Automatic Email Lists

For customers with the Advanced package, this feature will automatically generate and keep current some basic Email Lists for your Pack or Troop. You will see a new Auto Lists icon in the List Settings section of the Administration/Email page.

This feature will create the following Email Lists automatically.

  • announce@ containing email addresses from all member accounts (see exception below)
  • leaders@ containing email addresses of any adult listed as a leader
  • an Email List for each Den/Patrol using its name, minus any spaces. Both Scouts and Parents will be added to these Email Lists.

New Feature: Public Pages

A number of customers would like to make Custom Pages available to the public to provide more “marketing” information about their unit, for fundraiser information, and for community service projects.

You can now identify Custom Pages that you want to make available to the public.

Go to Administration/Content/Menus. Next to each Custom Page you will see a checkbox to make that page public. Once a page has been made public all attachments, files, and images associated with that page will also be available to the public.

Upgrade: Captchas

When we started our service we added Image Validation to public forms (Contact Us/User Registration/etc) to ensure a human was filling them out. This was done to prevent SPAMmers from utilizing these forms.

Occasionally we will receive reports that the Image shown does not match the Validation required to complete these forms. These issues are 99% of the time attributed to cache settings on a member’s computer or some proxy server in between. Basically an old image is shown vs. one the system expects – thus the form cannot be completed.

We have updated this component of the system two times in an effort to force browsers to load a new image every time. Unfortunately we cannot seem to get 100% of the browser cases covered.

Fix: N/A Issue

A number of customers have experienced an issue after updating/deleting a website account, that it looks like the content of your website has disappeared. All Announcements and Events have changed to “N/A”. In reality your website content is still there it is just a display issue that is causing it not to show. Either way it can still be very disturbing to see !

This bug has plagued us since our service was launched. We have put a significant number of hours trying to determine what causes it. We could never consistently repeat the problem and therefore could not create a fix for it.

Upgrade: OTHER NON LEADER member type

We have added some special characteristics to a website account that is both

  1. Of the Member Type OTHER

    AND

  2. IS NOT checked as an Adult Leader

For these accounts

  • They ARE NOT shown anywhere in the Unit Roster
  • Their email addresses WILL NOT be included in Automatic Email Lists
  • Their email addresses WILL be included in EBlasts
    • You can manually exluded them from EBlasts through the EBlast Exclude Members feature
  • Their email addresses WILL be included in the All Members Access option
  • You can manually add them to Email List Members, Authorized Senders, or the Global Senders List.

Upgrade: TM/PM 2008 Import

We have made a small change to the PM/TM 2008 Import process that will provide you with a lot more flexibility for accounts on your website.

When you use the Remove Members option of Import it will only remove members that came from a TroopMaster Import originally. Thus, if you add a website account manually and then perform a PM/TM 2008 Import it will not delete the account you manually added.

Through this method you can keep website accounts for individuals that do not need to be listed in TM/PM. This is great for keeping District, Charter Organization, and Community contacts listed for use in Email Lists.

New Feature: Automatic Email Lists

For customers with the Advanced package, this feature will automatically generate and keep current some basic Email Lists for your Pack or Troop. You will see a new Auto Lists icon in the List Settings section of the Administration/Email page.

This feature will creating the following Email Lists automatically.

  • announce@ containing email addresses from all member accounts (see exception below)
  • leaders@ containing email addresses of any adult listed as a leader
  • an Email List for each Den/Patrol using its name, minus any spaces. Both Scouts and Parents will be added to these Email Lists.

Upgrade: Email Enhancements

The following updates became available on July 7th, 2008.

We know that the majority of our customers rely on email as a timely method of communication to their unit members, including the SOAR EBlast feature. We continue to improve the SOAR email features to ensure that you can rely on email delivery.

Now that we own and control our own Email Servers we have been able to add a number of Email enhancements to ensure your emails are delivered to your unit members (avoiding spam filters and junk email folders) and to decrease SPAM going through our Email Servers.

A lot of the detailed information below is technically oriented for those that like to understand all the details. If you don’t want to read all the details, simply understand that we continue to fight unsolicited email.

Bug Fix: TroopMaster 2008 Import

The requirement to have the Mic-O-Say option turned on in TroopMaster has been removed in the new TroopMaster 2008 v4.00f version.

Please download this latest version of TroopMaster software at www.troopmaster.com

You can then leave the Mic-O-Say option on or turn it off without affecting the SOAR export file.

Upgrade: PackMaster 2008 Import

This upgrade primarily pertains to Cub Scout Packs.

Thanks to our friends at Troopmaster Software Inc. we have a number of great additions to the SOAR PackMaster Import features.

These include:

  • Single click export of a single file from PackMaster 2008
  • Date file encryption
  • Short website account usernames
  • Individual Progress Report is now available on your website.

We are pleased to announce immediate availability of the following upgrades and new features.

Single Click Export

If you get the latest patches for PackMaster 2008 (V4.00b or newer) you will find a new menu item available to you