GoMembership have been working on a range of system enhancements, and these are ready to be released into our live GoMembership environment. This will see us on version 2.6 of their software. It is important to note that there is no immediate action required and that all club functionality and set-up continues to be operational as per current.
There are some great enhancements so please read on for the high-level summary. As with the last round of updates, there is a lot of information to share – so please stay with us. Webinar dates are listed below if you would like to jump on for an interactive run through of these enhancements. You will have the opportunity to ask any questions you may have.
Specific “cheat sheets” about each of the enhancements have been added to the Club Support Guides area on the PA website. Existing Support Guides and Videos will continue to be updated to reflect the new enhancements. If there is a particular area of the system that you feel your and other Clubs would benefit from more detailed training guides/videos, please let us know and we will get onto it.
As always, there is an open invitation for you get in touch via phone (02 9763 0670, option 3) or email (membership@paddle.org.au) to provide feedback on (a) what is going well (b) what’s not going as well as you would like (c) what needs further explanation or clarification and (d) your ideas on what you would like to have considered for future enhancement from a system functionality perspective.
The system can only continue to grow to meet the needs of all stakeholders with your feedback and input. While we can’t control GoMembership’s enhancement roadmap, we can influence it by submitting our requests to them. We appreciate you taking time to share this information with us.
With you on the water
Paddle Australia
INFORMATION
TIMELINES
GoMembership V2.6 is expected to be patched into our live environment next week. There will be minimal to no down time for this process. Once the changes are live, estimated to be Wednesday 18th, you will see the updates as soon as you log in next. As good practice, users should ensure that you are regularly logging out of your account and clearing your browser cache. If you are not sure how to do that, CLICK HERE to see an article that has all browsers covered. Scroll down until you find your browser and follow the instructions.
ENHANCEMENTS LIST
GoMembership V2.6 has a lot of great enhancements. These have been broken up below into two sections – general enhancements and event related enhancements.
ENHANCEMENTS – GENERAL
CLUB MEMBERS AREA
There have been significant changes made to the look and feel of the Club Members area which also comes with some great functional changes. Just like before, you will have an indication from the member tile if they have current membership with your Club and/or your State Association as well as any Direct Memberships. You will be able to see the expiry date of active memberships. You will also be able to see all historical memberships, all without leaving the Club Members main screen. You will still be able to click into a members profile to help them update their information etc.
SUBSCRIPTIONS (AUTORENEWALS)
Clubs will now have the ability to turn on subscriptions (autorenewals) for any of their memberships and make it mandatory or optional. If selected, members will not need to log in each year to renew their membership, it will happen automatically. This will also apply to any products purchased as part of the membership journey (i.e Boat Storage)
WHAT DO I NEED TO KNOW?
You will need to turn this on for each of your memberships. You are able to set it as optional or mandatory. Members can cancel a subscription at any time from their profile. The option of autorenewals will be available next time your member purchases a membership.
CONDITIONAL FORMATTING ON FORMS
Via the Field Management area, clubs have the ability to set up questions to either sit on the members profiles or be pushed through as part of the Membership or Event Ticket Purchase Journeys. V2.6 brings the smarts of conditional formatting on these forms so that questions/fields can be set to display based on answers of a previous question.
WHAT DO I NEED TO KNOW?
You can update any of your existing forms with conditional formatting or create entirely new forms. If the forms are currently being used on your Memberships or Event Tickets, you should go into each of these memberships and/or tickets, scroll to the area where your fields are and click on the update button on each of them and reselect the question/field to refresh. This will ensure that the conditional logic is applied.
NEW FIELD TYPES IN FIELD MANAGEMENT
There are a couple of new field types in the field management area including a line grid container for making tables, content block which is a large text field area and an attachment field.
WHAT DO I NEED TO KNOW?
As with the above enhancement, you can update all of your existing forms with the new fields and create entirely new forms. If you have these forms attached to any live event tickets, you will need to head into the event ticket set-up and remove the form (and therefore all fields) that are there and then re-add it as you did initially. This ensures that the new fields are bought across to the ticket also.
DECLARATIONS
You can now set up declarations on each of your memberships. This is also available in the events space and is noted below. Declarations are mandatory acknowledgement fields that must be confirmed before the user is able to proceed. These can replace any existing fields that you have set up on your memberships with “I agree to…” type information
WHAT DO I NEED TO KNOW?
Declarations will need to be added to each membership or each individual event ticket. They are not on the event itself. If you want to reference a pdf file, it will need to be housed somewhere online such as a website. The file is then linked into the declaration.
