This is the second post in a series designed to prepare users for MemberHub 2.0 changes.

As mentioned yesterday in the introduction to subdomains post, the driving factors behind the upcoming enhancements have been to make the user experience more about your organization, while also making it easier for administrators to manage membership information. This has resulted in a new approach to user accounts in general. Of course the design had to change just a bit too.

Your Calendar and Dashboard are Scoped by Organization

To get to your combined calendar, dashboard, or profile for the current organization, simply click on the organization name [link] in the upper-left. The Dashboard will not look very different if you’re affiliated with only one organization in MemberHub. Same goes for the Calendar. (NOTE: if you’re currently subscribing to events on your combined calendar, you will need to re-subscribe to your organization Calendar). You’ll notice both of these pages now have the organization’s name and logo in the header instead of MemberHub’s.

Quickly let me explain what we mean by “scoped”. At the time this post is being published, Your Dashboard is a view across all your hubs; across multiple organizations (if you’re part of multiple orgs). In 2.0, you can only be on the Dashboard for the organization you’re currently logged into. Using our example from yesterday, when Gerald logs into Trinity Community Church at tcc.memberhub.com he will land on the Dashboard for that organization. He can switch organizations from the same dropdown.

Your Account, Your Profile; What’s the Difference?

Your Account will consist of your email addresses (yes that’s multiple addresses), your password, time zone, and global notification preferences. Your profile is everything else like your mailing address, phone numbers, gender, birth date, etc. The profile is managed by the organization and you both can make changes. You will have a separate profile for each organization that you’re affiliated with on MemberHub. We’ll talk more about what admins can do in the next post.

Your Family will be Created by Organization Administrators

After doing some real digging into the ways that the family concept was being used in MemberHub we decided to move the responsibility of creating and managing families to organization administrators. Most users were confused about the ability to add family members; especially when joining a hub and didn’t understand the implications of creating those records. Members will be able to edit Family Members but the responsibility of grouping members in to families will be left to the staff at your organization who decide to make use of the family view and new family directory. More on this down the road too.

In the next post we’ll share why we’re making life much better for organization administrators.

Please, leave us a comment below.

The main objective that drove this round of enhancements was to give more focus to the organization. Essentially we wanted to do a better job of scoping the entire user experience by the organization that actually signed up for the service. Let me explain something that might not be obvious right now.

When you currently log into MemberHub, you land on Your Dashboard. Every user has their own dashboard where they see a combined view of data across all of the hubs AND organizations that they are affiliated with in MemberHub. The header and the MemberHub logo are present. This was a great concept for some users because they are a part of multiple organizations that use MemberHub and the current dashboard provided a one stop view into all the organizations in their life.

However, what we heard in our feedback was that administrators wanted their member’s experience in MemberHub to feel more like their own organization. Many of you suggested that as members interacted with the system it was more about MemberHub and less about Trinity Community Church (example organization name). As soon as a member logs in, it’s not branded with the organization, it’s branded with MemberHub. This is all about to change.

Every organization (subscription) will now have a customizable subdomain. For example, Trinity Community Church could have a subdomain of http://tcc.memberhub.com. You can even use your existing organization’s website address and just tack the .memberhub.com onto the end to get your organization’s branded login page.

Think about this for a minute. Every time someone gets an email from MemberHub and clicks the link to take them into the system, instead of landing on a login page that says nothing about your organization, they’re taken to a branded login page that will immediately bring a level of trust and familiarity that your members are expecting when using a tool that you have provided. In addition to this, Trinity Community Church can now just link to http://tcc.memberhub.com right off of their website. In fact, it should be encouraged that members use your subdomain to login.

Once someone logs into the organization, they are no longer taken to a generic Your Dashboard page. Instead they are taken to the organization’s dashboard. With the exception of the top navigation (which we will explore later this week) the dashboard feels the same, BUT…it’s got the organization’s name and logo in the header…not MemberHub’s.

Having a subdomain for your organization in MemberHub allows the system to be opened up to many enhancements. Here are just a few:

• A more branded experience
• Member profiles that can be edited by both members and admins
• Less confusion on who’s in control of the data and communication
• A page for organizational wide events, directories, hub listings and more

All organizations in the system will have their subdomain defaulted for them. Administrators can customize their subdomain on the Settings tab inside the Admin console.

There are more blog posts coming this week about the upcoming changes, so stay tuned! And please leave a comment below and share your thoughts. Thanks!

