Better renewals, forms and more
Preside is the underlying application which all of our websites are built from, so new versions are something that all sites can benefit from. Along with lots of bug fixes and small incremental improvements, we are always trying to introduce a few new major features.
We are committed to introducing a few new major features based on our understanding of the membership sector plus adapting based on client needs. This sits alongside our commitment to maintaining this powerful digital platform in the dynamic online environment.
In August we released version 10.12 of Preside, this version introduced some major changes to the exporting functionality. Now you can save commonly used export filters and fields and schedule these to be run automatically, perfect where for example, you need a daily email report of all of the members registered in the last 24 hours.Just in time for Christmas, we’re completing version 10.13. Two of the major features of this version are around the permissions and organisation for rules, and enhancements to formbuilder.
Steve Dowle, Head of Product
Anyone who uses rules on a regular basis will understand how quickly favouring filters can get out of hand. You now organise filters into folders and assign permissions, so that you can have your own filters or share them to other admin groups. This will not only help finding a relevant filter, but also prevent other admins from editing or deleting filters that might have wider implications across the website.
Formbuilder is a much used feature in Preside, first introduced back in version 10.5. Whilst it’s super easy to create forms and collect information, it’s fairly limited in what you can do with the information collected.
Under the hood we’ve rewritten it all in this version so you can now use the rules engine to query what questions users have answered. Users of Eventfolio or our Awards platform, will be familiar with rules and find this new feature adds even more flexibility. This new version of formbuilder opens up a huge amount of possibilities in the solutions we can build as well as making it even more useful to users.
We’ll be providing more in-depth information on this when we officially launch this version, but I hope that's given you a taster of what to expect.
ReadyMembership
Renewals are approaching for a lot of member organisations. We’ve been working on a number of improvements in ReadyMembership to make the process as smooth as possible, not just for administrators running it, but those members entering an important time in their membership year.
- New renewal widget for website and email - this widget informs members during renewal and when lapsed how long they have remaining on their membership, how much their renewal will cost and a link to renew.
- Simpler member grade changes by administrators. An administrator can now upgrade/downgrade membership and suggested fees for the upgrade can be seen. Grade changes where a cost is required are emailed to complete the payment before the changes are confirmed.
- Setting the membership holder for corporate membership. The system will automatically set a default contact, but it's easy to change who the contact is that will receive renewal notifications via the admin.
- Improved cancelling of membership - if a member wishes to cancel, you can now configure whether membership is cancelled immediately or only when their membership period ends
Away from renewals there’s been numerous other improvements, especially around payments functionality.
- Clear distinction between creating an order for payment required and invoices for post payment.
- More intuitive payment administration, so it's easier to see who has payments for orders outstanding and be able to reconcile payments for them.
- Improved GoCardless integration to handle changes to subscription pricing, cancellations and payment failures.
- Be able to resend payment request emails.
- Definable invoice prefix and more control over the look and feel of an invoice.
- Conditional payment methods, so you can specify that for example only existing members can pay by bank transfer.
