SOAR

We have added a new section to the Signup Admin tab with some new options.

The first option in this section is Filter by Den/Patrol. This gives you the ability to limit who can register based upon the Den/Patrol filters you have assigned to the Event. This was originally called Filter Registration in the September 2011 release.

Three new options

• Scouts – Allow Scouts to be registered for the event.
• Adult Leaders – Allow any adult with an adult leadership position (as defined in your website Roster) to be registered for the event
• Adults – Allow any adult to be registered for the event.
  

SOAR Customers,

The Boy Scouts of America released guidelines for using social media (Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube) over the summer. There wasn’t much fanfare about the release of these guidelines, nor have I seen it trickle down to many local units yet. I wanted to make sure these guidelines reached each SOAR customer, so you can use this information if you are using social media for your unit.

http://www.scouting.org/scoutsource/Marketing/Resources/SocialMedia.aspx

The summary:

• Make sure you are following the Scout Oath and Law online
  

We wanted to give you an update on the service interruption issue that has affected 1/3 of our Cub Scout customers. This issue does not affect Boy Scout customers.

As you may know from a past Announcement, on August 22nd one of our Database Servers experienced a hardware failure. This server is the home of approximately 1/3 of our Cub Scout customers. The faulty hardware was replaced and the server rebuilt. No data was lost.

Since then the Database Server has experienced periods of connectivity loss, during which customers cannot access their SOAR website. There is no data loss due to this issue.

We are also pleased to release our first Feature Guide – a downloadable PDF document that covers a specific subject, in this case Event Registration. You can find it at Admin/Online Help/Feature Guides on your SOAR website. Moving forward it will be our goal to release a Guide with each major feature to assist in understanding the feature and getting the most out of it. We will also probably release guides for some existing features over the next year.

You will now have access to Version 3 of the Event Signup feature – “consolidated registration”. This will be the registration type you should use moving forward.

The consolidated registration

• Lists each member in your Roster separately in the Attendee list – no more wondering which scout or adult is attending in a family
• If you are using Individual Accounts, it will automatically provide you with a list of family members to register
• If you are using Shared Accounts, it will ask you to select a family member first then provide the list of family members
• Members can easily use checkboxes to say if each member will be attending the event
  

We have upgraded the Photo Upload Tools on your SOAR website, which includes the following

• Fixes issues with Internet Explorer 9
• Fixes some of the issues with older versions of Java on member’s computers
• Fixes the photo rotate issue with a handful of digital cameras that incorrectly set the orientation bit

In addition we have Digitally Signed the Photo Upload Tool. This means that you should no longer receive any security warnings when using the tool !

To process of adding a domain name that you own to your SOAR website used to be manual process for SOAR. We would receive the request from Admin/Control Panel/Domain on your SOAR website and then process the requests in batches a couple times a week. In some cases this would delay requests for a few days.

We have added automatic domain management to your SOAR website. You can now go to Admin/Control Panel/Domain to

• See what domains you currently have associated with your SOAR account
• Add new domains that you own
• Remove domains from your SOAR website
• Define which domain is the default domain – that will be shown to your members
  

For Announcements on the Home Page and Announcements/Events in the EBlast (left column) the website automatically create a “teaser” version for display. This teaser is meant to help condense information for easier viewing and consists of the first XXX characters of content. A Read More link is available to members if there is more content than shown. Customers can manually control the Teaser Break to adjust what exactly is displayed publically in the teaser on the home page and what is required to login to view. See Admin/Online Help/Features/Announcements for the Teaser Break section.

We have updated the Rich Text Editor within your websites. In addition to addressing some issues with Internet Explorer 8, we have made the following additions:

• Spell Check ! – After typing in your content you can spell check it by clicking the “ABC“ icon, last on the 2nd row. This will highlight potential spelling errors by underlining them. If you right click on an underlined word you can choose from properly spelled words and other options
• Advanced Bullets – There are now more options for the bullet and numbered lists. Use the down arrow next to those buttons to access the additional options
  

The Internet Explorer 9 release by Microsoft introduced a number of issues across the Internet. There were so many issues, Microsoft added a “compatibility mode” to IE9 which would allow you to revert back to how Internet Explorer 8 displayed website. You could use compatibility mode by clicking on the “broken document” (document icon with a tear through it) icon. Many internet users were never aware of the of the compatibility mode…

• We have fine tuned our Site Themes to avoid the IE9 issues
• We have updated our Rich Text Editor to work with IE9
• We have updated our Photo Upload Tool to work with IE9