June 7 - 14, 2024 Member Wizard Update

Update 1 - June 7 - 14, 2024

This is the first of what will be a weekly update on everything we are doing here at Member Wizard and the progress of various projects to date.

1. The Web Site project

The first of our U3A's launched their Member Wizard integrated website at the start of the week and by the end of the week another had joined them. The first has registered a new domain  U3Anorthgoldcoast.au and the second has redirected their existing website to the new Member Wizard integrated site at u3apinerivers.org.au 

In addition our first Victorian U3A is working on getting theirs online in the next few days. All in all the sites are all working well and doing what they are supposed to do so if you are thinking of changing over we are ready to help you.

2. The Date of Birth Issue

We have received advice from both the U3A Networks and from anti hacking government agencies that asking for and storing full Dates of Birth in conjunction with member contact details is a high risk strategy and U3A Australia advise that it is no longer required by U3A's insurers. Accordingly we contacted several U3A's who do this and offered to strip back and move their full year data into the new Standard Field we have created in Member Wizard - Year of Birth. We request that you do not store this data- Ticketek were recently hacked and the contact details and year of birth of thousands of ticket buyers has been stolen and presumably will be sold off. With this data hackers can steal identities and even access bank accounts in some cases. Member Wizard represents best practice in data protection but the possibility that a user with Admin access could have their login name and password hacked from their own computer and thereby compromise their entire organisation is a far more likely so we have made a decision not to permit full date of birth be saved unless the organisation acknowledges in writing that they are aware of the risks and have chosen to take them.

3. Absence Apology for a Class

This week we launched the ability for members via the Portal to advise that they will be absent from a Class to the Tutor, the Convenor and the Class Coordinator. We have still to make it possible for an office admin person to remove the absence if the member changes their mind but this will soon follow.

4. U3A Victoria Network Conference - October 2024

We have been invited to set up a stand and to present to Victorian U3A's in October. Jake and I will be travelling down there and we hope this will be the start of seeing us spread throughout that State as the membership system of choice. Very exciting for us.

5. The Knowledge Base, Change Log and Report a Request/Bug system

We have now fully moved our job tracking over to HESK (a highly regarded cloud based ticketing and knowledge based system). We have also moved all the Help Files over into the Knowledge base of HESK which means it is now fully searchable. This means that if you have a problem or request you can now log a ticket yourself from the Support Link on the Member Wizard Home page. You can also view and search the Help Files there and from the Help menu within Member Wizard. 

We have also instituted a Change Log which is updated at least once a day which shows what tasks were completed on the day and were published and their version number. We will still keep the Announcement popups for urgent communications or incidents.