There’s a lot in this update - everything from some UI updates to some new features for clients. All before we enjoyed Thanksgiving with our families and thankful for such great clients.
Fix for the embedded map so it loads to show the entire United States by default
Fixes for Clemson’s theme
Better spacing around social media icons
Improved header font sizes
Better grid alignment for People lists on the About page
Better layout and behavior for MAA sites with little-to-no content - AKA a skinny Maidstone (Additional changes for this will be included in December)
Better admin-side management for Alumni.Fund custom fields - we’re making it easier to delete fields
Added OU Forms and better Typeform functionality for Oklahoma
Added labelling for social share buttons on content
We have transitioned everything from using “Activities” to “Events” to make it easier to understand. Using “Activities” instead of “Events” has been confusing for users.
Updated our Eventbrite integration to add support and messaging for their business changes that require everyone to select a plan
MAA link color fixes - hyperlinks remain black instead of gold, making it easier to read
Fixed the homepage slider behavior to hide arrows and stop cycling if there is only one post featured. This affects Wainscott, Sutton and Maidstone themes.
Better width layout for featured images on Maidstone
Added public Activity submission form for UNC
Fixed full size image display behavior for galleries in the Maidstone theme
Fixed UNC slider title display behavior for really long words on mobile
Updated all custom domain DNS records to use standardized ALIAS records rather than CNAMEs
Added shortcodes for mass-publishing of content with dynamic group names and more
This release included a few enhancements and housekeeping items to improve display and functionality.
MAA Default Images for News Updates and Activities
If a user doesn’t upload an image for a News Updates or an Activity, a default Mizzou image will show up instead of the previously generic images.
Ability to customize join button link and text
This was specifically made for MURA, but we made it more global so we can now customize the URL and label for the membership buttons on a per-group basis for both FSU and MAA. This is available for Administrators only and can be customized in the Config tab under Site Settings.
Better assignment of Intercom users based on Staging vs Production
This is internal for Alumni Spaces so we have fewer test users in our user management.
This release contains a number of things to support the FSUAA network launch and a few fixes around the product:
Alumni.Fund
We fixed how Alumni.Fund reports were showing up on content admin pages because of an error with how SVG images were displayed. We also fixed how the scroll position appears when donating a custom amount on Alumni.Fund.
Wainscott Theme Updates
Full width footer bar
Added support for uploading a custom logo
Fixed the homepage so the Slider lines up with the left and right sides of the Pages section
Fixed pagination numbers of the /events and /news sections so Pagination only shows up if there are actually additional pages to go to.
Fixed the “see all” buttons for the Events and News sections so they line up correctly
Aspen Theme Updates
Aspen can now display four required Pages on the homepage. (Shout-out to the Charlotte FSU group!)
Network Login Screen
We changed the network login screen to hide the email/password unless someone clicks on the “work in the network office?” link at the bottom of the login module.
FSU Default Images
FSU now has some beautiful images in the Media Library from the alumni association. We mean beautiful.
MAA Activity Submission Form
The form has been added to Maidstone and is all ready for activities to be added!
OU Logos
We fixed the issue the OU logos were having in Firefox.
When you’re publishing an event, the Venue selector now uses Google Venues instead of Foursquare. The list looks better, results are more predictable and it means that Event location maps will now show the Venue and its information rather than just an address and pin.
Design updates
We added a hover state to MAA sub-navigation links, improved the link color legibility for MAA sites and fixed the oval profile images on the Maidstone About pages.
Alumni.Fund Updates
Tons of Alumni.Fund updates to get OUAA up and running with memberships!
-We defined network membership levels and prices, with the ability to restrict or empower groups to override/customize them
-Networks now have the ability to add custom text/HTML to Alumni.Fund receipts
-You can now turn Alumni.Fund receipts off altogether if your system will be handling receipting
-Unlimited BCCs - if you want to receive a copy of each Alumni.Fund receipt sent, we can BCC as many email addresses as you like
-Define deposit accounts for the network
-The Alumni.Fund Vault API now supports data for all aspects of memberships and is fully documented
-We re-engineered Alumni.Fund to use secure hosted fields from Braintree (Benefits include improved security, ensured PCI compliance into 2018 and faster, more consistent processing)
-Added the ability to add custom fields to the Alumni.Fund flow - Site Editors can now create their own text, checkbox or dropdown fields in the “Custom Fields” tab of the Alumni.Fund metabox
New Themes
We’ve launched two new themes!
Maidstone was designed for the Mizzou Alumni Association.
Wainscott was designed for the Florida State University Alumni Association.
We launched a brand new Support Site to help walk you through any questions you might have about using your alumni group website. It’s complete with step-by-step instructions, gifs and videos!
