Pathways Support in FreeToastHost

Written by FreeToastHost on . Posted in Documentation

This article is intended to give some specifics on the features and functionality in FreeToastHost that support Toastmasters new Pathways education program.

 

As of the time of this writing, there are two specific areas that are Pathways related and one area that was developed in the past with Pathways in mind.

 

1.  All Pathways projects have been incorporated into our project selection drop-down in the Meeting Agenda module.  This drop-down includes a filter to assist you in finding your desired project, whether it is a Pathways project or a project in the Traditional Toastmasters Program.   Additionally, the relevant project details show up in the Role Reports.  The projects of the Traditional Toastmasters Education program will be moved to the bottom of this drop-down after the spring of 2018, and will be removed from the drop-down after the 2-year Pathways transition period is over.

Project Drop-down 

 

2.  FreeToastHost has special functionality in it to support Base Camp notifications to be routed to the 3 club officers designated as possible Base Camp Managers: the Club President, the Vice President of Education, and the Club Secretary..   If you insert either the club contact-####@toastmastersclubs.org email address or a FreeToastHost provided officer email address (e.g. vpm-#####@toastmastersclubs.org) for your club's contact email address in the Toastmasters Find a Club page, then any Base Camp notification emails will be automatically re-routed to the three officer roles designated as Base Camp Managers.  Please see "Updating club contact on Toastmasters International site" to read how to update this club contact email address.

If you are uncertain what your Club Contact email address is, any club officer can determine this by logging to the Toastmasters.org website and checking the Meeting settings in Club Central.

NOTE 1:  If you use the contact-####@toastmastersclubs.org email address for your club contact email address in Find a Club, remember to verify that the this email address is enabled in the Email and Contact Forms module.  It must be explicitly enabled for it to work.  See "Email and Contact Forms" for more details.

NOTE 2:  It does not matter which roles or people you actually have set for your club contacts in your Email Settings.   There is no connection between who you set and who gets the Base Camp Notifications.  It only matters that you use either the contact-####@toastmastersclubs.org email address or a FreeToastHost officer email address (e.g. one of the president/vpe/vpm/vppr/treasurer/secretary/saa email addresses) as your Club Contact email address for Find-A-Club.  Then the re-routing of Base Camp notifications will happen automatically.

Since Base Camp will always send its notification emails to the club contact email address entered in Find a Club, but this address is often used for communications with new potential club members, this special re-routing provided by FreeToastHost is intended as an improvement to the default Base Camp email notification functionality.

Level Completion Email

FreeToastHost accomplishes this re-routing by examining the email address that the email was sent from and changes its behavior if a Base Camp notification email is detected.  To illustrate this, lets imagine a hypothetical club #123456 that has entered its vppr officer email address (This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.) in Find A Club as the club contact email address.  This makes sense, since many people contacting the club via this email address will likely be non-members.  If we examine what would happen by showing you some hypothetical email log examples, this will make things clearer:

SUCCESS (User Email) Thu 2018/04/05 00:25:23 UTC Club:[123456] From:[This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. ()] To:[This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.] CC:[] Subject:[toastmasters first visit]

This is just a normal email from a non-member to the vppr email officer email address, which FreeToastHost then forwards to the VPPR's actual email address.  Now consider what happens if Base Camp sends a notification to the same email address:

SUCCESS (User Email) Sun 2018/04/29 23:50:17 UTC Club:[123456] From:[This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. ()] To:[This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.] CC:[] Subject:[A member submitted a level completion request] 

SUCCESS (User Email) Sun 2018/04/29 23:50:17 UTC Club:[123456] From:[This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. ()] To:[This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.] CC:[] Subject:[A member submitted a level completion request] 

SUCCESS (User Email) Sun 2018/04/29 23:50:18 UTC Club:[123456] From:[This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. ()] To:[This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.] CC:[] Subject:[A member submitted a level completion request]

In this case, even though the same VPPR email address used corresponds to one person, FreeToastHost has detected that "From:" address indicates that it is a Base Camp notification, and it redirects the email to the actual email addresses for the Club President, VP Education, and Secretary.

This special re-routing happens whenever the contact-####@toastmastersclubs.org address or any officer email address is used for club contact email address in Find a Club, and FreeToastHost detects that an email is coming from This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

 

3.  Pathways encourages mentoring as part of the educational program.  Mentoring-specific features were added to FreeToastHost a few years ago when it became apparent that there would be greater emphasis on it moving forward.   FreeToastHost allows multiple mentors to be assigned to a club member--see Assigning Mentors to Members.  FreeToastHost supports mentors and mentees getting in communication quickly by sending emails to each of them containing their respective contact information.  Additionally, there are mentoring reports available in the Membership Management module.  (look at "Membership Reports" in Membership Tools)  There are also specific mentors and mentees email distribution lists to allow easy communications with current mentors and mentees.  Lastly, FreeToastHost can be configured such that mentors are notified when their respective mentees take or drop a meeting role.