[GSAS-board] Updating Membership

[Paul Wallace <pwallace@u.washington.edu>]

Hi All:

I hope everyone had a pleasant holiday season.

I am worried about the current state of membership as we have a large number of 
expired members on our list.  However with the transition to electronic 
newsletters the old mecanism of notification by address label broke.  I am 
reluctant to blindly purge members so I have discussed this with Eric to 
understand how the system should work.

The first change is the ability to generate a list of about to expire members.  
I am working up text to be sent monthly.

The second is to use the existing purge functions as intended.  I would be more 
than happy to work with Steev on the "Show (reset) new/renewals" and "Show 
(purge) lazy members" functions now that the January newsletter is out.

I appreciate any feedback on this manner as we can be doing better.

Thanks,
-Paul

Eric Wrote:

Couple of options here.  Probably the easiest is to copy over a simple 
script that we use on the AGA side...hang on... Take a look for the new 
"generate e-mail list of members about to be purged" link.

Basics of what's "supposed" to happen every month. (I should probably send 
this to the board):

1. Every time SUSAN gets a new member or renewal, she updates the expiry 
date, flips the member to Active, and sets label flag to Renewal (if 
appropriate).  This appears to be what's going on.  (Note, don't update 
DeactivatedDate -- that's done by the purge script).

2. STEEV clicks the appropriate links to generate labels and e-mail 
addresses.

Note that "Generate list of e-mail addresses" doesn't include expiration 
info like the labels do, which is our first problem.  Those people getting 
newsletter via e-mail never know when they expire.  I don't know how 
Steev is doing the e-mail, but if he can use a second field that includes 
their expiry status, I can add this to the e-mail address list.

3. (And here is where we're screwing up big time).  STEEV also clicks the 
"Show (reset) new/renewals" button, examines the page of stuff, then 
clicks the "Reset Renewal Flag" link at the bottom of that page.  This is 
needed so that the labels don't say "Renwal, thank you!" but instead start 
showing the expiration date.

4. (And here is the big payoff that's also not happening).  STEEV finally 
clicks the "Show (purge) lazy members" button, glances in horror at the 
page + of members about to be expunged, then clicks the link at the bottom 
"Yes, Expire them!"  They are now inactive, and will not show up next 
month.


Could this be automated?  We could certainly combine 3 and 4 into one 
script, but...The original reason I kept them separate was that when I ran 
step 4, it was what told me who needed new membership cards (which I 
stapled into the newsletter)!


I certainly also could automate the generation of the e-mails all in one 
shot, from gsas.org, which might make sense.  One click would bring up a 
screen showing all the recipients of this month's newsletter, plus all the 
people receiving expiration warnings.  A second click would e-mail the 
appropriate letters, reset the flags, and purge the database.   Steev 
would only need to remember to print the labels BEFORE doing the e-mail 
step.

    - Erik

-- 
Erik Olson
erik at thekrib dot com


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