SOAR

A number of customers have experienced an issue after updating/deleting a website account, that it looks like the content of your website has disappeared. All Announcements and Events have changed to “N/A”. In reality your website content is still there it is just a display issue that is causing it not to show. Either way it can still be very disturbing to see !

This bug has plagued us since our service was launched. We have put a significant number of hours trying to determine what causes it. We could never consistently repeat the problem and therefore could not create a fix for it.

We have added some special characteristics to a website account that is both

1. Of the Member Type OTHER
   
   AND

2. IS NOT checked as an Adult Leader

For these accounts

• They ARE NOT shown anywhere in the Unit Roster
• Their email addresses WILL NOT be included in Automatic Email Lists
• Their email addresses WILL be included in EBlasts
  • You can manually exluded them from EBlasts through the EBlast Exclude Members feature
• Their email addresses WILL be included in the All Members Access option
• You can manually add them to Email List Members, Authorized Senders, or the Global Senders List.
  

We have made a small change to the PM/TM 2008 Import process that will provide you with a lot more flexibility for accounts on your website.

When you use the Remove Members option of Import it will only remove members that came from a TroopMaster Import originally. Thus, if you add a website account manually and then perform a PM/TM 2008 Import it will not delete the account you manually added.

Through this method you can keep website accounts for individuals that do not need to be listed in TM/PM. This is great for keeping District, Charter Organization, and Community contacts listed for use in Email Lists.

For customers with the Advanced package, this feature will automatically generate and keep current some basic Email Lists for your Pack or Troop. You will see a new Auto Lists icon in the List Settings section of the Administration/Email page.

This feature will creating the following Email Lists automatically.

• announce@ containing email addresses from all member accounts (see exception below)
• leaders@ containing email addresses of any adult listed as a leader
• an Email List for each Den/Patrol using its name, minus any spaces. Both Scouts and Parents will be added to these Email Lists.
  

The following updates became available on July 7th, 2008.

We know that the majority of our customers rely on email as a timely method of communication to their unit members, including the SOAR EBlast feature. We continue to improve the SOAR email features to ensure that you can rely on email delivery.

Now that we own and control our own Email Servers we have been able to add a number of Email enhancements to ensure your emails are delivered to your unit members (avoiding spam filters and junk email folders) and to decrease SPAM going through our Email Servers.

A lot of the detailed information below is technically oriented for those that like to understand all the details. If you don’t want to read all the details, simply understand that we continue to fight unsolicited email.

The requirement to have the Mic-O-Say option turned on in TroopMaster has been removed in the new TroopMaster 2008 v4.00f version.

Please download this latest version of TroopMaster software at www.troopmaster.com

You can then leave the Mic-O-Say option on or turn it off without affecting the SOAR export file.

This upgrade primarily pertains to Cub Scout Packs.

Thanks to our friends at Troopmaster Software Inc. we have a number of great additions to the SOAR PackMaster Import features.

These include:

• Single click export of a single file from PackMaster 2008
• Date file encryption
• Short website account usernames
• Individual Progress Report is now available on your website.

We are pleased to announce immediate availability of the following upgrades and new features.

Single Click Export

If you get the latest patches for PackMaster 2008 (V4.00b or newer) you will find a new menu item available to you

If you have previously used the PackMaster ME/2006 Import functions, you member accounts will have "long" usernames. i.e. their usernames will contain their full first name.

When using the PackMaster 2008 Import function this naming convention will continue so as not to unexpectedly change login information and potentially confuse your members.

You can convert from "long" to "short" usernames by using the following steps.

1. Upgrade to PackMaster 2008 (www.troopmaster.com)
2. Make sure you have the latest PackMaster 2008 patches (V4.00b or newer)
3. Run an export from PackMaster 2008
   

To import PackMaster 2008+ data into your SOAR myPack website, do the following

1. Navigate to the PackMaster 2008-2011 Import function on your website
2. Select the options you would like to use
3. Select the export file from PackMaster
4. Click the Import button

Import options include

• Activate Adults?
  • Active = members can login to the website using their individual username & password.
  • Blocked = members will need to use shared account
  • Either way, account information will be availlable for the Roster and Email Lists.
    

The export of PackMaster 2008+ data has been greatly simplified thanks to the folks at Troopmaster Software, Inc. In addition, the resulting single data file is encrypted to protect your senstive information.

Instructions

Use the following process to export data from PackMaster.

1. Open PackMaster
2. Click File/Export/SOAR.
3. Select a location to save the file
4. Remember where you saved the file

How easy is that???