Dear HarmonySite administrator,
Lots of improvements to announce in this latest bulletin...
1. One of our most popular recent additions to the software was to allow credit card payments - for membership dues, for merchandise orders, etc. Many groups have now streamlined the collection of membership dues with this option. However, some groups were reluctant to use this because of the credit card fees involved. There is now an option to specify a credit card surcharge (e.g. 2.5%) for each transaction. So if something costs $100 when paying by cheque or Internet bank transfer, you can now nominate that it will cost $102.50 when paying by credit card. You can even nominate what types of transactions this surcharge applies to (membership invoices, merchandise orders, etc). Find these new options on the bottom of the "Payments" tab on the HarmonySite configuration page.
2. Each member can now link their Facebook profile to their HarmonySite member profile. Simply update your own details and look for the new Facebook field.
3. For riser-stacking purposes, there's now a "height" field for each member (e.g. 180cm or 5'10"). If a height is entered, it shows on the Riser Stack page (singing groups only).
4. There's a new report to track the login activity of your members, and of your general website visitors. It's called the "Website Visitors Report", found in the "Administration" box on the main Members page. If you wish to use this report, you must first enable the "Website Visitors" module. Do this on the "Configuration" tab of the HarmonySite configuration page. Once the module is enabled, tracking of website visitor data will begin, and can be viewed on the report. The information tracked is simply: The date and time of their last visit, and how many visits they've had since recording began. There's one entry for each member (that's ever logged in). There's one extra entry for the general public. If you ever want to reset these stats to zero, visit the "Website Visits Administration" page, found in the drop-down list in the Administration box on the main Members page, and click the "Reinitialise" button.
5. The Event Calendar now has a system for reminding your members who have NOT responded to requests for their availability at an event. You can find this reminder system in three places...
- On any event's page (any event in the FUTURE, of course), and see the new button in the "Attendance" box
- On the Attendance Report for that event, next to the "Not yet responded" count
- On the main Attendance page, where attendance details are entered for the whole chorus for an event - right at the bottom of the page
6. Again with events: If you have nominated a team/committee for a given event, or nominated some "rostered/on-duty members", then when you go to send an email out to members about that event, you can elect for the email to go to JUST the nominated committee/team, or JUST the rostered/on-duty members.
7. And still more with events: We've enhanced the actual calendar that's displayed on the Event Calendar page. The new calendar is much improved...
· It now has a "Week" view as well as the original "Month" view
· Administrators can drag'n'drop events onto new dates (or new times, if viewing the calendar by week)
· Navigating between months is now faster and easier
· It displays better on mobile phones
Note that "Week" view is only available if your HarmonySite is configured so that when you enter a start time for an event, you do so with a little pop-up slider. Most HarmonySites have this option. If you enter event start times as free text, then the Week view is not available to your group.
8. Yet another improvement for events: You may recall the feature we added recently, whereby an event's song list could be printed out, complete with the duration of each song (assuming you've entered durations for each of the songs in your active repertoire). Some people asked that that printed song list also support "intermissions" - for when a performance is split into two (or more) "song sets". This is now done. It's now possible for the printed song list to show each song set, with a total duration at the bottom of each set, as well as any intermissions, each with its own duration. Here's how you do it...
1. Create a new song CATEGORY, called something like "Intermission/break". Do this by going to the "Lists Administration" page (select "Lists" from the Administration drop-down list on the main Members page), and creating a new list item. IMPORTANT: The "Internal identifier" for this list item MUST be called "break".
2. Create a new song (it's not really a song) called "15 minute intermission" (or something like that), and choose the category that you created in step 1. Set a duration for this song of 900 seconds ( = 15 minutes)
3. This new "song" can now be selected, along with all the other songs, in the "Songs to be sung" section of each event
9. When adding new files/resources to a song, it's now possible to nominate that the file/resource is of type "Administration" (e.g. the receipt that was issued when you purchased the sheet music). It's also possible to restrict access to any file/resource of any song, by way of the new "Access level required" field. So you can nominate that regular members can't access a given file/resource, so that it's only visible to administrators.
10. There's a new "Gender" (male/female) field for each member's profile. This isn't really used for anything except deciding which generic icon to show in place of a photo, when they haven't yet uploaded a photo of themselves. Profiles of females will sport a more feminine icon, male profiles will have the original icon (which is slightly more masculine). If you don't select a gender, then the system's default icon will be used. That default icon can now be selected from three choices. Those choices are found on the "Configuration" tab of the HarmonySite configuration page.
That's all for now!
If you have trouble with getting any of these working, or can't find the new options, or my instructions aren't clear enough, or just have a general question, please don't hesitate to contact me.
What's Next?
As mentioned in an earlier announcement email, our new "Stockholm" theme is now just about ready. Not only is it clean and modern, it's designed to work well on a mobile phone (or other small screen). This new theme is currently going through its final testing on our home chapter's HarmonySite: www.soundconnection.com.au Have a look through the site - especially on a mobile phone. We'll announce its general availability in the next few days, as soon as we've written the guide to switching to this new theme.
We also have a second mobile-friendly theme coming. But instead of releasing it as a second theme, we've combined it with the "Stockholm" theme. There will be only one theme, but there will be two choices of home page: The one you see on www.soundconnection.com.au, and the more "full screen" version found here: http://themes.harmonysite.com/Stockland. This new home page style is nearly ready. It will probably arrive about a week after the Stockholm theme.
The next cab off the rank is the long-awaited event-tickets module, where you can see ticket to your events on your own website, and even take payment via credit card. Another month or so for that...
Enjoy the improved software...
Mark Virtue
HarmonySite
Australia
+61 2 8005 4277 (Australian number)
In North America, call: 1-415-651-7009 (San Francisco number)
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