We’ve been busy…listening. In the last 6 months, we conducted customer interviews, spoken with prospects, chatted with early adopters and even formed a Customer Council. We’ve been listening to your feedback, suggestions and problems and now we’d like to make some noise!  We’re making some enhancements that we know are going to be warmly welcomed…even more than the beloved sound of a vuvuzella.

We’ll be communicating the details of these changes out to our users over the next few weeks via email and this blog. So if you’re not already subscribed, then do so at the top right. You can subscribe via email and the blog posts will be delivered to your inbox.

Here’s an idea of what to expect in the upcoming changes:

• Sub-domains (ex. http://trinity-church.memberhub.com)
• Branded login pages for your organization and branded user dashboards
• Ability for admins to manage member profiles
• Register multiple email addresses
• Easier member directories

These changes will open up the door to even more enhancements. Enhancements that weren’t possible before; like more membership management capabilities. The bottom line is that it’s going to be MUCH easier to get your members into the system, easier to manage member profile information and therefore easier to enhance communication with and among your members. Your experience with MemberHub will be branded less with MemberHub and more with YOUR ORGANIZATION.

Thank you to those of you we’ve spoken with and especially to our Customer Council.

Photograph by: UNITED PHOTOS
Credit: REUTERS

One question that we hear often is:

Do we add member data in directly or do I have my members signup?

Most customers love the current implementation where members signup and manage their own information. Others want complete control and even want to add members manually and start communicating. So the question is: Who owns the data?

Can a system be designed that can be both a membership management system and a self-serve member communication tool? We think so. And we’re taking steps now to be the best of both worlds.

Organization administrators can now manually add person records in their organization’s management console. What this means is that you can now accurately reflect all the people in your organization. You can enter the profile information and upload their picture.

The next step will be to merge any offline person records with a real account should that person create a MemberHub profile. We’ll be speaking with existing customers to gather feedback on how this should work.

If you’re an administrator, check out the New Person button and let us know what you think!

When we performed our last customer survey, a couple of trends were immediately spotted. The most common was the suggestion to allow users to send a message to just a select few people in their hubs. Discussions are great for creating dialog between all the members in a hub and you can easily send a one-to-one message to a member (or admin) of your hub. But there wasn’t an easy way to send a message to a few select people in your group. Well we heard ya loud and clear and we’ve made some simple, very intutive changes to allow you to do just that.

Anytime  you’re on the Members listing in your hub, you can click the little mail envelope icon beside the member’s name. This pops up a message dialog where you can provide a Subject and Message to send an email to that person. In the past the message could only be sent to that one person.

Now when you get the New Message popup, there is a To: field where you can add additional names. Simply start typing the name of any person in your hub and the dialog will attempt to auto-complete the name for you. Also notice that there is new checkbox at the bottom. Leave that checked and you will be emailed a copy of your message.

As an alternative to clicking the envelope icon beside a member’s name you can also click the blue New Message button found in the right-hand sidebar on the Members page in your hubs.

Enjoy and don’t hesitate to visit the Support Forum at http://help.memberhub.com if you have any feedback or suggestions.

One of the more pesky navigation issues in MemberHub has been that users were required to go back to their Dashboard to switch into another group’s hub. This is cumbersome and for some of our power users has become rather slow too (we’re going to speed up the load time for the Dashboard). It’s been recommended multiple times to allow a user to simply switch the context of which group they’re in.

So we added a simple drop-down list in the Hub Navigation where you can easily switch between hubs. The hubs are even grouped by Organization like on Your Dashboard.

We hope this saves you some time!

We’ve made some recent enhancements to the hub Home Page and the hub Join Page that will help administrators to further customize their hubs.

Every hub in MemberHub has a corresponding public-facing Join Page. This page is where prospective members can learn about the group and either join right from that page or request to join. These pages are especially useful if you take advantage of putting a Hub Listing widget on your organization’s website. For example, you could list your small groups hubs at your church on your website. Visitors can then click on each group to learn more. The link will take them to the Join Page for that hub where the will see a description of the group, a member count and NOW a personalized group image!

We have a Knowledge Base article you can read to learn how to set up your Join Page(s).

While we were at it, we gave hub administrators the ability to upload an image to their hub’s Home Page too. Hub administrators can simply click the blue Edit Homepage button at the bottom of the Home Page to upload an image. We heard this suggestions quite a bit, so enjoy!

Drop us a comment below and let us know what you think. Do not hesitate to contact us over on the Support Forum if you have any questions at all. We’re here to serve!

