Kim Skimmons
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An error occurred while saving the comment Kim Skimmons
commented
Yes, this would be most useful. Some of my associations have a dedicated admin assistant or director whose job it is to send out email blasts on behalf of various officers or committee heads, but they want the emails to be 'from' the officer, not 'from' the admin assistant.
In addition, the system emails for membership renewals does not allow us to specify the 'from' address either which causes them to be from the site administrator email. When recipients reply to these emails with questions or whatever, the reply goes to the site admin instead of the membership chairperson (even though we've specified the membership chair's email address in the "Routing of system emails" settings for membership emails.) I will add this as a separate request since it's a little off-base for this topic.
- Kim
An error occurred while saving the comment Kim Skimmons
commented
Similar to in event emails, it would be nice to be able to specify the "From" address for the membership-related system emails that go out automatically -- e.g., renewal notifications.
Right now, those emails are 'from' the site administrator email address. When recipients reply to these emails with questions or whatever, the reply goes to the site admin who then needs to forward them to the membership chairperson. We've specified the membership chair's email address in the "Routing of system emails" settings for membership emails, but that doesn't solve this problem.
It's sometimes confusing for the recipients of these emails and definitely a pain for the admin to have to forward replies to the membership chair. In larger organizations this can translate to hundreds of emails being forwarded.
- Kim
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5 votesKim Skimmons
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An error occurred while saving the comment Kim Skimmons
commented
[quote user="Apricot Kernel"]About receiving a copy of emails by administrator - I'm not sure this is something that has to be done silently. It's a privacy issue - visitor should be warned that his text will be also copied to another person (administrator) so he does not add any private details into email.
Comments?
[/quote]
Isn't the privacy already violated by having the emails appear in the log? Legally speaking, I'm not sure that what you're doing now is any less a violation than adding a cc: or bcc: to the admin. For all practical purposes, the log actually functions like a silent bcc: Just sayin'...
I have clients who have asked for this feature as well. Especially if they have a referral policy in effect. They don't want members circumventing their referral fee.
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3 votesKim Skimmons
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Kim Skimmons
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244 votesKim Skimmons
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An error occurred while saving the comment Kim Skimmons
commented
I don't have a need for this as yet, but in the short run could you use something like Google analytics to track IP addresses that land on your member login landing page (the page they land on when they login)? Maybe not as precise as you'd like, but might work. Just a thought.
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135 votesKim Skimmons
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An error occurred while saving the comment Kim Skimmons
commented
I would love to have a simple way (e.g., in the "Customize colors and styles (Beta)" function) to specify the width of the site. Most templates seem to have a width of 919px. My clients often want a wider site and I have to add a bunch of custom CSS to make it happen. A simple fill-in-the-box width field would be really great. Thanks.
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21 votesKim Skimmons
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An error occurred while saving the comment Kim Skimmons
commented
[quote user="Tim"]
I'd like to see more flexibility on the member profile page so that the admin can reset the privacy settings by membership level and thus create different privacy defaults for different membership levels.[/quote]
Me, too. A sponsor or affiliate is very different from a member in most organizations in terms of data collected. Totally different fields are needed to show in the profile by default, including the profile header -- a member probably wants his/her name as the main heading, but a sponsor or affiliate wants the Company Name as the profile heading and probably wants their personal contact information hidden.
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11 votesKim Skimmons
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An error occurred while saving the comment Kim Skimmons
commented
In this case they are searching a membership directory and want to be able to search for members who represent fiction writers but NOT children's fiction. They have a database field called "Categories" that is a long list of checkboxes they can choose from. The directory includes this field in the display, so it's searchable using a keyword search. Among the categories are "fiction" and "children's fiction". So typing fiction into the keyword search would return both 'fiction' and 'children's fiction' in the results. If they could type fiction -children in the search field, that would work.
An error occurred while saving the comment Kim Skimmons
commented
[quote user="Chief_Apricot"]
Has anyone else come across other situations when NOT would be useful?
[/quote]
I have a client asking me today for a NOT option in Keyword Search. FWIW, I like how Google uses the hyphen prefix for NOT (e.g., dog NOT cat is: dog -cat ).
An error occurred while saving the comment Kim Skimmons
commented
Not specifically yet, but I can easily imagine scenarios where it would be useful. Every Boolean search has a NOT option.
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10 votesKim Skimmons
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Kim Skimmons
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369 votesEvgeny Zaritovskiy
responded
I merged another very similar thread into this one, they should be solved together – the registration to multiple events should be simple and fast if possible. There are a number of suggestions in comments on how to achieve this.
Kim Skimmons
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An error occurred while saving the comment Kim Skimmons
commented
Hi. You are correct -- I'd still like to have different registration types for each registrant. Recently I had to setup a Ski Trip event. Each registrant had 5 "packages" to choose from depending on whether they wanted to ski or snowboard, if they wanted a lesson package plus whether or not they needed to rent a helmet. The person who initially setup the event, logically created the event and added 5 registration types, one for each "package". However, when mom signed up for the ski trip, she chose the ski package for herself then proceeded to "add a guest" to register her son. Her son wanted to snowboard, but she couldn't figure out how to specify that and they both ended up with ski packages and the pricing was wrong.
I had to recreate the event with one registration type: "Sign up for the ski trip" that was "free". Then on the registration form, I had to create extra-cost options for each package. This worked, but it was not intuitive. Would be much easier to just be able to choose the reg type for each registrant.
An error occurred while saving the comment Kim Skimmons
commented
For organizations that have lots of events that require sign-ups, it would be nice to be able to sign up for multiple events at one time and pay for all of them at once.
