Alex Sirota
My feedback
125 results found
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74 votes
An error occurred while saving the comment An error occurred while saving the comment 5) Reporting can be done in 1 site with membership summary quite well IF and ONLY IF the membership levels are selected for each chapter (described in 1). If a consistent set of chapters with calculated charge fields are used for all chapters, that's even better. The Excel Dashboard we adapted from Wild Apricot API samples can be effectively used for custom rollup rerpoting.
6) Training and operational excellence is a MUST in a single site multi-chapter Wild Apricot system. You have to do things correctly in terms of adding a chapter, adding pages, inheriting membership levels for a new chapter, modification of existing levels.
Setting up 1 set of levels seems like a better way to go but that assumes a business model transformation across all chapters which may not be realistic.
It seems doable, but the payment gateway roadblock seems to be the thing that is the most critical to resolve, whereas the others are not so bad.
Setting up 60 chapters individually with cloning and then reporting across them all seems great, but financially it just doesn't scale because the per contact cost at the smaller payment levels is dramatically more than at the 15k+ levels. The larger the org the less appealing a multi-site approach looks and the more difficult it is to manage.
I can see the light at the end of the tunnel if the Payment Gateway issue is resolved, honestly speaking.
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111 votes
An error occurred while saving the comment Include export contacts logging as well to track who/when/and what fields where exported using the Export feature, please.
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103 votes
An error occurred while saving the comment Just an aside -- database hygiene is always an issue even in the most complex and expensive products. There is always a way people can break validation with ingenious lack of information or purposely provide invalid data. Until a feature is available built in, Excel exports of problematic fields along with User ID can be used to bulk clean up data.
There are great Excel formulas that are easier to implement than regular expressions (many don't know REGEX patterns and directives). These formulas can be used to "clean up" data using built in Excel formatting rules for phone numbers, formulas like MATCH, LEFT, MID and RIGHT and data transformation tools like VLOOKUP, IFS and other means to convert values based on specific input. It takes some Excel smarts, but once you have a good workbench in Excel you can clean up data all day long :)
https://xltools.net/data-cleansing-in-excel/
https://support.office.com/en-us/article/top-ten-ways-to-clean-your-data-2844b620-677c-47a7-ac3e-c2e157d1db19 -
12 votes
An error occurred while saving the comment I have seen this be a common complaint as well. There should be a way to collect a subset of the common fields for Guest registration and collect a different set for member registrants.
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9 votes
An error occurred while saving the comment A few comments here -- export functionality is a must, as copy and paste is rather cumbersome. An import of the WordPress XML files could be a nice addition.
The main issue is that the new URL format must be established during the import to ensure link names are consistent in the new ** site.
Having an import from WordPress feature would go a long way to fixing this.
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8 votes
An error occurred while saving the comment It is possible to use Custom HTML to assign page template level CSS that is inherited by the pages that use it. Here's how to set a page template level BODY tag change to swap out the background image:
<style>
body { background-image: url(https://newpathconsulting.wildapricot.org/resources/Theme/template_backgroundimages/imageWA.png); background-size: cover; background-repeat: unset; background-attachment: fixed; background-color: navajowhite; background-blend-mode: unset; }</style>What would be nicer is to be able to assign a full tag like this in a Custom CSS settings of a page template. Inline styles currently are only available for gadgets so it would be ideal to be able to add this code on the settings of the page template, just like they could be done on a page.
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6 votes
An error occurred while saving the comment If you're going to support the ability to create a link field why not just go full route and support an HTML field which allows the embedding of a subset of HTML code like <a> <strong> <a href> some formatting and also <embed> tags. <img>
This would enable you to put all sorts of content into the membership field and enable rich media to be available. This will also solve the issue of profile photos not being large enough since you can create a Photo album.
I daresay putting a field like this in will actually let you design a more custom profile page without having to modify the underlying template in some cases.
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36 votes
An error occurred while saving the comment I would add a couple of more features for blogs.
1) Have the ability to add an excerpt that would show in the recent blogs gadget (this should be an option). So the excerpt could be added for each blog separately from the content and whether it shows or not in the gadget for recent blogs
2) Similarly show a featured image in the blog entry. Have the ability to set an optional featured image, and have the ability to show that image in the recent blogs gadget.
A new blog gallery gadget could make use of the exceprts and images much better than a recent blogs gadget. The gallery could be a carousel or a grid like show of blog posts. Could be quite powerful way to feature content.
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14 votes
An error occurred while saving the comment This is an important wishlist item to treat documents in the file manager as equal citizens to other pages.
One interesting thing about downloading files though. Many web browsers "preview" the link and render it without a helper application - images, PDFs and other data types are dealt with in a different way.
Fillable PDFs for example are sometimes not fillable at all (see Firefox). Interactive PDFs that have calculations break very often as well due to lack of implementation support for the full PDF specification.
Using the HTML5 "download" attribute it is possible to force the browser to download the file rather than render it for preview. This will allow users to open the documents in the ****** "helper" application when necessary.
Details on this very useful, and little known feature that is supported in all the major browsers and platforms.
https://www.w3schools.com/tags/att_a_download.asp -
42 votes
An error occurred while saving the comment Adding conversion analytics tags to ** is somewhat painful. We use Custom HTML gadget for this, but one place that is not possible is on payment checkout
A comment on how payments are made in WA. It seems that a payments processor page (website) is invoked OUTSIDE of the ** site to complete a transaction. That has some benefits like complete control of the payment UI and SSL encryption for all transactions.
The one draw back it has is that you cannot place conversion tags with google analytics into that page.
