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Details vs Profile updates

Forums: Suggestions and Feedback
Created on: 01/07/09 08:56 PM Views: 1765 Replies: 13
Wednesday, January 7, 2009 at 8:56 PM

As the administrator, I am much more interested in learning when a classmate has updated their contact information than their biographicals. Since these are on two different pages with separate "Save" cycles, can we have an administrative notice (or subscription option) when there is a change to the Details page itself?

I have to keep the class records in synch with our all-years (1907-2008+) alumni master database & mailing list. As it is now, with profile change notices only, I have to read through & compare all of them when most didn't change their address or email at all.

As more and more of our school's classes start to implement ClassCreator Sites as we recommend, my email traffic as co-admin of these other years, getting all the "just profile changes" is overwhelming!

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Wednesday, January 7, 2009 at 10:32 PM - Response #1

You should only be getting Profile Update notices for those Classmate to whom you subscribe.

Your suggestion to email Admins when Classmates update Details pages is excellent. I'm having one of those "why didn't I think of that" moments. I'll add it to the Preferences page, where you can simply specific which Admins (if any) are emailed when Classmates update their Contact Details page. Simple as that!

Having said that, I'm sure you have your own reasons for keeping two lists, but I should point out that the whole purpose of Class Creator is to NOT have to keep two lists. Most people use the system itself as their primary Classmate database, and export the database to Excel whenever they need the current data for something (mailings, labels, invites, etc.)

Is there something else you need in the system so you would NOT have to maintain two separate lists?


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Edited 01/07/09 10:33 PM
Monday, January 12, 2009 at 8:19 PM - Response #2

I'm on the same page with Mary and would like to see an e-mail when the details are updated. Presently, whenever I see a "Profile" update on the home page, I check against our offline Excel spreadsheet to see if there has been a change.

For the most part, I'm with you on keeping everything online, however, the folks in my hometown who run the reunion want the offline Master List. Things that are in the list that are not online are "Mailing name" (we're of a generation that some like to have the Mr., Mrs., or Ms. as part of it), "e-mail name" (we have several sets of married classmates and we have one e-mail for both)and "Full School Name". Many classmates want to drop from the website their middle names, first names, names we didn't know unless we looked at the yearbook so unless we keep the offline list, we don't have it. Reason for keeping it, more options for research when someone goes "missing".

To my way of thinking, what the folks running the reunion have been doing for 45 years now and are used to is certainly easy enough to maintain and keep everyone, including those who not as comfortable with computers happy. My goal is to keep the website up and running to help with rebuilding / reigniting friendships.

The work you and your team has done is helping that immensely! For that, I thank you!

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Saturday, January 24, 2009 at 11:17 AM - Response #3
SPHSAlumniDb_TEMPLATE_0901245.XLS

I'm in the process of reviewing over 500 Profile Updates from the downloads of the 13 classes we have online so far. We're doing a major mailing in the next couple weeks. Do you have an ETA on that "Details Update" notification?

Attached is a template of our Master database. It's in Excel where we have separate worksheets for Alumni and Deceased where they get moved when we can determine their status. That section of columns shows which of our publications they are listed in and whether we're also publishing an obituary. Having Birthdate helps distinguish our own alumni from other people of the same name when we find death notices online.

We also record Alternate addresses for mailing to people who change residences during the year.

Member# is our unique key but we also use it to link family members and couples where we only mail one copy of things to a household. We contact family members when we lose an address on somebody.

I will add a "CCWEB" column so I can quickly filter who is active on our ClassCreator sites. That makes synching our Master with your downloads easier. Right now I'm using the Source column but that will get overwritten when I get NCOA forwarding address updates from the post office--we're going to have them review our list quarterly so we don't loose people from having their forwarding expire.

While we're at it, I really need the Class Year on the downloads! Tired of having to add that all the time since I merge them together to process.

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Saturday, January 24, 2009 at 1:02 PM - Response #4

Thanks for attaching your Excel sheet. It's helpful to see what people's needs are and how it could impact future Class Creator updates.

I can get that class year in the download for ya. Shouldn't be too long for the Classmate Contact Details notificatios too. Possibly this coming week.


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Thursday, February 5, 2009 at 11:42 PM - Response #5

Can you add this to the task list: On the admin view of the classmate profile, can you pop the page buttons on the bottom also. When verifying I run thru both pages, it would be helpful for the buttons to be at the bottom also.

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Friday, February 6, 2009 at 1:10 AM - Response #6

No. It's a usability thing. There's already a Save button at the bottom. It's absoltuely essential people see that button and that it stand out. If you don't click save, then you've lost everything. I think interjecting more buttons down there increases the chances of error -- i.e. somebody clicks on one of the other buttons and ends up not saving their changes. People not saving things after making changes come up more than you'd think.

Quick workaround though, just press control-home on your keyboard, and you'll jump right back to the top where the 3 buttons are.


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Friday, February 6, 2009 at 1:12 AM - Response #7

Oh... did not try the home button. End must be to the bottom???

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Friday, February 6, 2009 at 1:27 AM - Response #8

Good point, you don't even need to press control. Just home. (I'm an old WordPerfect 5.1 for DOS guy). Yes, End jumps to the end.


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Friday, February 6, 2009 at 8:08 AM - Response #9

Brad Switzer wrote:

Good point, you don't even need to press control. Just home. (I'm an old WordPerfect 5.1 for DOS guy). Yes, End jumps to the end.

Hey Brad, just an FYI...I was a programmer at WordPerfect Corp. for about 12 years.


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Friday, February 6, 2009 at 10:10 AM - Response #10

No kidding! You mean YOU helped make that stuff? Seriously, WordPerfect 5.1 for DOS was some of the best software ever made. I loved that stuff. I couldn't believe my eyes as I watched Microsoft Word become standard. I'd rather use a 15 year old copy of WordPerfect than the latest and greatest version of Microsoft Word any day of the week.


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Friday, February 6, 2009 at 10:21 AM - Response #11

Yes, it is true. I wasn't on the WP 5.1 DOS team, but was on the WP 6.0 Windows team, translating the DOS machine code to C++ code. My feature was TABLES. I also worked on the PlanPerfect (spreadsheet). I was with the company since 1987 until 1999 when Corel took everything (except the people) up to Canada.

Yes, it is sad about Microsoft Word. I sure wish I would have invested in them back then, though.


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Friday, February 6, 2009 at 11:20 AM - Response #12

You said we'd be getting the Details update notifications, separate from the Profile updates? Either none of our classmates have made any changes there or updates in Details are not being announced. Or maybe the admins have to subscribe to each and every one to hear of changes? What's the status on this?

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Friday, February 6, 2009 at 11:27 AM - Response #13

It's on the Task List behind threaded forums, threaded email, and community photo galleries. But it's coming. We're currently seeking another programmer to speed up development a little bit this year.


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