CLUB EMAIL OPT-IN
When you send emails using the Club Email function, you can now make an opt-in selection. At the National Level there are three opt-ins which cover communication (such as newsletters) from the National, State and Club levels. Previously, Clubs did not have access to this opt-in when sending communication to their members. Now you do. When creating an email simply click on the opt-in button, select Club and confirm. This will include all individuals who have a tick in the Club opt-in box.
WHAT DO I NEED TO KNOW?
Individuals can manage their own opt-ins from their profile, alternatively they can reach out to Paddle Australia and we can assist (Clubs cannot manage this on their behalf). Opt-ins are designed to give individuals a choice on the communication that they are receiving from each of the levels in Paddling. When sending communication such as newsletters, the opt-ins must be selected so as to only include those who want to receive this type of information and so that your Club complies with Privacy Law . Important operational Club or event information and updates such as closures and meetings can still be sent to all as it is regarding the administration of the sport and therefore is allowed to be sent under Privacy Law.
ENHANCEMENTS – EVENTS
EVENTS – TIME ZONES
When setting up your events and tickets, you will now be able to select your timezone. This is great for when you have tickets that will close at a certain time
WHAT DO I NEED TO KNOW?
The time zone will need to be applied to the event and each of the tickets set up for the event.
EVENTS – EMAILING PARTICIPANTS DIRECTLY
You will now be able to email your event participants directly from within the event module. This means you can send out targeted communication that is event specific. This is ideal for when there is an update to the event or if you need to move or cancel an event.
WHAT DO I NEED TO KNOW?
When you are in the manage bookings area of the event, you just need to select the individuals (or click the tick in the header to select all) then click the “Send Email” button, compose and send! You can even add attachments to the email.
EVENT – WAITLISTS & TRANSFERS
You can now opt to turn on a waitlist for your events when setting them up. When someone is on a waitlist you are able to give them priority access to another event that you set up, give them access (first in, first served basis) to any tickets that become available to the original event due to booking cancellations or transfer them across to a different event completely.
WHAT DO I NEED TO KNOW?
When setting up an event you will need to click tick the waitlist tickbox to enable the waitlist for that event. As members opt to be added to the waitlist, you will be able to see their details and then you can transfer them to another event or reserve them a place in the next event and give them time to register before the event is open to the public. You can also transfer fully booked members onto other events.
EVENT – SAVING AS TEMPLATE
When you create an event, you can now elect to save it as a template to make setting up next time a lot quicker. You will just select the “Copy” option from the template event and update dates and any other areas.
WHAT DO I NEED TO KNOW?
When copying a template event you need to ensure that each of the tickets on the event have also had the dates adjusted so that they are available for purchase.
EVENT – PUBLISH OR SAVE AS DRAFT
When you create an event now, you will have the option to save and publish or save as a draft. This way you don’t need to make the change from the event summary list if you are ready to publish as soon as you are finished setting up. You can continue to change the publish status of an event via the summary page.
WHAT DO I NEED TO KNOW?
Nothing! When you’re finished setting up your event (or not!) just click save as draft or save and publish.
EVENT – EMAIL MANAGEMENT
With the introduction of the new email waitlists and transfers, there are some new emails available also. These relate to waitlist, transfers, event reminders and event cancellations
WHAT DO I NEED TO KNOW?
You will need to head to Email Management and make sure these emails are turned on for you. While you are in there you can customise the content of each of the emails to be specific to your Club and add any recipients from within your Club that you would like cc’d or bcc’d in on when the email sends to members.
CLUB ADMIN WEBINAR SESSIONS
We have organised two webinars to cover off all of the new enhancements in an interactive setting with you. During these webinars you will see the new functionality in play, understand how to set it up and ask any questions you may have. Simply click on one of the webinar headers below to register to attend. You will then be sent a link for when the event is on and you will receive a reminder email.
CLUB ADMIN WEBINAR
Date: Thursday 19th August 2021
Time: 6:30pm AEST
CLUB ADMIN WEBINAR
Date: Tuesday 24th August 2021
Time: 8:30pm AEST
SELF SERVICE SUPPORT
Self service support is available by way of pdf guides and training videos through the Paddle Australia Helpdesk. Select either the Club Support Guides or Club Support Videos from the GoMembership menu to access these.
Paddle Australia Helpdesk
If you are having problems viewing the support guides on the default viewer, you can download them as a pdf file.
