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Administrator Email - 3/7/18 - Announcing Version 7.6

With this admin email, we're pleased to announce ClubExpress version 7.6. This release includes a redesigned Standard Member Directory module, as well as small but significant enhancements in many admin functions. We're also continuing to make progress on the Internationalization project for customers outside the US but also including features that will benefit US-based customers, such as improved time zone support.
 
The Administrator, User, and Extra Cost Features Manuals have been updated for this release. The online help system will be updated in the next couple of days.
 
We will hold a webinar on Wednesday, March 14 to describe the new features in version 7.6. For more information and to RSVP, please click here. If you can't make it, this webinar will be recorded and an edited version will be available on the website within 48 hours.

Also check out some of our recent video tutorials and webinars:
We're hard at work on version 8.0, which will be a major release with important new features, especially in the Event Calendar.
 
Is ClubExpress helping to strengthen and grow your organization? Are we exceeding your expectations? If so, please consider posting a review on one of the major software review sites. Click here for more information.

In this issue:

Standard Member Directory

The Standard Member Directory has been redesigned. It now has a similar look and feel to the recently released Business Directory, with a compound search panel at the top, an optional Google map showing member locations, and results in our standard "biz card" format underneath.

You can now search using multiple criteria at once. You also have control over which search fields are displayed. For example, a club where everyone is in the same city might turn off the City and State search fields.

With the Map, members who have a visibility that shows an actual address will be shown at that address on the map. Members where an address is not shown will be highlighted on the map based on the "center" of their zip code.

For administrators, the Standard Member Directory now also allows prefiltering based on a subgroup (chapter) and/or interest group.

USability Enhancements for Admins

With version 7.6, we have implemented a number of usability enhancements requested by administrators:
  • The Financial Accounts admin screen now has a search panel to find an account within a long list. You can also archive financial accounts that are no longer being used, and they will not be displayed in drop-down lists to select a financial account.
     
  • The Bad Emails Manager also now has a search panel, allowing you to filter bad email accounts by failure type and active members only. The results panel now has paging and there is also a new button to Clear Temporary Failures.
     
  • The Advanced Content Editor will no longer list widgets for modules that have not been enabled. For example, if you're not using the Blogs module, the Blog widget will be hidden from the list of available widgets.
     
  • The Menu Builder popup dialog now allows you to filter the list on the left by Built-in Modules, Custom Web Pages, Photo Albums, External Menu Links, and Submenus. This should make life a lot easier for clubs with many custom pages or albums.
     
  • For clubs and associations with chapters, districts, and regions, the Organization Data screen will now remember which nodes have been expanded as you move from screen to screen.
     
  • The Primary/Secondary/Tertiary Changes button in the Member Manager now supports active, expired, trial, bulk loaded, pending, and prospective members.
     
  • An Important Note for clubs and associations that use the Discussion Forums module and have one or more forums enabled for email-based digests: some time ago, Apple dropped support for anchors within an email, a feature that was essential to jump around a digest email. The latest versions of Android are now doing the same thing, so internal links in digest emails will no longer work. This is not a ClubExpress bug but rather a conscious decision by both Apple and Google to improve email security.
     

Internationalization Project

This major project is continuing, and many changes have already been implemented for clubs and associations outside the US. Some of the changes even benefit organizations within the US, including improved time zone support.
  • Date and time and number formats now adjust automatically based on the user's browser and computer settings. This will work even for international users of a US-based club or association.
     
  • The system now also uses metric units of measurement for organizations outside the US.
     
  • The system will also assign a default currency symbol based on the country, but this can also be changed on the Money Options page. Currency symbols can be up to 4 characters long, to allow for symbols such as "AUD", "AUS$", "$AUS", etc.
     
  • ClubExpress now includes powerful time zone support to accurately track the local time for important activities such as a membership signup or renewal, an event registration, an event close date, a forum post, a volunteering assignment, a donation, a scheduled resource, a survey close date and response, transactions and payments, contact requests, etc. Each organization has a default time zone but members also have a local time zone, which is important for national clubs that may have members across the US, including Alaska and Hawaii. A time zone will be assigned automatically at both the club and member levels, based on the specified country and state but it can be changed for situations where a country or state may have multiple time zones. Some parts of the system have already been updated to support time zones but this work is ongoing.
     
  • The Name and Description screen for a club or association now works better for customers outside the US. The official address now has a time zone, and various other fields behave differently depending on whether the organization is in or outside the US.
     
  • Many parts of ClubExpress have been updated to fully support international character sets. This work is ongoing; as other parts of the platform are updated, we will also add full support for international characters.
     
  • If you enable Holidays to be shown in the event calendar, the system will now show country-specific holidays for the US, Canada, Australia, and the UK.
     
  • Note that reports have not yet been updated with currency symbols and date formats and to show the correct local times for transactions and payments. We will start deploying these soon.
     

Other Enhancements

  • When members who have a pending payment log in, the system will now display a notification with a link to jump to the Payment Page to complete the payment. This change should help clubs collect on a higher percentage of unpaid charges.
     
  • When members who are in the renewal cycle log in, the system will now display a notification with a link to jump to the first page of the renewal wizard. This change should help you accelerate your member renewals.
     
