SportingPulse Membership: System Upgrades

SportingPulse have today launched a series of significant changes to our online membership system (SportingPulse Membership).

These changes have been planned for some time, and impact how the online database is controlled, and include improvements to your online registration forms.

Below is a summary of the changes, and you can find more information by clicking the CLICK HERE FOR MORE INFO links at the end of each summary.

Field Permissions

What is the change?
Organisations now have greater control of what fields levels below them in the database can use, and in particular, can now set a field to be compulsory on any online registration forms.

How does this change things?
It means that if you are a league, you have greater control of what fields your clubs can use. For example, if you wanted to make it mandatory for anyone joining one of your clubs to include their mobile phone number, you can now control this. Likewise a State Body might insist on some new information being collected as a result of a by-law change, and by changing the setting it means all leagues and clubs below that State will have to include that field on their online registration forms.

What do I have to do?
Right now you do not have to do anything. This change does not require you to update your database at all. However, we recommend you look at the Wiki information and give some thought to how you might use this new capability in the future. As usual, our support desk is happy to help you. This is a significant change – we encourage states and league's to "hasten slowly" and certainly have a chat with us before you implement any new rules!

CLICK HERE FOR MORE INFO

Registration Form Changes

What is the change?
Our online registration forms now have a new look. It's cleaner and gives the user (your players and coaches etc.) a much better idea of where they are in the registration process.

How does this change things?
We think the new forms will make it clearer and easier for your participants to register online.

What do I have to do?
Again, right now you do not have to do anything. The new look and feel of the forms will be automatically implemented.

CLICK HERE FOR MORE INFO

Add a Logo to a Registration Form

What is the change?
Administrators using online registration forms can now add their club or league logo to a form.

How does this change things?
Your logo will show on the online registration form. It will help your participants know that they are registering to the right organisation!

What do I have to do?
Login to your online database and upload your logo! Here's a quick tip – a square version of your logo will work best! (For those who are a bit more technical the system will generally resize your logo to 200x200 pixels….)

CLICK HERE FOR MORE INFO

Products Available by Time

What is the change?
You can now specify a time and date when a product expires and/or specify a time and a date when a product can be offered for sale.

How does this change things? This is a big change. You could now attach two products to a registration form. Product A expires on Feb 29 (yep, it's a leap year!) and is for membership for $75.00. Product B becomes available on March 1 and is for membership for $85.00. In other words you can manage early bird specials, or simply time limit a product.

What do I have to do?
You don't have to do anything right now but you should really give some thought to how you would use this functionality.

CLICK HERE FOR MORE INFO

Auto Reminders and Product Linking

What is the change?
Administrators can now set reminders for products that are about to expire. Administrators can now link products so the expiry of one product becomes the commencement date of the new product.

How does this change things?
For many products and renewals, you can now click and forget. Let's say all your members registration products expire on February 29. You can setup up reminder emails to go 30 days before the old membership expires and 15 days as well. The system will automatically send your members a reminder email. You can set up to 5 reminder emails and they can be either before or after the expiry date.

Providing you link the old product to a new product, the system will also stop sending reminders as soon as the member renews.

What do I have to do?
Have a good look at this new functionality and think about how you can use it to save administration time and power up your online registrations and improve your cash flow!

CLICK HERE FOR MORE INFO

First Name Field

We've made one other seemingly small but we think very big change.

From today the first name field in the database has been renamed "Legal First Name". This is very important for online registrations in particular. You know that Rob Smith or Bob Smith is really Robert Smith, so this change will help remove duplicates over time.

Some significant changes here and as always, we're here to help. Our customer service team are available via support@sportingpulse.com and we'll point you in the right direction if you leave a question here on the blog.

Cheers all.