TOPIC:

Please see below--this is Revision 2 of 3 to this feature. The Email Agenda functionality has been expanded. Many of you have requested the ability to send to meeting roles, and I have wanted to simplify the handling of agenda replies (as I started to do in the 1st revision). Also, now the settings for this email are readily available in the dialog... no need to hunt for them in the admin console. The settings also are no longer global--they are saved on your individual computer and only apply to that computer, so if you need to include meeting notes for a one time agenda email, it is much easier to do that now. Lastly, I am rolling out new functionality via the "Email Tools" drop-down that will allow you to save frequent email messages as an "Email Template".

Acknowledgements... The following users' posts were referenced in this update:

support.toastmastersclubs.org/7-improvem...ns-to-send-an-agenda
support.toastmastersclubs.org/7-improvem...g-of-emailed-agendas

THANK YOU FOR YOUR CONTRIBUTIONS! I may not always get things implemented quickly, but I do get to them eventually.

I would like to get some sample Email templates that could be converted into system email templates if anyone cares to contribute anything.

Steve

Thank you so much for this change which makes sending out agendas much more flexible. Our club send invitations to visitors and guests who might be thinking of joining and so I was wondering if it would be possible to have this feature. We can then add individual email addresses and thus send our guests meeting invitations with attached agendas. Thanks for considering.

Ralston Maloney
Club President
Monday Mumblers Toastmasters Club
#2976

ramalone wrote:

Steve

Thank you so much for this change which makes sending out agendas much more flexible. Our club send invitations to visitors and guests who might be thinking of joining and so I was wondering if it would be possible to have this feature. We can then add individual email addresses and thus send our guests meeting invitations with attached agendas. Thanks for considering.

Ralston Maloney
Club President
Monday Mumblers Toastmasters Club
#2976

It is technically possible for me to create functionality to send the agenda to the guest list. However, we have never wanted to do this on philosophical grounds... when you send out an agenda, some of your members names are identified on the agenda--this is fine for emailing the agenda to other members, but emailing it to non-members may risk your members' privacy in an undesirable way. We are very sensitive about privacy, so we have always been a bit hesitant to do anything that would be perceived has having a cavalier attitude towards privacy. Additionally, if a provision for emaiing the agenda to guests were added, then we would want to make sure it is done selectively to avoid unwanted mass emails to guests.

The reason that this is important to us is that the emails come from the FreeToastHost server (it is the "middle man"), so any claims of people being spammed would likely be associated with the FreeToastHost system--we really want to protect the reputation of the system.

You can use the existing guest list to forward the agenda... I realize that will also come from the server. (We are limiting our exposure, but not eliminating it entirely.)

For us to take any action on this, you would need to come up with a very compelling justification for it... more specifically, compelling to Brian, as he is sort of our philosophical guide/mentor in these matters.

Also, note that the email templates functionality I have rolled out with this update was originally conceived for use with the "Send Basic Email" feature in Membership Management... you could create a nice looking invitation email, and save it as a reusable template. It is just a case that I released it in the Email Agenda update first because of a past user request. (see above) It will be released as an update for the Send Basic Email feature, also... you can then make up some nice formatted email invitations.

Thank you Steve for this explanation and I do understand your concern about privacy. We do have an agenda template in Word which we send out weekly to members and guests and we currently do manual sign-ups. However we are switching over to the much more efficient on-line sign up system and so I wanted to eventually get rid of the old Word template. I will consider your other options - I dont quite understand how the "Send Basic Email" setting works in Membership Management but will learn it. Thanks again for your quick and detailed response which is very helpful.

Have a Happy Christmas and New Year !

Ralston Maloney
Club President
#2976

ramalone wrote:

Thank you Steve for this explanation and I do understand your concern about privacy. We do have an agenda template in Word which we send out weekly to members and guests and we currently do manual sign-ups. However we are switching over to the much more efficient on-line sign up system and so I wanted to eventually get rid of the old Word template. I will consider your other options - I dont quite understand how the "Send Basic Email" setting works in Membership Management but will learn it. Thanks again for your quick and detailed response which is very helpful.

Have a Happy Christmas and New Year !

