Support

Current behavior:
Each member record is required to have a unique email. Email is as a unique record identifier, for example to login and used for event registrations to determine applicable price.

Desired behavior:
Some organizations have members who do not have/use emails.  So it is desirable that email field should not be mandatory.

Workaround:
Using a 'fake' email address for such records, e.g. John.Smith@noemail.none and setting the option not to send any emails to this member.

Notes:
Our current thinking is to make MemberID field to be the main unique identifier. Ideally we should do it so that people can login with either email or MemberID (for backward compatibility).

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Dmitry Buterin, Chief Apricot

I hope to be uploading my database before too long . . . It sounds like I should be importing the user ids from my current site, even though I don't remember seeing them as a field when I customized my database.

Purpose of course would be to make the transition seamless to them, especially if you are going to switch to using these ids as the main identifier . . .

Am I reading this correctly?

Hello!

Not exactly - of course you may skip IDs on importing into Wild Apricot. In this case it will use emails as it does now.

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Vassily, Wild Apricot team

The current system's user id's are alpha-numeric . . . will that fit into WA's member id field?  For example, my id on our current system is "gypse".  Can I upload those to member id or will that field be strictly numeric? (I don't know why, but I had the impression it was a numeric field . . . )

You are right - current WA MemberID is a numeric field and its value managed by WA system only.

We will consider alphanumeric and ability to modify it.

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Vassily, Wild Apricot team

If the numeric stayed as a "hidden" field for WA's purposes and the user id was public, it would be better for people using the user id to sign in.  It is a lot easier to use your standard user id than to remember a new number - especially when it has no significance to you.  (and less typing for an id as opposed to an email - plus email changes more frequently as providers merge, etc)

Having the user id be unique within the system is good.

Having it be modifiable - nice, but not necessary . . . It would get used by people that used a name that they then changed via marriage, etc - but my experience on my current site and the associated public forum is that I've only had 2 people in 5 years that asked to change their ids.  It could not be done on the system - had to delete one and create a new one . . . so it would be nice to be modified, but not a high priority.