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Curtis Harris
F1 Staff
190 posts
Fellowship One Release version 2.1.6
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Reducing duplicates via WebLink LoginWe're excited to let you know about the next big step towards preventing the creation of duplicate records of individuals.With this release we have simplified the Fellowship One WebLink login and account creation process. It will now leverage the uniqueness of email addresses per individual to reduce duplicates, similar to how other popular web-based services behave. This will require everyone with a WebLink account to convert their User ID to an email address. To help understand these changes, please take a moment to watch this video which covers the most common scenarios. There is also a list of frequently asked questions available in Answer ID 643 within the Fellowship One online help center. |
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Group Email: Another step forward in deliverabilityFor many people, the best way to create an HTML email is in Microsoft Word followed by a copy/paste into the group email text box. The problem with this practice is that Microsoft adds some invisible formatting that prevents the entire message from being seen by some email inboxes and distorted by others.An enhancement has been made in the Group Email feature that will automatically strip away this invisible formatting to ensure that your recipients receive the message you are trying to communicate. |
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Social Media LinksWe've added Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn as new fields for each individual profile. Simply add the unique URL for any or all of the social media websites in the user's record and each social media icon will be presented as a clickable link that opens in a new browser tab or window. |
Curtis HarrisF1 Staff
190 posts
Comments (31)
Curtis
I would like some clarification on the email change. Sounds great. We have had an issue with some pwople receiving 'blank' emails from us. When they hit reply , it shows up. I was never really certain what the cause was except it may have been related to html and some email servers/programs. Would this upgrade solve something like that?
Thank you for your comment. We did make improvements to the Rich Text Editor which should solve the problems you were experiencing.
Suzie Donaldson
Business Analyst, Product Management
Fellowship Technologies
Don't you think its a bad idea data wise to store anything other than the actual Twitter username in the twitter field? From a programming standpoint, that seems like its going to really limit the things you can do if you have to strip out the http://twitter.com/ anytime you reference it (hoping that end users actually enter it right). I loved the features I've seen in the groups 2.0 that actually show you their twitter feed.. just seems backwards to store their url and not their username.
@ddrewery at one point we had coded it so you would only provide the 'name' part of the twitter/facebook/linkedin path, but got into a lot of issues when trying to reflect the correct path for someone outside the US. The dev team decided to modify it in this way until they can identify a better approach.
@cindy, you asked about how to find the full path to someone on facebook... if you look at the person's INFO tab you will see the path at the bottom under the Contact heading. Not everyone has set up their 'vanity' name in facebook so it isn't always available. Twitter is simply their twitter user name at the end (mine is curtisharris)
Help please! My background checks are missing from the People > Volunteer Pipeline > Background Checks page... Searches on that page are inaccurate and/or coming up blank.
Thanks!
A couple of you have identified issues you have bumped into since the release. The best way to handle that is to submit a support ticket and include any details that will help them re-create the issue. Without the support ticket there isn't any visibility to the development team.
Thanks!
@edavis - yes, part of the release did include removing the 'Paste from Word' option as we now do it automatically.
-Paul Lloyd. you can require email address on contact forms for WebLink fron this menu WebLink › WebLink Setup › Church Information.
Curtis, will this new update help the the duplicates in the new from website queue? there are a few new accounts, but there is also dupes I am just wondering if the new update will verify if they used the same email for the old and new account.
thanks for feedback.
Edgar
@Edgar, this update will not do anything retrospectively; sorry ;(
I will miss receiving updated addresses as part of the person's setup for weblink. In the past we have received many address corrections as part of this process.
@Paul.Johnson - you will like what is coming next... stay tuned.
@curtis - I know in the past there has been much talk about giving parishioners the ability to update their address/phones/e-mails etc. Is this part of "what's coming next"? If so, will we be able to NOT allow that? We have found that many many people give inaccurate or intentionally false information when they are working with the internet account creation (especially with birthdays, etnering cell phones for home phones, giving PO boxes or work addresses instead of home address to name a few). Our data is very clean and the last thing we want is for this to happen. Will there be a way to make things so that permanent changes can only be made by those authorized to do so?