An error occurred while saving the comment Kim Skimmons
commented
* Make Registration Type selection a set of checkboxes instead of radio buttons to allow a member to choose more than one type of registration at the same time (e.g., Attendee + Volunteer (Food) + Volunteer (Day of Event)).
* Allow member to specify number of people and names (e.g., a family might have both the husband and wife available to volunteer, or all 4 family members will attend the event for each type.) I know multiple registrations is covered in another Wishlist item. Maybe this part is just an extension of that to include Registration Types? -
43 votesKim Skimmons
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An error occurred while saving the comment Kim Skimmons
commented
I plan to use Groups to control page access -- who can read what. Once a year, right around renewal time, I have some high-demand, time-sensitive information that I post on a web page as an incentive for people to renew their memberships. But I only want people who are active for the coming year to be able to see it, not people who are presently active but about to expire within the next few weeks. I hope to use Groups to implement this restricted access but there is one main shortcoming having to do with manual group assignments.
Specifically, it would be really nice to have dynamic group assignments based on renewal date or member status so that when people create or renew their membership online (or even when a manual payment is confirmed), they are instantly admitted to the group that can access the time-sensitive information page without requiring any further admin intervention. Or maybe their renewal date (or whatever criteria) is dynamically verified at the time they attempt to access the restricted page. If they fail to meet the criteria, an appropriate message is displayed.
If this is not possible for whatever reason, the next best thing would be the ability of an admin to select group members based on admin-defined criteria (like an advanced search) and then assign those members to the group all at once. The admin could then run this saved search repeatedly to catch new members and add them to the group. The downside here is that the members won't get instant access to the time-sensitive, high-demand pages upon payment -- they'll have to wait until the admin manually adds them to the group -- which I'm sure will frustrate them.
If there's a better way to implement this besides using Groups, I'm open to it. Thanks.
An error occurred while saving the comment Kim Skimmons
commented
I like this parent/tree structure concept as well as the Group Editor concept. Both are useful. I assume that:
* A group could have edit privileges to various web pages independent of their location on the website (not tied to parent-child relationship)* Multiple groups could potentially have edit access to the same page(s) at the admin's discretion
* An individual can belong to more than one group, thus editing more than one set of pages -
146 votesEvgeny 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
Kim Skimmons
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Kim Skimmons
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21 votesKim Skimmons
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An error occurred while saving the comment Kim Skimmons
commented
Yes, that would be great to have direct links to system pages in the Insert Link dialog.
Kim
An error occurred while saving the comment Kim Skimmons
commented
What about my original question? Is that doable?
An error occurred while saving the comment Kim Skimmons
commented
Now that's what I call service!
Kim Skimmons
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152 votesKim Skimmons
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An error occurred while saving the comment Kim Skimmons
commented
A good list of features is here http://whentohelp.com (http://whentohelp.com/). Printable, or at least exportable, reports (schedule/timetable, volunteer contact list, who's doing what list) are important. Obviously integrated with the contacts database.
An error occurred while saving the comment Kim Skimmons
commented
I'd like to have a volunteer tracking component in Wild Apricot. Nearly all of my clients' organizations rely heavily on volunteers. Keeping track of them is a problem. It'd be great to have a way for volunteers to sign up for activities, time slots, etc. and communicate with them, as well as tracking their hours for the year or whatever time frame. Using the events database to do this (i.e., creating a "Volunteer for..." event) is possible but really doesn't cut it for any but the simplest projects.
An error occurred while saving the comment Kim Skimmons
commented
One thing to keep in mind is that volunteers are separate from event registrations. Not all volunteers are attendees.
An error occurred while saving the comment Kim Skimmons
commented
I moved this entry over to the Wishlist because I don't think this is something WA can do right now.
An error occurred while saving the comment Kim Skimmons
commented
Like most non-profits, a huge part of our activities involve not only sponsoring events and managing event registrations, but also (just as importantly if not moreso) signing up volunteers to help with these events. There are a few different types of volunteers typically.
(1) General volunteers who sign up to help plan the event. There may be different subsets in this category. For example, our annual Spring Fair is a major event that recruits volunteers for the Food Committee, Decorating Committee, Entertainment Committee, PR Committee, etc.
(2) Event Day Volunteers are people who sign up in advance to work specific jobs and/or time slots on the day of the event. Using the Spring Fair example, we might have someone who can work a Game table from 1:00 - 3:00. Another person can work the food booth from 11:30 - 1:00. The committee chairperson needs to make sure she has at least 2 people to cover the food booth for the duration of the event.
(3) Multi-Day Events volunteers. Some events go for an entire week and we need to make sure we have enough staffing for each day of the week. This is similar to #2 above but allows people to specify a specific day as well as a specific time.
It would be really nice to have the ability to post volunteer openings, allow people to sign up for spots and send email reminders to them.
Kim Skimmons
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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.
Kim Skimmons
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An error occurred while saving the comment Kim Skimmons
commented
Would the bundled spouse then count toward our database contact total? If so, that would double our contacts pushing us beyond what we can afford. We're a community level now with up to 500 contacts for $50/month.
An error occurred while saving the comment Kim Skimmons
commented
My memberships typically consist of a husband and wife. The wife is usually the primary, but often times both would like to receive the emails from the website. However, since there is only one email address per membership that the system recognizes, only one of them can get the emails and then must forward them on to their spouse which is an inconvenience and unreliable.
Is it possible to have a second email address on a single membership that can optionally choose to receive system emails? Thanks.
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172 votesKim Skimmons
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An error occurred while saving the comment Kim Skimmons
commented
A nice-to-have feature, but not a high priority for us since we can do this pretty easily using MS Word. But an improved data export functionality (export-to-MSWord-for-MailMerge) would make it a little easier.
Awesome :) Thank you.