Administrator Email - 8/3/2022 - Announcing
Version 66
We're excited to announce ClubExpress Version 66. We've been busy working on a wide variety of enhancements in many parts of the platform, most already deployed, but you may not have noticed them. And many of these new features are popular requests.
We will be holding a webinar on Wednesday, August 10th, starting at 12:00 Noon US Eastern time, 11:00 AM Central, 10:00 AM Mountain, and 9:00 AM Pacific, for those who want to learn more about these enhancements. If you can't make it, the webinar recording will be available within a couple of days, on the ClubExpress
YouTube channel. There is no need to register for this webinar but it is limited to the first 500 attendees. Here are the connection details:
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/86275388342?pwd=cHdCVEdwa3lieitoeFpnZW0xb0lWUT09
Meeting ID: 862 7538 8342
Passcode: 555756
In this issue:
Website Look and Feel
We have added support for Mega Menus. You can now define a submenu that drops-down from the main menu, where the submenu includes more than one column, each column being its own submenu.
To define a Mega Menu, first create the lowest level menus as separate submenus. Then create another submenu and check the box to define it as a Mega Menu. You can then add the lower level submenus to this menu. Finally, define or edit your top-level menu and add the Mega Menu to it.
In our Page Builder, we have added two new widgets:
- The Tab Display Widget allows you to define a section of the page with a series of tabs across the top. As each tab is clicked, a different panel of content appears. You have full control over the tab text, font, colors, etc., and the contents of each tab are defined using the Advanced Editor.
- The Carousel Widget allows you to add multiple photos to the widget that will be displayed in rotation, and to control the number of seconds each photo will be shown before the next one replaces it. There are also navigation arrows on the left and right, and selection dots at the bottom middle of the image. For each photo, you can also optionally define an overlay heading and caption, including fonts and colors, as well as an optional link when the image is clicked.
We are also updating the look and feel of additional data questions to be more modern. This enhancement will be used in multiple areas of the system, including:
- Additional Member Data
- Event-specific Questions
- Surveys
- Ad Hoc Forms
- Collectibles Module
We added a Horizontal Rule option to the editor when you are defining the Question text. This will make it easier to break a page visually into sections.
We have defined a default look and feel for questions, but you can change it on the Website Look and Feel Site Editor - Text Styles screen. Please note that this change is still in testing, but should be deployed before the webinar next week.
We have also updated many admin screens to the new user interface standard, with more screens still to come.
System Emails
Unpaid Transaction Reminder
There is a new option on the Money Options page to have the system automatically send a reminder email to every member and non-member with an unpaid transaction. When you enable this option, you can configure the number of days between reminders (for example, every 30 days) and the lag period for an unpaid transaction before a reminder will be sent (for example, it must be at least 10 days old.) The Reminder email can be customized. It includes a link that, when clicked, will jump the recipient to the Pending Payment page to complete payment.
System Emails From, Reply To, and Subject
You can now customize the following elements for each system email:
- From Name
- From Email Address
- Reply To Name
- Reply To Email Address
- Subject
You can also specify default values for the From and Reply To settings. Finally, you now have the ability when a system email is sent, to track who opened it.
Member Director Notification
On the People Options screen, we have added more options to the email that's sent to the designated Member Director when someone signs up or renews:
- No notification
- New Member Signup
- New Member Signup and Payment
- New Member Signup and Renewal
- New Member Signup, Renewal, and Payment
Member Login and Profile
Logging In
You will now have the ability to enforce strong passwords, regular password changes, and even 2-Factor Authentication to login.
- One strong password option is to require a minimum length as well as at least one lower-case letter, upper-case letter, number, and symbol.
- The other strong password option is to require a longer "pass-phrase", for example, "myfirstdoghadpurplespots". It's well documented that the longer a password, no matter which characters it includes, the harder it is to crack. With this option, you can also specify a minimum length.
- You will now be able to enable 2-Factor Authentication. With this option, when someone enters their username and password, the system will send them a 6-digit number via email or text message (if the club has enabled text messaging) and users must enter this number in order to complete login. Note that if you use the text messaging option, additional per message fees will be applied.