  • Some people share a computer. But when a member logs in and clicks the "Remember Me" option, this creates problems for the other member. We have added an option on the member drop-down panel, just above the "Logout" link, to "Log in as a Different User".
     
  • Some clubs and associations require a member's birthday. Previously, ClubExpress has allowed you to require the birthday for secondary and tertiary members but the primary member's birthday was optional. You can now configure the member's birthday to be required and to be collected on the main Contact Info screen.
     
  • In the Collectibles module, a new option allows clubs to limit collectible items shown on the public side of the website to Active members only. The Collectibles Manager now also shows a member's status.
     
  • A new option in the Committees module for associations where people join through the business/professional lives, allows you to show a member's Work Title in the committee member results, within the Biz Card format.
     
  • The following enhancements were made to the Event Calendar:

    • A new option allows the system to notify a list of email addresses when an event is created.
       
    • For QuickEvents, a new option requires approval before an event is activated in the calendar.
       
    • A new Emailing option allows admins and event coordinators to email just the people who signed up for an activity within a multi-activity event.
       
    • In the event Registration Manager, the Search by Name function will now find any event registrant, not just the primary.
       
    • A new option allows you to limit registrations for a chapter-level event to just members of the chapter.
       
  • For users of the optional Trail Map/Trail Status module, a new editor widget allows you to display a summary of trail statuses on the home page or any custom web page. This module has also been genericized to allow it to be used by different types of clubs.
     
  • For users of the ClubExpress Mobile App, new configuration settings in the Meets function allow you to control the options showing distance (radius from the user's current location) and time (how long they want to be visible.)
     
  • The Business Directory module has been enhanced for multi-tier organizations with separate websites for each chapter and where people join at the lowest level. If the Directory is activated at the top level organization, it can be configured to show all member businesses from all linked clubs at the lower level.
     

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Bug Fixes

The following bugs were fixed in the past 3 months:
  • The vCard option in the Member Directory was not working correctly with Google Chrome after recent changes made by Google.
     
  • In the Optional Additional Charges function, recurring charges were not being automatically checked.
     
  • In the Collectibles and Ad Hoc Forms modules, users saw an error when certain date fields were being edited. This problem occurred after some recent internationalization updates that impacted date formats. Also after recent internationalization changes, there was a problem in the Questions functionality (used in multiple places throughout the system) creating a date or year or integer question without specifying min or max values. For date questions, the earliest year allowed is now 1900 and year questions now allow a range from 1800-2050.
     
  • Also after recent internationalization changes, in integer and number questions, if users entered a value greater than 999, the system was adding the thousands separator to make the number display look nice. But when the answer was saved, users saw an error message.
     
  • There was an error creating an Ad Hoc Form with attachments set to No.
     
  • In the Documents Library module, the document Description field allowed 1000 characters but the system was chopping it off at 400 or fewer characters when saving.
     
  • There was a problem applying an open Credit of greater than $1000 to a pending payment.
     
  • The People Options screen was not loading correctly for clubs and associations in countries without states.
     
  • Changing the expiration date for a primary member that had dropped secondary and/or tertiary members would also change the expiration date on the dropped members and reactivate them.
     
  • When a non-member who was part of a committee was dropped, the system was not also dropping them from the committee.
     
  • When an admin recorded a payment received from a member, and then returned to the member's Profile screen, the system was still displaying the Payment Due link.
     
  • When running reports with a Date Range filter, if you selected "Select Period" but then didn't select a period, the system was using invalid default dates. Now, it will require that a date range be selected or entered. Also, when specifying a custom date range for a report, the system was not including transactions or payments on the specified End Date.
     
  • When an admin tries to delete a subgroup, the system checks to be sure there are no members or subgroup admins, and no child subgroups before deleting it. However, if someone was assigned as a module coordinator attached to that subgroup, for a module that supports subgroup operations (for example, Documents Library, Committee, Event Calendar, etc.) that member was no longer able to login.
     
  • When a photo had an apostrophe in the title, the view link (eyeball) in the Photo Manager did not work.
     
  • The Event Calendar module had the following problems:
     
    • When an admin selected the option to mark attendance for not-yet-registered members, the system was also showing members who were previously registered.
       
    • Some event reports that showed the registrant's address were not correctly displaying the Address1 field.
       
    • When someone was added to an existing multi-activity event registration, and the registrant type was changed in the drop-down, the system would display an error if the event had activity-registrant questions.
       
    • There was a problem reordering registrant types for an event. If the registrant type was edited, the list would revert to being sorted in alphabetical order.
       
    • The Event Calendar module allows subgroup administrators to restrict registrations for a subgroup-level event just to the members of the subgroup. This was not working in all situations.
       
  • In the Collectibles module, when admins were editing properties for a member's collectible item, clicking Save would return them to their own list of collectible items rather than the member's list.
     
  • If a radio, checkbox, or true/false question had a space at the end, the user's answer would not be remembered and redisplayed if they returned to a previous page. This would also cause required validation errors, complaining about a question which was previously answered.
     
  • There was a bug on both the personal and business/professional versions of the member basic Contact Info page. When running the wizard as an admin, if you enter a member number which is already used by another member, then go to the next page, the page and the wizard blow up.
Again, all of these problems have been fixed.

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