TOPIC:

CONTACT US submission form behavior for our club has changed in the last month or so - not sure if it was something one of our members did or something on the FTH side.

"Select up to 3 contacts for your club. The order in which you select the members, will be the order in which they are listed. Generally speaking, this means that the first contact will be called the most, if the phone number option is checked. Otherwise, the contact form submissions will go to all the contacts, and the club contact who responds is encouraged to "reply-all", so the other contacts can see the reply and know the prospect is not waiting for an answer."

Traditionally, we've had myself and one other receiving contact for submissions. I would always reply all and that way the other officer would know the guest was followed up with.

Then "other officer" added a second e-mail to his FTH profile, for what reason I am not sure. Contact form submissions started going to myself along with his other two accounts.

Now for some reason, the behavior has changed - myself along with other officer are e-mailed and we are not on the same e-mail, so we don't know that the other is receiving it and results in multiple emails being sent to guest, duplication of work and confusion.

Not sure if this has to do with a FTH change or soemthing the other officer did but it appears they are still set up as a recipient of the contact form. (but not one to receive phone calls) Cannot tell if he changed that recently. Getting this person to reply to troubleshooting e-mails in basically impossible.

Anyone have ideas?

not sure what you are referring to kevin, the other person on the contact form only has one email address in his profile

Now for some reason, the behavior has changed - myself along with other officer are e-mailed and we are not on the same e-mail, so we don't know that the other is receiving it and results in multiple emails being sent to guest, duplication of work and confusion.

I made a change to Contact Us so that all submissions go through tcmail now via the contact-####@toastmastersclubs.org .

This is for spam control, since contact us has been a source of spam/junk email, particularly for clubs outside the US. (I have observed this.) Also, the old way revealed member's email addresses to a non-member in the reply, which is not acceptable.

For those reasons, I am not inclined to go back to the old way. However, I do appreciate and understand your concern about confusion. I might be able to address that by putting the names of the people associated with the contact us email address in the name part of the email. For example, "Joe, Sally, Bob" <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.> . That way, the emails still go through tcmail for spam control, but you are tipped off about who is getting the emails. Also, since we generate the email itself, we can list the recipients' names in the body of the email. How does that sound?

If you got the "reply-all" verbage from the docs, then we need to change that, since it is always basically reply all now.

Just so that we are clear on this:

OLD WAY:

1. Non-member submits Contact Us Form.


2. Generated email submitted to *actual email addresses* of members associated with Contact Us Form (or club admin email if none found) and Reply-To set to Non-member email address. No check done to verify that non-member is not blacklisted or sending spam.


3. If reply all done, then it was sent to non-member and *actual email addresses* of members associated with Contact Us Form. Non-member would see member *actual email addresses*.

NEW WAY:

1. Non-member submits Contact Us Form.


2. Generated email submitted via contact-#####@toastmastersclubs.org (or admin email if not set) and Reply-To set to non-member email address *and* contact-#####@toastmastersclubs.org (Reply All by default). Since contact-#####@toastmastersclubs.org goes through tcmail, the generated email is spam checked with SpamAssassin and the non-member email address will be checked if on club black list.


3. If reply done, then it is sent to non-member and contact-#####@toastmastersclubs.org (members associated with Contact Us Form).
   
   Thus, the intention is that the non-member never sees actual email addresses and all emails go through tcmail for spam and black list checking.

Brian wrote:

not sure what you are referring to kevin, the other person on the contact form only has one email address in his profile

Brian, if you had the ability to see it, you would have probably noticed that the change with Kevin was made today. He wasn't on the "contact us" list until today. In the past, it was as I described it. Can't tell you how the other officer (President - Hitesh) has his account set up today, with single or multiple e-mails, but again the configuration was as I described it. We've been trying lots of things to sort out what was going on with the recent changes, including adding/removing people from the list. It is all a moot point now that I see the explanation about the changes that were made. Now we just have to do some additional testing because for some reason it seems like when we reply to non-members, we are not copied on reply which ends up with the multiple replies. I could be wrong, perhaps other officers are not replying and perhaps that are not accurately reporting that they ARE receiving my replies.

Thanks to all who have answered, I will play around with it some more now that I know the new intended behavior.

SteveTheTechie wrote:

Just so that we are clear on this:

That makes sense Steve, thanks for the clarification. I suspected there might have simply been a change but with the changes that some of my officer peers make, I wondered if that hadn't caused a problem somewhere. Nice to know that this was simply an expected change.

support.toastmastersclubs.org/component/...il-and-contact-forms

That is the URL that has the reply-all instructions, you are right those need updated but for us ... I don't know that any change has to be made, we can adapt around the new setup. As long as the people who receive the e-mail actually get the replies as well - good enough.

Thanks!

robyeichner wrote:

I don't know that any change has to be made, we can adapt around the new setup. As long as the people who receive the e-mail actually get the replies as well - good enough.

Well, please understand that I do appreciate and want the feedback. We try to strike the right balance between privacy/spam control approaches and convenience/flexibility. If there is a way the new approach can be improved on, please let me know.