- Finally, you can now also require that passwords be changed every X days (between 30 and 365.)
Note that these features are still in testing and should be deployed in time for the webinar next week.
Renew Early
On the member Profile screen, you can now configure an option to allow members to renew early, before their first renewal notice is sent out. This option is available on the People Options screen.
Modules
Event Calendar
- On the Event Admin Panels screen, there is a new "Reset Event" button below the left side tabs. If you make extensive changes to an event, and these changes do not immediately appear, click this button to reset the event within ClubExpress, so that the current configuration is immediately displayed.
- We updated the event cancel and delete processes to ensure that pre-scheduled emails are not sent to event registrants.
- We also updated the processes for archiving events. An "Archived" event is now just another status. Archived events are not shown on the calendar by default, but they can be shown in the Event Manager.
- For Event Contacts, there is a new option to notify one or more contacts when a registration is Cancelled.
Classified Ads
- Users can now search classified ad listings using Last Name as well as Category and Keyword.
- For ads that require approval, admins now have the option to view the ad.
- The email sent to the Classified Ads contact person when an ad is reported, now includes a link to the Reported Classified Ads page.
- The user side of the module now displays 30 ads per page instead of 10.
- We also fixed a problem when moving forward or backward though ad pages, where the user was being placed at the bottom of the page.
Expense Reimbursements
- Members now have the ability to delete a rejected reimbursement request.
E-Commerce Storefront
- We added a Copy function for products and inventory, allowing you to quickly create variations (size, color, etc.)
- When you cancel an order that was partially filled, the system will now issue a credit for the unfilled portion.
- Clubs can now designate Storefront items that cannot be purchased by a user, only an admin ("Call for Availability" or "At event only".)
- The Open Orders export now includes the answer to the Additional Information question.
- Clubs can now require an email address for non-member orders.
Other Enhancements
- Data Exports:
- There is a new Expired Members export that allows you to filter by Date Expired range.
- We updated the date filters on the first 8 exports showing member data.
- We also updated the prompts on other exports to better explain what the date range applies to.
- There are new Data Cleanup options that allow you to match a non-member to a member account:
- By Email Address and First Name
- By First and Last Name
- By Street Address
- We have added TikTok support to the Social Media widget.
- For organizations using our Multi-Tier Option 2 functionality (multiple websites; members join at the bottom level), we have added powerful Content Syndication functions to allow you to create content at the top level and push it down to the lower level clubs.
- Define a Blog at the top level that appears in the Blogs module for all lower-level clubs
- Define a News/Articles Category at the top level that appears in the News/Articles module for all lower-level clubs
- Define a Document Folder (and sub-folders) so that any documents in these folders appear in the lower-level Document Library
- Define a Custom Web Pages category, so that any pages in this category are available in the lower-level clubs to be added to the menu or placed in a link
- Define Home Page rows that appear on the home page for all lower-level clubs
- Specify events at the top level that appear on the event calendar for all lower-level clubs. This feature also works in the other direction. A lower-level club can define an event and share it on the top-level club's calendar.
Bug Fixes
The following bugs were fixed since our last version announcement:
- In the Event Calendar, the link for video conferencing was not being sent to registrants when the event was free.
- In the News/Article module, with the recent content sharing changes, an article would sometimes be displayed twice on the main News page. Also, searches at the lower level were not finding items shared from the top-level club. The same problem occurred in the Document Library module but not in the Blogs module, which was working correctly.
- In the Interests module, the interest description was not retaining line breaks.
- When system emails had been customized, the system was not always using the edited version but instead, was sending out the original version.
- Search engines were unable to navigate through blog posts – we were preventing them from following the links on the left side menu of posts. Note that this fix does not allow search engine access to members-only blogs.
- There was a problem in the E-Commerce Storefront during Checkout, where the Gift Message information would appear even if the user had selected that this was not a gift.
Again, all these problems have been fixed.