The MemberHub team has deployed an enhancement that will save administrators time by empowering their members to create hubs which can easily be moved under their MemberHub organization.

After you click on the New Hub button on Your Dashboard we ask if the hub should be affiliated with an organization. If you are not an administrator of a MemberHub organization, this option will default to “No, this is a stand-alone hub”. Remember, free stand-alone hubs are limited to 25 members and 25 MB of storage. The Click here to lean more link pops up a bubble that gives you a few more details.

Clicking “Yes” to this question reveals a new section that allows you to select an organization. If you are an organization administrator this option will actually default to “Yes”.

As an example, if a member of your nonprofit named Charles needs a hub for his new committee he can create the hub without having to ask an organization administrator to create it for him. The admins of the organization will get an email that allows them to Accept/Reject the new hub.

If accepted, the hub gets pulled under your nonprofit automatically. If rejected the hub is still Charles’s, but it falls outside of the nonprofit’s organization. This means Charles won’t have access to the membership when adding members, your nonprofit logo would not inherit down to his hub and he would be limited on members and storage.

These changes should help organizations better serve their members by empowering them to get organized among themselves. And isn’t this what you want? Ministries, committees and teams that can JUST DO IT.

Please share your thoughts or questions by leaving a comment!

Online discussions are a great way to enhance communications and help members stay organized. With so many tools available, it’s hard to tell the difference between a mailing list, a discussion forum and general online messaging. With MemberHub, every single hub (online group) has a mailing list. It’s not a forum or place to blog; perhaps those features will come later. I’m not going to spend time explaining how mailing lists work, but I am going to explain an enhancement to our hub mailing lists that have opinions on both sides.

There is a new checkbox labeled “Send me a copy of this message” that you can now click whenever you are logged into MemberHub and you create a new discussion or reply to existing discussion. In addition to this, whenever you send an email to the hub mailing list, the list will automatically send you a copy of the message. This is what we mean by “echo” emails.

For example, if you wish you to start a new discussion in one of your hubs by sending an email to “my-hub-example@discuss.memberhub.com” you will now receive an email from the list just as others in the hub receive an email.

The main advantage of these new features is the assurance that your message was delivered successfully and the ability to review your message as recipients will view it.

So, try it out and let us know what you think? What are you used to when it comes to mailing lists? What are your preferences? Drop us a comment and/or a suggestion? Thanks!

This is the final installment in our short series on Family Members in MemberHub. I hope that you’ve found these posts informative and I hope that you’ll consider bringing your entire church or organization on board to take advantage of the family-oriented hubs feature! Start here for a recap of this series. Nuff said already, how do we set up a family hub?

I kid you not when I say that it takes less than 10 seconds to convert your hub into a family oriented hub. If you are an administrator, click on the Hub Settings button and you will land on the General tab. Scroll to the bottom and find the new Members Listing section. Select “Group by family” and don’t forget to click Save Changes.

One thing to keep in mind is the experience your members will have when joining your hub. We’ve made it pretty easy for you to handle this. There is a new option on the Joins tab underneath the Hub Settings button that will change the way members join your hubs. It’s imperative that you “Allow” or “Encourage” users to join family members (see above screen shot). Okay you’re done! End of post. Kidding. But that’s all it takes. Let’s continue to look at options surrounding this new feature and what happens when you turn it on.

The Members page in the hub will now show the family picture. The adults are listed and then underneath will be children. Members can then click on the family name and see an expanded view of the family. A larger version of the the family picture and a link to each family member profile will allow hub members to view the picture, contact information and bio for each person in that family. The first image in this post is screenshot of what that looks like.

You may be asking what happens if you have an existing hub for which you want to turn on the family grouping and what happens as families change? In other words, how do members control which of their family members are in the hub? Family administrators can then easily add and remove their family members from a hub on the Personal Settings tab underneath the Hub Settings button.

Create a living, breathing, online, private member community where families can come together and connect. Your members can learn about each other, communicate and collaborate. Did I mention it’s online and in a private environment? In the very near future we believe that all churches will have some version of an online member community and it needs to represent real life. It will be crucial to have the concept of a family in these communities. Your printed family directory is already out of date so what are you waiting for?

That is about it. Please do not hesitate to contact us with any specific questions. We always deliver an implementation plan and sample instructions to help new customers get comfortable with and successfully deploy an online community with their members. In addition to this we can make available sample instructions that you can provide your members to ensure that they set up their family correctly and join your new family hubs.