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Suggestion: Guest Member Additons

Forums: Suggestions and Feedback
Created on: 08/12/08 11:24 AM Views: 1260 Replies: 6
Tuesday, August 12, 2008 at 11:24 AM

It would be great to include some additional fields for guest members:
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For Alumni of other years a field called "Year Of Graduation"
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For Teachers/Faculty a field called "Years Worked"
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This would be great for reporting purposes for multi-year reunions and to see if there was enough of an interest for another class website to be formed for example. It should be easy for your database programmers to handle as well as it would be an independant additional field.

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Tuesday, August 12, 2008 at 12:55 PM - Response #1

1) We have a new alumni system coming up shortly to handle multiple graduating year sites (i.e. alumni sites). Anyone who wants to use it (optional) will be able to switch their site ove to acommodate additional graduating years.

2) A guest could be all kinds of things (principals, teachers, friends, etc). Based on who the guest is, there could be numerous fields added to a Profile. We'd have to define all guest types, and come up with all additional fields for all guest types. And even then we wouldn't think of everything everybody might want to do with guest types. For each guest, the Administrator would also have to define the guest type. In the interest of usability I think this would just be too much. Information such as years worked, etc. is better left to the guest's own discretion and should be entered into the Comments area. If there is certain information you want entered (e.g. years worked) you can direct the guest to supply this information.


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Tuesday, August 12, 2008 at 1:39 PM - Response #2

Brad Switzer wrote:

1) 2) A guest could be all kinds of things (principals, teachers, friends, etc). Based on who the guest is, there could be numerous fields added to a Profile. We'd have to define all guest types, and come up with all additional fields for all guest types. And even then we wouldn't think of everything everybody might want to do with guest types. For each guest, the Administrator would also have to define the guest type. In the interest of usability I think this would just be too much. Information such as years worked, etc. is better left to the guest's own discretion and should be entered into the Comments area. If there is certain information you want entered (e.g. years worked) you can direct the guest to supply this information.

Okay I guess I can understand your reluctance. As for the "comments" area when I add a guest account there is no field called "comments". I have made this suggestion so that guests that are added and then displayed throughout the website would have a desination to the year displayed or perhaps a title designating what type of guest they are. This would make the guests and the members feel more comfortable with one another and break the ice a bit more than a "mystery guest" would.

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Tuesday, August 12, 2008 at 2:30 PM - Response #3

Ok I gotcha, you're thinking more than just the Profile area... (Guests who show as Guest Members do have Profiles, and therefore also have the same "Comments" area that Classmates have).

When entering your guests why not just add any designation of your choosing? E.G. "John Teacher, 84-91", Sally Smith (Principal), Albert Musical (Band Director), etc? It would be far easier to just enter your own designation in the name field than for us to try to predict every possible thing somebody might need included in the Guest System. Or so it seems to me?


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Tuesday, August 12, 2008 at 9:27 PM - Response #4

Brad Switzer wrote:

Ok I gotcha, you're thinking more than just the Profile area... (Guests who show as Guest Members do have Profiles, and therefore also have the same "Comments" area that Classmates have).

When entering your guests why not just add any designation of your choosing? E.G. "John Teacher, 84-91", Sally Smith (Principal), Albert Musical (Band Director), etc? It would be far easier to just enter your own designation in the name field than for us to try to predict every possible thing somebody might need included in the Guest System. Or so it seems to me?

OKay now that we are on the sames page I did try that and I added the year designator to a guest name. I discovered in the process that, the database strips off parethisisin the last name field it will however keep it when you add it to the maiden name field which I have done. Again to reiterate because of your great service channel with this forum I felt free to ask for it as a suggestion as I am a bit of the "particular" type when it comes to such things. I will make due. Smile

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Tuesday, August 12, 2008 at 9:50 PM - Response #5

Nah, we don't like just "making due." I'll see if I can get it to preserve those ( ) in the last name field. If we made due then the system would just be average. Having said that though, in every decision we make we have to keep an eye toward usability. That's why I recomended the parenthesis after the last name. I got out of the business of predicting what people might want to do a long time ago. Smile


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Tuesday, August 12, 2008 at 11:02 PM - Response #6

Thank you yet again for your timely response Brad. Please let me know if I can ever be of any help to you or your organization.

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