Thanks,
Laurie
@Laurie - you are a sharp one... yes, that is what I was referring to. I don't know the definitive answer to your question about allowing a church to opt in or out of this new feature set, but would love to get some insight that can be passed to our product team.
Curtis,
At first glance, I was very excited to see the enhancements made to creating a Weblink account. However, the enhancement isn't really helpful to me since it is only an enhancement if I do not use Household emails. We give any family a household email address if there are children in that Household for reporting/group email purposes. It seems to me I have a choice of using Household emails or ease of creating a Weblink account. I understand for security purposes that you need to verify an email is unique, but isn't unique to a household sufficient?
Thanks!
Elena
@edavis - true, you do have to make that choice. I believe it goes beyond simple security with the duplicate process and rather addresses a core need for unique identification with an individual. At some point mom needs her own login as does dad and 2 of the 3 kids; the login is the unique identifier, email address is as unique as anything outside of a social security number. There are quite a few reasons the product team chose this route, but even if you can't take advantage of the duplicate reduction, the process is much improved.
Thanks for sending out the information about the iPad. We are very excited about that. We are going to test it out today and may try using the iPhone as well.
I agree with lauriek, churches need the ability to opt out of letting people update their own address information. This is non-negotiable for our church as we only allow a few staff members to update that information.
Andrea
I too agree weith lauriek. There are only a select handful of people who have the ability to edit/update People info at our church. I second the suggestion for the ability to opt out.
Michele K.
Excellent work on the InFellowship ID login and conversion. We are three days in. The process is clear. No phone calls from our attendees with problems or questions. New from website duplicates are down dramatically.
I agree with paul.johnson that we need them to submit their address so we may update their record. Mailings are returned by the postal service with the new address, but after the event has passed. Also we captured other info that was submitted on the New from Website form.
I also agree with lauriek that people sometimes do not know if they live on a street, drive, court, lane etc. and will enter their address incorrectly. If you are going to let people change their own addresses, FellowshipOne should have a way for us to find these updated records quickly so we can ensure they are correct.
Great job on the InFellowship ID login and conversion! So far we have had 103 users convert their weblink id to a InFellowship Id and I only received one phone call. Also,I love checking my New From Weblink duplicate que and seeing only a few compared to hundreds!
THANK YOU!!!
We've had some complaints about users not receiving the confirmation e-mail when converting their Weblink user id to e-mail. Is there a report or query to see how many users have successfully converted? I see the information stored in the People screen, but don't see a report or query to pull converted ID's.
kyoung,
Yes. We have modified A8000E - Web User Account Listing to include WebLinkID, InFellowshipID and a column indicating whether the person has completed the conversion process. Please give it a try.
Also we included WebLinkID and InFellowshipID as optional output columns in Core Report P9400 - Core Individual Records.
Thanks,
Jeff Rice
Director, Strategic Services
It would be nice to be able to run A8000E for just the users who have converted successfully. We are having a few problems with people receiving the e-mail confirmation code, so I would like to restrict this report to see which users have converted successfully. I converted my own Weblink ID and it does not show on either the A8000E report or the P9400 report but does show as converted on the People Screen.
Is there an easy way to search for members' facebook pages just by email address, rather than having to manually input them?
@rnmatthews - good idea, but not at this time.
Awww, thanks Curtis. Maybe we can add it in a later release? HINT HINT :-)
We are still getting a few duplicates from New From Website, same name address etc, and also the same In Fellowship ID. They are not 2 people in the same household, but 2 separate households.
Do we still need to have people convert their account? I'm seeing an infellowship id for one of our members and a weblink id, but his record also says his account has not been converted. How would he have received an infellowship id without converting his account.
Thanks!