ClubExpress Admin Email - August 10, 2017

We are delighted to announce ClubExpress version 7.4, which has been deployed over the past week. This version adds PayPal support, a redesign and new features in the Blogs module, and many smaller enhancements in other parts of the ClubExpress platform. These are described in the following pages. Note that the Administrator Manual and online help system have not yet been updated for these new features. This will be done in the next couple of weeks.

We will also be hosting a webinar on Wednesday, August 23rd at noon Eastern time to explore these new features. Click here for more information.

Some of you may have noticed that ClubExpress.com, our main website, was recently redesigned. This admin email follows the new design as well. To read each section, just click the link on the left (or at the top if you're viewing this on a mobile device.) 

We also moved into new and larger offices last week. We were out of space at the old office and the building was going to be demolished anyway. The new office is still in Schaumburg, IL. Addresses in the system have been updated accordingly.

I also want to introduce Alan Zenreich, who recently joined us as Chief Evangelist. Alan has started updating the video tutorials and adding new ones. He is also posting on the Administrator Forums, and will be organizing webinars, writing a blog, updating the online help system, and posting on social media. Alan has been working with online communities for 30 years. He calls himself an ‘enthusiast’, and has way too many interests, including woodturning, video, live streaming, 3D printing, photography, community theater, cooking, and motorcycling. Online communities let Alan interact with other enthusiasts around the world, sharing experiences and best practices. Before joining ClubExpress he administered the Dell EMC Community Network, a global community with hundreds of thousands of members. He has authored several database programming books and programs, and presented at many symposiums. Alan is married and has two adult sons.

With this admin email, we are also announcing a change in our monthly hosting fee structure. This change is specifically targeted towards clubs and associations with a non-member mailing list that is way out of proportion to the size of their active member database. More than 80% of you are not affected by this change and another 10% will only see a very small increase. For more information, see the appropriate section.

PaYPAL Support

ClubExpress now allows payment of membership signup and renewals, event registrations, donations, and other charges using PayPal!

For this feature to be enabled, your club or association must have a PayPal account and it must be configured to allow ClubExpress to initiate charges and have them deposited into this account. On the Pending Payment page, users will select PayPal as their payment option. When they do so, a PayPal button will appear; clicking this button opens a PayPal screen to allow them to login, select any source of funds already configured within their personal PayPal account, and have the funds automatically and immediately transferred to your PayPal account. Once there, you can move them anywhere you want! Users are then transferred back to the ClubExpress receipt page, indicating that the payment was processed successfully.

Please note that with the PayPal option, the funds do not pass through ClubExpress and so we cannot distribute them into different bank accounts for you. If you have separate bank accounts configured for individual chapters or an event or a donation fund, payments through PayPal will not be deposited into these bank accounts.

To start using PayPal, you must either have an existing PayPal business account or create a new one, and then allow ClubExpress to use that account for payments. All of this is done on the PayPal website, working together with ClubExpress. Then you click the "Start PayPal Process" button, you are redirected to PayPal where you can login to an existing account or create a new one. For new accounts, we supply some basic information (organization name, email, phone, etc.) so that some required fields are already filled in. As you step through the authorization process, PayPal will display several screens to collect the information they need. At the end of the process, there is a button to allow you to return to your ClubExpress website. Now the account status is "Pending" and the "Activate PayPal Account" button is displayed.

Please note that PayPal can only be used for member and non-member payments to your club or association, and ClubExpress has no direct access to this account. It cannot be used to pay ClubExpress charges and we will never remove funds from this account. You will still need an active bank account configured on your ClubExpress website to pay our fees.

Note also that any processing fees charged by PayPal will be debited against the account. PayPal provides reports and exports that allow you to document deposits and charges. (But note, however, that transactions may not appear immediately; it can take up to 30 minutes before they show up.) Within your ClubExpress website, we will record the payment method on screens, reports, and exports as "PayPal" but we cannot document any fees charged by PayPal.

BLOGS MODULe

The Blogs module has been redesigned. When you select a blog, you will see a screen similar to the Documents Library, Chat, and Meets modules, with a list of posts on a left panel, and the most recent blog post in the middle of the screen. You can select recent posts or archived months on the left to view older blog entries. (On smartphones, the links appear above the content.)

There is now a Search function, accessible from an icon at the top of the screen to search within a blog. The tagging system that we updated a few months ago for Documents, Photos, and News/Articles has been added to Blogs as well.

Members who write a blog now have an option on their Profile screen to access the blog posts manager page.

The method for subscribing to a Blog has changed. We are no longer using RSS (which has largely fallen out of favor.) Instead, new blog entries are sent by email. One link in the email allows you to view the new entry while another link allows you to unsubscribe.

We have also added a new Blogs Widget. This widget allows you to display a panel, often on your website's home page, showing recent blog posts. It can be accessed from the advanced content editor.

