Support

Feature Description.

We would like WA to develop a new "Administrator" class that would enable the user to "read only" all the membership data in the Membership database. They would be able to do "Advanced Searches" on this criteria, and download the results of searches. They would NOT have the privilege of uploading records. We would like them to see information that cannot be seen at the membership level of the MMS (and even information that members have selected not to be shown in the on-line membership directory). This includes details of active members, lapsed members, pending members, names, addresses, emails, and all other membership data fields.

They would not be able to send "email blasts", this is reserved for the existing admin classifications. If the capability can be limited to specific criteria, then it may be ok to give them email sending privileges.

They would not need to see the financial reports or transaction records (unless this was able to be limited to specific criteria).

The reason we need this capability is that we have member groups, all over the country (called "Sections"), that need to keep track of their local membership, currently the local Section Executives are just at the general membership level. We don't want to give them all full membership management "Admin" privileges as this would be difficult to control and may jeopardize the integrity of the whole system. There are over 25 sections across the country.

Currently the system administrators have to provide this information based on specific requests from Sections, and it would be easier if we gave the local section executive the privilege of seeing this information themselves, when they want and need to, rather than having to wait for the current administrators.

Patrick, I really appreciate the detailed write-up and explanation. This makes good sense.

I will add this to our list and  while I can not yet predict any timelines, I can assure you that this level of details goes a long way to bump your request higher in our queue.

We have had more discussion on our request, and If our feature request is difficult, another solution that would meet most our needs would be to make the "Renewal due on" field to be a field that could be seen in the Member Directory and viewed by members. This solution would eliminate any "privacy" issues that arise with give giving more people administration privleges. We realize that some people could decide not to show this field, but that would highlight itself and enable th local section to follow up.

The major requirement we have is to enable local sections follow up on membership renewals, and having visibility to the "Renewal due On" field would solve most of the problems.

I could see many different instances where you might want to grant someone ability to see membership records - or portions of records - but not the ability to add/update/delete - or not the ability to update all fields.

One could be the ability for "vendors" to peruse the database in some limited fashion to verify group membership before granting a discount to a particular member.  (Many groups solicit discounts for its members - then face how to prove the person is a current member at time they are asking for the discount.)
(Many groups do not want their membership list to be public - and may not want the vendor to have rights to the members only page.)

Various volunteers might need to see data - but you don't want them to have the temptation of being able to adjust the renewal dates - extending people without payment.

Volunteers doing membership drives might want to verify people that are current/past members and people that have been contacted before so they are not "spamming" people in their attempts to make new people aware of the organization.  They might need to add contacts to the database and update a contact field with information about when contacted, etc.

Volunteers updating info on "juried members", etc might need edit acceses to just one field or set of fields, to put in results of jury, etc.

So, might be a database field level thing - locking and/or hiding some info unless the person has the right sign on.  Might be a "canned report" feature that people with the right sign on can look at. 

The more powerful the options, the more uses that will be found.