Always feel free to reach out to us at support@alumnispaces.com if you have any questions or ideas on how we can make your website better and life easier!
We’re all about organization and anything we can do to help simplify a good workflow, which is why we’re excited to introduce Internal Group Names for our Symphony clients and alumni association staff members.
We’re introducing Internal Group Names so you can have a different internal naming convention separate from what your groups identify with externally.
The Internal Name field is only visible to network users, local Editors and Authors will never see it.
Internal names will show up in Reporting lists and on the Group Detail page in Reporting.
The “Group Name” field (External Group Name) will still be what shows up on the public facing website and for all of the labels that local users will see.
So go ahead, get wild and create some awesome internal names!
We always say that one of the greatest benefits of Alumni Spaces to alumni association staff is our commitment to “slay the email monster” by centralizing communication from local leaders. Our Symphony product does a great job of automating a lot of tasks, but sometimes a question or activity needs some extra attention.
Those flagged for staff member attention items have always appeared on the Symphony Dashboard/front page, but now we’re making it easier to stay up-to-date with what’s happening in your network. We’re putting you in control with options for what to be notified about and then combining all your notifications into “digest” style emails, so you get one useful summary as frequently as you like.
You can choose to get a notification about:
All Published Content
Published Activities
Notes added to Activities
An Activity is Flagged for Review
You can even decide if you would like to hear about everything in your network or just the groups “assigned” to you, then tell us if you want to get a unified summary of these events hourly, daily or weekly.
And because everyone deserves modern solutions to their problems, we’ve also added the ability to receive these notifications in your favorite Slack channel!
This is just for network-level Symphony users for right now, but we’ll add similar notifications for group leaders soon. To find your notification options, just log into your site and go to Users > Your Profile:
This release has a number of customizations for our new Oklahoma network and some great updates for everyone else too.
Alumni.Fund links - When you enable Alumni.Fund for a post, we’ll automatically add a button to the content so visitors can easily get to your payment page. (You can always change this in the Alumni.Fund settings for your post.)
Cleaner Settings - We’ve removed the Integrations tabs in Site Settings. For most people, it’s been retired for awhile so you probably won’t notice. Everything that used to live here has been moved to Widgets and the Eventbrite publisher.
New maps - We’ve majorly upgraded the display of location maps on Events. Now, if there is a Google location for your event’s venue, people can easily get directions or send the directions to their phone.
Lots of theme improvements - Better responsiveness for Columbia, post thumbnails on Columbia, new widget locations on all themes and a lot of responsiveness improvements.
Better comparisons for reporting - Now when viewing Activity data, you can chose to view the increase/decrease compared to either the previous period or the previous year.
Easier registration - Registration of new sites is a bit clearer with better domain validation.
“One of the cornerstones of alumni relations is ensuring members of the Sooner family across the country and world have access to the latest information, university highlights and news, and support opportunities available. We feel our partnership with Alumni Spaces will allow the OU Alumni Association to provide a platform to our local clubs and affinity groups that will do just that. One of the biggest challenges in ensuring alumni feel connected to their alma mater cutting through the noise of information traffic in today’s connected environment, and after vetting numerous companies from across the country, it became readily apparent Alumni Spaces was best equipped to assist us in doing so. In the end, the decision to use the Alumni Spaces platform was not only the best decision for our association, but for our alumni as well,” said Bill Moakley, director of communications for the University of Oklahoma Alumni Association.
Trivia fact: The president of the University of Oklahoma is a former U.S. Senator AND Governor. Pretty impressive!
Just as the temperature drops for Autumn, we’ve released the latest batch of updates. It’s a mix of improvements and fixes for everyone - odds n’ ends and upgrades for you.
Everyone
Add tables to any content! Many groups post football/basketball schedules or score results throughout the season - this is a lot easier now that you can create tables anywhere. Just click the new Table button in the editor.
Delete post confirmation - any time you delete content, you’ll see a popup asking you to confirm. I know, popups are very 2001, but most people never delete content and we’ve had a lot of cases where it was done accidentally. We’re hoping this popup is a force for good in the world.
We’ve fixed a number of use cases around social login and registration - you can now register a site using capital letters (AwEsOmE!), invite new editors to sites using social login and if you ever need help, our team can now see what social network you used to register.
Symphony
Activity detail pages will now show a map of where an activity is taking place.
Anywhere you see a a number indicating activities for your review, you can now click it to see the drilldown list of those activities. Or any time you’re looking at a drilldown report, you can now say “only show me things marked for my review.”
Activities reports now have a significant number of new columns available to make visible. Just click the Gear icon above any activities list and checkout the “Columns Visibility” menu to toggle more data.