Ralston Maloney
Club President
#2976

What some clubs do currently is to send out the normal agenda email to their members, including the VPE, VPM, and VPPR. Then one of those officers turns around and forwards the received agenda email to their guest list (guests-#####@toastmastersclubs.org) w/ an invitation from their own email/webmail software. You cannot do that forwarding from "Send Basic Email"--i only mentioned that as some background regarding the new Email Templates functionality.

ramalone wrote:

and we currently do manual sign-ups. However we are switching over to the much more efficient on-line sign up system

When I roll-out the final revision to the Email Agendas functionality in the next few weeks, I think it will "seal the deal" for you... it will totally get rid of the need for manual sign-ups.

Steve, i just wanted to say i used these updates shortly after you rolled them out and i am ecstatic with the new options. Thank you for all the hard work you put into making this system more user-friendly and flexible. I can't wait to see update 3 of 3!

Ok, so Rev 3 of 3 has to do with the nature of the Agenda Email itself... The actual email you receive.

Because emails can contain links that can do stuff, I am working on putting useful links in the email that will actually do the following:

1. Indicate that the email recipient will be attending/not attending the meeting that the agenda is for.
2. Allow the email recipient to actually take or drop a role in the meeting that the agenda is for. (Assuming someone else has not already taken the role in question.)
3. Confirm a role that the email recipient has already signed up for.

This will go further than the current links in the Agenda Email, and should allow members to interact with the system via email (e.g. from a mobile phone) without having to log in.

Some issues are still being worked out in the implementation, so this is a work in progress. As you might imagine, this implies that I am still working out the implementation details for the role confirmations functionality.

Hi Steve,

Thank you so much for your improvements, I really love the new email system and the possibility to save templates!

I have some question/suggestion on things that would be really useful:

1) Is it possible or are you planning to implement a mailmerge function? it would be really useful to use tags like [name] to personalize the emails.
2) I did set the signature but most of the time the email comes blank and I don't know how to insert it, I usually go into the template and copypaste but I guess it is supposed to come automatically, is it possible that some "saved setting" is preventing the signature from coming out?
3) To send reply to it might be useful to add "President" since sometimes the VP can send emails and want only him and the president to receive the answers and not all the officers.
4) this is a long shot but it would be a killing feature: knowing who received the email. Some members don't look at them and knowing who they are we can make sure they check their spam and receive all the information they need!

Thank you so much for your work, I'm looking forward to know what else is coming! I love all the last improvements!

Thx... see my responses below.

tund3r wrote:

1) Is it possible or are you planning to implement a mailmerge function? it would be really useful to use tags like [name] to personalize the emails.

>>> I did consider this... this email function is essentially the "cousin" of the Send Basic Email feature in Membership Mgt that does do some mail merge stuff. I am not totally against this... I just prioritized my time for another cool feature I am working on. Let's revisit this later.

2) I did set the signature but most of the time the email comes blank and I don't know how to insert it, I usually go into the template and copypaste but I guess it is supposed to come automatically, is it possible that some "saved setting" is preventing the signature from coming out?

>>>I am probably going to do a tweak on this so it works a bit better. UPDATE: I did some modifications on this... please see if it works any better.

3) To send reply to it might be useful to add "President" since sometimes the VP can send emails and want only him and the president to receive the answers and not all the officers.

>>>Ok, I could add that easily. UPDATE: This has been added.

4) this is a long shot but it would be a killing feature: knowing who received the email. Some members don't look at them and knowing who they are we can make sure they check their spam and receive all the information they need!

>>>I honestly do not know how or if I could do this. My impression is that this is essentially a delivery/read receipt type of function, and those are almost always specific to an email provider, like gmail... not sure where I would start on this. UPDATE: I did some research and I added an attempt at this (added an option too)... However, it should be considered experimental and not guaranteed--some email providers will ignore the requests. Let me know your experience w/ it.

Thank you so much for your work, I'm looking forward to know what else is coming! I love all the last improvements!

Thanks!

I expect to implement the final revision to this functionality over the weekend... stay tuned!

Revision 3 of 3 for Agenda Emails is HERE

woot woot