With the recent completion of the YourMembership (YM) association management software (AMS) migration to the Amazon Web Services (AWS) environment, we’re back to a normal YM software development and release rhythm. So, we’re excited to share some updates and new features we will introduce during the next several months.

Here we go.

Going to GDPR and beyond.

We’re building data security tools so you can stay aligned with the latest security standards. Next week, YM will release our new administrative Privacy Policy management area and enhanced Cookie Notice functionality. These tools will ensure you can provide your organization’s updated Privacy Policies in a centralized area, and automatically link them to your Cookie Notice. Both features – and, ultimately, all tools related to data security and compliance – will be configurable and controlled by administrators, deciding how they appear for your members.

Increasing platform performance.

Moving to AWS was the first step in a forward-thinking strategy to improve platform performance and responsiveness. During the coming months, YM will continue to make updates, remove inefficiencies and optimize our application and supporting infrastructure to create the end-user experience your staff and members expect.

We’re focused on optimizing heavy queries to decrease page load times and removing redundancies in how we handle CSS compilation. We’re also getting smarter about how we leverage advanced caching capabilities available to us through new tools provided by AWS.

Continuously improving.

In addition to performance, we are focused on making a greater impact on your organization’s day-to-day operations. These will improve your operational efficiencies and increase your revenue.

The high-impact fixes will also be more efficiently released. We can now push updates without scheduling maintenance downtimes. We’ve been releasing fixes on a weekly basis since our cut-over (May 19, 2018). And, we plan to close the gap on the backlog of issues we’ve discovered or seen reported during the past several months.

For more details about YM’s most recent releases, please review our release notes here. You may also review our recent releases by navigating from the YM admin area to Support -> Support Home and clicking on the “Product Release Notes” area in the bottom right of the page.

Securing your recurring revenue.

During the next couple of months, YM will release an enhanced version of our BluePay gateway integration. This will occur with the introduction of two key features. These features will increase overall security and better ensure consistency in your recurring revenue channels.

Tokenized payments greatly enhance the security of your credit card and ACH transaction through secure tokens. While YM complies with PCI requirements to ensure your account information is securely transmitted via the latest TLS protocols, you can think of these tokens as keys to a vault. They keep your sensitive account information even safer.

Account Updater will automatically update changes to card information. It will secure your recurring revenue without the need for the cardholder to update their information. Gone are the days of trying to track down a member and have them update their new credit card.

Account Updater works with Visa, Mastercard and Discover for verification against their databases, which are continuously updated when cardholder information changes. Typical scenarios include expired, lost or stolen, or upgraded cards specific to a cardholder account.

What’s best about this update? As a BluePay client, you can take advantage of this feature at no additional cost.

Responding to your feedback.

YM has prided itself on the ability to provide you with regular releases based on thoughts you directly submit through our Unity Idea Box. During the second half of 2018, we’re eager to refocus our roadmap efforts to build and release features that have won the most support from our administrator community.

Some of the top vote-getters include the following:

Customizable event name badges.

Receiving nearly 100 votes in our Unity Idea Box, YM will update the existing event badge feature. It will soon provide customizable logos, additional form fields, and flexibility with font size and face for your individual events. With an easy-to-use visual interface, you can quickly upload and change your preferred logo, update font color and font face, and choose which dynamic field elements you want to include. In addition, these can be positioned on the badge as you see fit. Configurations can be previewed in real time through a “Badge Sample” preview.

Member preferred address.

Receiving nearly 70 votes in our Unity Idea Box, YM will enhance the preferred address functionality. This will allow your members to define their preference. Today, as the administrator, you can set the preferred default address at the member type level—either individual or organization. Moving forward, we put the decision in your members’ hands. You will still have the option to define the default. But, your members will have the final say as to which address is selected as their primary.

Enforcing email uniqueness.

Another update request with a high vote count in our Unity Idea Box is the validation of email during registration and the creation of new member records. We will add this functionality to align with our overhaul of the member registration process and workflow. We will make this email validation an optional configuration for our administrators. That’s because we understand some organizations may not want to enforce this based on how specific records are configured within your YM CRM.

 

 

In addition to the highlights we’ve outlined, we look forward to providing you and your members with valuable updates and enhancements during the coming months. We expect to deliver them in a timely manner, with no need for scheduled maintenance or downtime events.

As a customer of YourMembership (YM) association management software (AMS), you can meet up with many other administrators who have years of knowledge and experience on the platform. Wouldn’t it be cool if you could easily reach out to them whenever you wanted for ideas and answers?

Chances are good those users have the same questions and challenges your organization faces.

Did you also know you and other administrators can directly help steer YM product development? Ideas submitted by our customers help the Product Team shape annual objectives and roadmap initiatives.

As a YM administrator, you can be a part of all this through our community portal – YM Unity. You can also participate through the YM native iOS and Android mobile apps.

What’s YM Unity?

YM Unity is an exclusive online community for YM customer administrators to connect and collaborate with each other. They can also submit and vote on future product ideas using the Unity Idea Box.

Powered by the YM SocialLink community platform, administrators enter this dynamic community feed where questions and ideas are posed to fellow Unity members. Topics posted to the feed range from general product questions to organizational processes. It’s the perfect tool for administrators to collaborate and learn from like-minded individuals utilizing the same software platform.

But, Unity is more than just a networking community for administrators. It’s also a platform for product collaboration and contribution using the Idea Box. You can stay informed of new posts. You can feed activity. And, you can ask questions through the YM mobile app. Instant push notifications and in-app alerts keep you engaged and informed on the go.

What’s the Unity Idea Box?

The Unity Idea Box is a YM feature, which allows administrators to submit ideas to a central location where others can vote on those submissions. The more votes an idea receives, the better chance the idea gets picked up by the YM team for implementation. It’s a perfect platform for customers to directly impact the future of the product they use every day.

Every week, senior members of the Customer Success and Product Teams meet to review all new ideas submitted. Together, we look at the request and prioritize them based on overall customer value, level of effort, and number of votes.

The Product Team reviews the newly-submitted ideas, comparing them with existing ones. The team then determines their priority, along with other product roadmap and business initiatives, to determine the best time to implement and release.

Our goal as a Product Group is to commit to at least one high impact, high vote count customer Idea Box item each quarter. We are bound to that through 2018.

Recently, in tandem with our AWS migration during this past late spring, YM released the #2 vote-getter (78 votes) found in the Idea Box. It led to the implementation of Google’s reCAPTCHA tool on all available forms to increase security and reduce spam submissions.

Coming down the pipeline for the second half of 2018, we will address two of the top five ideas from the Idea Box. This includes the #1 item.

As we announced at Xperience 2018 last May, we will upgrade our Event Badges to allow customizable badges for each event (#1 with 86 votes). In addition, we will enable members to specify their Preferred Address within their profile (#4 with 70 votes). These two, high impact, high vote items look to make a big splash for customers this year. And, we are excited to make it happen!

We’re even more excited the ideas came directly from our customers.

Drop us a line.

Come visit YM Unity soon. Connect with fellow administrators. Collaborate on challenges, and get your questions answered. And, help contribute to the future of your YM AMS.