OTHER ENHANCEMENTS

This update is chock full of other changes:

• The Contact Us form has been redesigned to be nicer looking and fully mobile-responsive. It now also includes a required Captcha to submit the form; this feature will limit spam submissions.
   
• The updated content editor has been added to several more places in the system, including Mobile Setup - Home page, News/Articles, and the Resource Scheduler. The user interface of the News/Articles module was updated to support the new editor.
   
• In the Emailings function, there is a new "Maximize Editor" option to display the editor in full-screen mode.
   
• For clubs with subgroups (chapters, districts, and regions):
   
  • You can now define latitude and longitude for the lowest level subgroup. If the subgroup is in the USA or Canada, latitude and longitude will be calculated automatically but can be edited. Outside these countries, the geocodes can be entered manually. In all cases, these coordinates will be displayed when you use Google Maps for the Chapter Finder module.
     
  • Many exports now include up to three columns for chapter, district, and region.
     
  • And if your club is also using QuickBooks, we changed how subgroup dues are recorded using QuickBooks Items. This change was made to allow clubs and associations to record subgroup dues separately from club or association dues in QuickBooks.
     
• When doing an import into the non-member database, you can now select a chapter, district or region to have the imported records linked to that chapter, district, or region.
   
• In Discussion Forums, when doing an "All Words" search, the system will now ignore more than 120 "noise" words. 
   
• In the Event Calendar, you can now specify a quantity for any items in a multi-activity event. For example, users can now buy more than 1 of an event t-shirt.
   
• In the Committees module, bulk loaded members can now be added to Committees. And Committee exports now include Terms of Office dates.
   
• In the Surveys module (and other modules that use the same functionality), radio button, check box, multi-text box, and true/false questions now have a light border around the answer fields. For answers that are required, this box helps to show that the "Required" indicator applies to all options rather than just the first one.
   
• In the Member Directory, the "Company" search was changed to be "anywhere in field".
   
• In the E-Commerce Storefront module, a date range section has been added to all Product and Category Sales reports.
   
• In the Donations module, a new report allows you to print a tax letter to each donor. This report is formatted for a standard #9, 2-window envelope (with the sheet folded in thirds.) It shows each donation made within a specified date range.
   
• In the Volunteering module, a new report shows the detail of member and non-member volunteer hours within a specified date range.
   
• Discount Coupons can now be archived so that they don't appear in the default display.
   
• When you have configured a member type for Automatic Renewals, the system will now send a confirmation email to members that their membership has been auto-renewed, and ask them to login to complete payment.
   
• As of early July, we are now requiring logged-in members (and non-members on secure pages) to use the most current form of secure connection (for those who are technically inclined, TLS1.2.) This change was required by the Payment Card Industry to maintain PCI Compliance. Any user with a reasonably modern computer and a browser that automatically updates (Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Safari on a Mac, etc.) will not notice any change; their secure connections automatically use the correct protocol. Users running a computer or browser that may or may not be compatible will see a warning message with a link that leads to detailed instructions for how to configure their browser. Users with very old computers and browsers can no longer login to the website; when they first come to the website and even before logging in, they will see an error message explaining the problem and encouraging them to upgrade their computer and/or browser.
   
• We made several changes to credit card processing. Once a card number is entered on the Payment Page, it will be partially hidden for security reasons. We also improved the handling of expired or canceled transactions. Finally, for clubs that have their own merchant account, administrators can optionally skip entering the CVV code; and the limits for membership dues and additional charges have been increased to $10K and $3K respectively.

FEE CHANGE FOR THE NON-MEMBER DATABASE

ClubExpress has never charged for the non-member database, a separate mailing list of people and organizations that you need to keep in contact with, as long as this list was reasonably in proportion to the size of the active member database. In our minds, "reasonably in proportion" always meant "five times" (e.g., for a club with 200 active members, you could have up to 1000 entries in the non-member database and we wouldn't care.) 

However, we recently did a more detailed analysis and discovered a small number of clubs and associations that were above this ratio, some by quite significant margins. Unfortunately, this means that we're not being fairly compensated for how these organizations are using the platform. 

So we have made a small change to our monthly billing. At the end of each month, we will calculate the number of entries in the non-member database above this 5X threshold and will now charge an additional $0.02 for these entries. Using the example above, a club with 200 active members and 1100 entries in their non-member database will now pay an additional $2.00 per month (100 entries above the cut-off point, times $0.02 each.) As we noted in the introduction, this change has no impact on more than 80% of our customers.

This change will take effect at the end of August, with the September hosting fee.

As part of this change, we have also added a new feature to the Non-Member Database. Select the Cleanup Tools button to manage and clean up your non-member database. The following options are available:

• Select "Show Non-Member Statistics" to see your current count of members and non-members, and what (if any) fee will be charged.
   
• Select "Find Duplicates by Email Address" option to find and clean up entries with identical email addresses.
   