I think conversion tracking is an essential part of the membership conversion process and it would be nice to be able to track marketing campaigns held outside of ** to conversion to various registrations/payments made.
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7 votes
An error occurred while saving the comment To ******'s point about templating language: that would be an amazingly complex feature. It would allow all sorts of interesting customizations on a per member basis. Really expand what can be done with a member profile. In general a member profile template can be changed with custom themes or CSS changes. We are doing that now on a site and it works great to overrride gadget CSS.
I should say allowing straight HTML (and javascript embeds) ensuring nothing that would break the profile could be a first step.
There could be a set of tags that are allowed to be submitted into a contact/membership field and they are rendered. An example use case:
1. Videos from Youtube for a profile
2. A list of RSS feeds using a Javascript RSS reader that renders within a profileThis functionality could make profile's SING and could really be a great way to expand the value of a member profile when you can show stuff other than just text and pictures.
But agreed -- your comment about being able to insert content from the rest of the database using data variables would be even more amazing.
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7 votes
An error occurred while saving the comment When setting up payment settings in Settings/Finances/Payment Settings it would be good to specify whether the default for all membership levels and events is either
a) online only
b) offline only
c) both online and offlineThat way this can be set globally and only changed when necessary to override. The ability to set this will enable organizations to set default policies on whether they take online payment only and "pay by invoice" or "invoice me" could be essentially disabled when allowing online only.
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1 vote
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2 votes
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2 votes
An error occurred while saving the comment Share your website so we can inspect the actual gadget.
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5 votes
An error occurred while saving the comment This is possible with CSS. Much else is possible to hide this way all through out the system by using the display:none; directive on the appropriate class or ID.
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98 votes
Hello!
We’re glad to share that the first two system push notifications are now live in the Member App on both iOS and Android. Members will now receive updates when:
- New events are published and open for registration
- Event reminders — sent a day before and an hour before the event starts
These new tools are designed to boost member engagement and help attendees stay in the loop.
Members can manage these notifications anytime in their app settings.
Another system push — notifications about event changes — is coming in the next release. Stay tuned!
You can read more about these changes in our Help Center
An error occurred while saving the comment An alternative would be to have SMS integration into the product to create SMS message campaigns from a cell phone field.
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123 votes
An error occurred while saving the comment You can use the Excel system we built to extract data and create a nice layout in Excel or Word to print badgest with a few mail merge tools built into both products.
http://www.newpathconsulting.com/wild-apricot-excel-reporting-dashboard.html
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38 votes
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32 votes
An error occurred while saving the comment ******
I see. So before an invoice is created. The message box appears in the bottom right corner when there are outstanding invoices to be paid. I have never been totally pleased with this ui. How would these be triggered? What sort of criteria would you use to trigger the alert?
Also isn't this something email blasts could be used for too? Seems like something that email could drive more compliance.
What size of box would you like?
An error occurred while saving the comment There is already a message box in the bottom when you login. How is this different than the current implementation that reminds you of outstanding invoices?
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I have been wracking my brain on how to work around elegantly Wild Apricot's configuration to accomplish the idea of a "master" site and subsites all within 1 Wild Apricot instance.
1) The database can be configured to have either a chapter assignment attribute OR a different set of membership levels for each chapter.
Using the database field approach one can register through a central, agreed upon set of membership levels consistent for ALL chapters (or at least the majority) and then the member records via drop down or radio button which chapter they are assigning themselves to. You can do some interesting things like being assigned (and pay via calculated charge membership field) to multiple chapters if you want. The MAJOR issue with this is that page level access control CANNOT be set with saved searches so membership groups have to be used instead. I do believe membership groups CAN be set on registration or renewal but cannot be automatically defaulted to a set level. This is an issue that could be solved with some page level Javascript (a very small hack).
Using membership levels is another approach where each chapter derives their own set of membership levels from a master set and then has a large degree of configurability. Membership levels are the chapter identifiers then.
Access control works seamlessly in the website with membership levels.
2) All access control to websites can be managed via membership level or the membership group and unsurprisingly this is the easiest and best fit. Chapters can have their own page templates derived from a master set of templates and the "subsites" can be quite rich with their own set of controls.
Escalation has to happen to a master website coordinator to make new pages or changes to page templates. This may be a *good* thing!
3) The events system has to use membership level/groups based on decision in 1 OR instead use the tagging system. Tagging system can be fragile and leak events into wrong chapters.
The main issue here is that any administrator with event management rights (or full admin) can see all the events and has to be adept at finding and managing their own events. Lots of chapters means LOTS of events. The upside is that people can copy event ideas from each other using duplicate but the event UI can become a mess. On the other hand with adequate training and policies this *could* work.
Events access control via gadgets show the appropriate events to each subsite chapter, with a BIG plus that events across the whole org seamlessly float up to a master event calendar.
4) The payment gateway limitation is the *single biggest* roadblock. Since only 1 currency and 1 payment gateway per account is allowed, the owner of the payment gateway has to be responsible for "doling" out funds to each chapter using a very well defined identifier. This must happen in the reporting on the payment gateway. Most (if not all payment gateways) support ONLY 1 bank account so this must be done OUTSIDE of the payment gateway. This is a show stopper.
If Affinipay supported multiple bank accounts for withdrawal based on a tag, a single payment gateway would be ok as long as an indicator for every transaction showed where the transaction goes (HQ, chapter 1, 2 etc) and if the payment gateway could just dump money into the right account, financial reporting could support the reconciliation effort.
Saving costs of multiple payment gateway setups and administration as well as single point oversight of all financials could be good (unless chapters didn't trust each other).