If someone enters an email address in the "Forgot Password" password reset section on the login page that is not attached to a user account in your database, a notification email will now be sent to that email address!

Previously, email addresses that were not associated with a user account were not notified. Now, there will be less confusion on their part, and less calls from members for you and your staff! As you can see in the sample below, the notification email will include links for creating an account and contacting your staff.

Learn more here.

Thanks to the wonderful feedback we get from our associations, we've made a few updates to the registration page.

Why the changes? A few reasons!

The first being that "Register" wasn't always the best verbiage for every association's membership types and options. 

The second and most exciting, is that the member type information is now editable from the frontend instead of solely from the backend and has a new text box above the member types to add additional content, such as disclaimers, member benefits, etc.! 

Previously, the go-to page for this information was /register. This page still exists on your site, and will still be shown if someone begins a registration and clicks back to Step 1 (see below).

Moving forward, however, you'll want to update and link to /membership-information when updating membership info. (Don't worry, we've already updated the link in your navigation and where it's linked on your site!)

Learn more about the new membership information page here.

The Attendee field (which includes Name, Phone, Email, and Company) is now automatically selected as a form field in the “New Ticket” modal (see below). 

It is no longer considered a custom field, so the information will now be stored on the attendee record.

This update eliminates the need to manually drag/drop the Attendee field on to the form, and since this information is very important for most events, it reduces the possibility of a ticket being created without Attendee details. 

Of course, if the ticket should not include Attendee information, the “Show on Form” box can be unchecked. 

Note that the “Required” box is not automatically checked.

For more information on ticket setup, check out this article: Event Ticket Setup

You are now able to view some additional member data in your event attendee list. If the attendee is connected to their record in the database, you can add additional member data columns to the attendee list.

This will allow you to include custom fields in your attendee report for existing information that you've already collected on members! 

So what additional member data can you see? The "Attendees" tab now includes the option to display the following member field information from an attendee's record:

To see this within the event, go to the "Attendees" tab and click on the gear icon to view all available columns.

Note:
You can still include the custom fields in your attendee form if needed. That column will only be displayed once on the Attendee list, and the value shown will be the value the attendee enters on the ticket. This will not overwrite your current member information.

Your event attendees may notice a slight update to event confirmation emails. The purchaser of the registration's name will now appear directly below the payment method information. This is to ensure there is no confusion between purchaser information and attendee information for those receiving the email. Learn more about event registration here.

We realize how important it is for your association to collect, have, and easily track family and parent-child relationships between your records. 

To help set up these relationships, we have system fields that appear during registration, user account creation, etc. that allow users to enter and/or see this information.

We know that the basic "parent company" verbiage doesn't always apply to all member type situations. For example, it might make sense for a Company/Staff relationship, but not for your association's Company/Sub-Company relationships.

Hearing this feedback, we've made the title and description of these fields editable!

Learn more here.

You can also choose whether or not to show or require both of the above fields. To do  so, head to the "member fields" section and scroll down to the last two fields.

*To update these sections, please contact the Novi team.

A very exciting new feature is now in use that you may have heard us affectionately refer to as the "Data Handshake." This is a huge breakthrough, as it allows the sharing of data between two Novi websites!

In a nutshell, the data handshake will allow a Novi website to share data, such as member record updates, custom field values, etc. with another affiliated Novi website. 

This is available for affiliated Novi websites. Example: A state or national association is using Novi. Its (local, regional, etc.) affiliates that are also a part of the Novi family can share member data with them easily and seamlessly, making things like end of year or quarter member update reporting a breeze on both sides!

In a nutshell, the first step is the website sharing their information (the source) will set up an API Key (just a fancy term for a key that gives you the power to allow other sites to see your data). 

This is where they will decide what information is to be sent over to the second website and where a key is generated. Besides required fields (things like Name), it is up to the source what information gets sent and who they give the API key to.

Once that is complete, the website receiving the data (the target) simply will set up an API Feed using the key given to them by the source. They determine what information they want to take in and map the data to their existing member types, custom fields. etc. and voila!

There are a few more things that happen after the initial set up, like continuous syncs. The API functionality is one of the more advanced features that Novi provides, but also one of the most powerful for associations that have other affiliated associations or systems to share data with. If you have any questions about what can be done using this functionality, please feel free to contact the Novi team.

In addition to searching by name, email, and alias, you can now search for a record by address. This will be helpful for when a member may change their name for instance, but not physical location. You can also use it to search for the billing address for a check that you may have received under another name or alias.

We've made a small change to the background process relating to printing transactions from the backend/admin of Novi, in order to prevent timeouts on large bulk printing and making the process more efficient in communicating with QuickBooks Online. 

This won't affect your usual printing processes, but if your browser has a pop-up blocker on, it may prevent your downloaded transactions from opening. 

Please make sure that if you have any issues printing from the admin side or if it looks like nothing is happening, you mark your website as safe with your pop-up blocker.

Learn more here.

By design, groups pull based off of your members. Beneficiaries can be added to a group using the Group Beneficiaries settings on each group, but sometimes you may just need to pull a group of these beneficiaries from a particular member type without the actual member.

In our example conditions below, if we had a company-based member type named "Supplier," this would create a group of any sub-customers of those members, meaning, any staff members or sub-companies underneath a Supplier member.

Another great use case would be a scenario where there is a company member type and a custom field that applies to people, but you only want to pull people's results whose parent is in that certain member type.

Learn more about creating groups here.

An exciting new condition is the ability to create groups off of specific expiration dates! This will be great for marketing email campaigns in MailChimp or Constant Contact targeting members expiring at a certain time. 

One fun idea could be to use this to send "Renewals are coming up soon! Don't forget to update your information in your Member Compass." email.

Learn more about creating groups here.

Example 1 (members who expire on a certain day):

Example 2 (members expiring within a specific month):

Accountants and bookkeepers with multiple QuickBooks Online companies, rejoice! If you ever need to disconnect/reconnect your site to QuickBooks Online, and want to double check that you've connected the site to the correct account, Novi will now tell you which company is connected in 

If an individual or sub-company record is inheriting its parent's billing or shipping address (determined by the gear setting in the screenshot below), these inherited addresses are now visible in results when the child record's addresses are pulled in custom reporting. Learn more here.

Previously, when performing a merge in Novi, any staff or sub-companies associated with the losing record needed to be manually removed from their parent prior to the merge. 

This is no longer needed, making this update a big time saver! When a merge occurs where sub-customers are involved, all sub-customers (including inactive and deeper family tree levels of sub-customers) will automatically be transferred under the new, winning record. Learn more about merges here.