• Select "Find Duplicates by Name" option to find and clean up entries with the same last name and similar first names. The system will recognize common variations such as William/Will/Bill.
   
• Select "Find Duplicates by Street Address" option to find an clean up entries with identical street addresses.
   
• Select the "Missing Data" option to find non-members without important information such as first and/or last name, email address, phone, street address, etc.
   
• Select "Delete All Non-Members in a Category" to do exactly that! The system will show you the number of entries in each category. Note that non-members in multiple categories will not be deleted completely; instead, they will be removed from the specified category.

WEBINAR - Wednesday, August 23

To learn more about version 7.4, please join us for a webinar on Wednesday, August 23 at 12:00 noon Eastern (11:00 AM Central, 10:00 AM Mountain, and 9:00 AM Pacific.) During this hour-long discussion, we will demonstrate the new features in version 7.4 and answer your questions.

We will be using Zoom.us to host this webinar. Zoom requires a simple download for your PC, Mac, Linux, iOS, or Android device.
Click this link a few minutes before the event: https://zoom.us/j/8474572582

Or Telephone: 1-408-638-0968 or 1-646-558-8656 (call charges may apply)
Meeting ID: 847 457 2582
International numbers available: https://zoom.us/zoomconference?m=W1qEButrpfv76cTNoTBvq24SsY1X7tiP

If you're planning to attend, please RSVP with your name and your club or association name to info@clubexpress.com.

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BUG FIXES

The following bugs have been fixed in the last three months:

• In the Event Calendar:
  • The Registrants with Answers report was not displaying comments correctly for event questions that allowed comments.
  • After a recent change, the emailing attendees option was ignoring non-members and guests in the emailing list.
  • For multi-activity events and only on certain platforms, the accordion controls to expand and collapse individual activities were not working correctly.
  • For a short time, the Registration Close Date could not be defined correctly for a Quick Event.
  • In Event Questions, removing the ~ (default) character from a question was not working.
  • For a Quick Event with external registration, the "Register Now" button was only appearing for logged-in members.
  • When entering a full description for an event using the advanced content editor, if you clicked Cancel, the editor window was not closing; rather, the Event View screen was appearing within this window.
     
• In the new Tag system added in the previous version, there is an internal limit of 30 characters per tag but the system was not properly enforcing this limit.
   
• In the Blogs module, members who had previously added photos to a personal album were not able to use these photos in their blogs.
   
• In the Emailings function:
  • There was a problem attaching a document that had previously been uploaded.
  • Archived emails were still being displayed in the online View list of emails.
  • Viewing "Results" for a sent emailing was generating an error.
  • There were a couple of problems limiting the view of emails sent to a subgroup to just that subgroup's coordinators.
     
• In the Mobile App that's available to all clubs and associations:
  • The Member Directory bio cards were not displaying correctly.
  • Social networking links now open in the system browser.
  • In the Meets function, when a session timed out, users would receive a system error.
     
• In the advanced Content Editor, the Insert Audio/Video dialog was not properly handling the updated Documents Library module.
   
• The Bad Emails page was not correctly handling an email address that included angle brackets (as a result of an import.)
   
• In Discussion Forums:
  • If a forum thread subject included an apostrophe character, the Move function did not work.
  • There was a problem with how digest messages were being displayed in the Apple email viewer if those messages included large photos.
  • Attaching documents to a forum post on the website occasionally failed in a specific situation.
     
• In the Document Library module:
  • If you used single or double quotes in the document title, we were not displaying that title correctly.
  • If you created a new folder and immediately used the new Multi-Document Upload function, the document count was being set to 1, no matter how many documents you uploaded.
  • Chapter coordinators could not get access to a chapter-specific folder if they did not also have access to the parent folder.
     
• In the member signup and renewal wizard, when a Joining Agreement was displayed, if users did not check the "I Agree" box before clicking Next, it was disabled and they had to go back to a previous panel in order to click the Next button.
   
• When adding a new non-member record, the mailing name value was not being saved correctly.
   
• In the E-Commerce Storefront module, when an order consists only of digital items and the total value is $0.00, the order was not being flagged immediately as "Filled".
   
• In the Surveys module:
  • There was a problem with the "Take this Survey" button not appearing on mobile devices.
  • On a Check Box or Multi Text Box question, if comments were allowed and one was added, it was only being saved if the first check box was checked or the first text box had a value.
  • Also, if you don't answer a question but enter a comment anyway, the comment was not being saved. Now, it is saved and the answer to the question will be "Comment only".
  • The last page of a survey shows a list of answers to review before submitting. This page did not include comments; now it does.
     
• In the News/Articles module, members with coordinator rights in this module as well as the Photos function were only seeing their own photos, not every uploaded photo.
   
• On the Misc. Charge/Credit screen, the QuickBooks Item Name field was not appearing for a misc. charge.

Again, all these problems have been corrected.

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