[Chapter-delegates] Problems with new membership system

Thu Mar 7 21:30:05 PST 2019

Dear Joyce

Is there any resolution on this? Please see below the message I posted on
Feb 13.  I need to send communication to our members, to a more complete
list.

Thank you!

On Wed, Feb 13, 2019, 7:10 AM sivasubramanian muthusamy <
6.internet at gmail.com wrote:

>
> 1. AMS shows the total number of India Chennai Chapter members as 371,
> down from about 700.
>
> 2. We have a long pending issue over our choice to retain the list of
> applicants AFTER the pending applications are processed to admit applicants
> from the pertinent geographic region. (We wanted to retain the names for
> our records / reference / future decision ) *The number of applicants in
> the "pending" list was 1500+, now it shows 19 applicants.  What is even
> more strange is this:  9 out of the 19 pending applicants are applicants
> who applied after February 4, 2019.  For the period 2010 - Jan 2019, 10 out
> 1500 names are migrated to the new portal, how Staff decided to select
> these 10 names out of 1500 is not known.*
>
> 3. Processing applicants is far more difficult, as the table does not
> provide a summary overview of the applicant city, email address etc. but
> instead the columns are Name, Account, Subscription, period from and period
> to (irrelevant and unnecessary columns) giving no information to make a
> quick glance judgement for bulk action. If a Chapter looks at pending
> members once a month, and if there is an accumulation of 100 applicants, it
> would take 5-6 hours of work just to click on each name to find the
> necessary details such as the applicant city. This is not functional.
>
> 4.  Data can not be sorted as per the needs of the Chapter.
>
> 5.  There is no list of memberships coming up for renewal.
>
> Sivasubramanian M
>
>
>
> Sivasubramanian M <https://www.facebook.com/sivasubramanian.muthusamy>
> twitter.com/shivaindia
>
>
> On Wed, Feb 13, 2019 at 1:50 AM Nashilongo Gervasius <
> engervasius at hotmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Dear All
>>
>> Biggest challenge for now ( while still getting the feel of the new
>> system)
>>
>> Looking for the notice/messaging forum  for the members for discussions
>> and interaction.
>>
>> Otherwise wholeheartedly agreeing with concern of previous colleagues.
>>
>> Nashilongo
>>
>> ------------------------------
>> *From:* Chapter-delegates <chapter-delegates-bounces at elists.isoc.org> on
>> behalf of Dewole Ajao <dewole at isoc.ng>
>> *Sent:* Tuesday, February 12, 2019 8:37 PM
>> *To:* Olivier MJ Crépin-Leblond; Chapter Delegates; amshelp at isoc.org
>> *Subject:* Re: [Chapter-delegates] Problems with new membership system
>>
>>
>> Hi Olivier and All,
>>
>> On our own side, apart from the disappeared members (that we assume did
>> not opt-in), I've observed the following from the AMS side:
>>
>> You can no longer send email to (applicant) members with pending
>> applications. This was a useful feature as we used to email them to say
>> welcome and tell them a little more about the Chapter and how they could
>> participate (even before accepting their applications). Sadly, the new
>> system won't let you work around it by approving first and trying to mail
>> the most recently approved (because the only ordering options are first
>> name and last name). On both the member listing and email communications
>> pages, one should be able to filter by status, date joined, etc.
>>
>> I also see that there are several subscription status options - including
>> "Active"
>> "Terminated"
>> "Terminated, Active" <- dunno what this magical status is...
>>
>> Painful enough that you cannot opt to view more than 100 members at a
>> time, one does not get any meaningful pagination - If you are giving me 20
>> pages of 100 results, I should at least have the option of going to page N
>> rather than click next, next, next several times for a slow loading page.
>>
>> Userbility problems aside, I think we should get an explanation about
>> what has happened to member data, what we have left, etc so we can stop
>> speculating.
>>
>> Regards,
>>
>> Dewole.
>> Nigeria Chapter President
>> On 2/12/2019 6:09 PM, Olivier MJ Crépin-Leblond wrote:
>>
>> Hello all,
>>
>> I'd be interested in your comments, as I have realised (from the feedback
>> received on today's Chapter Advisory Council Steering Committee) that the
>> UK Chapter is not the only Chapter with Membership software problems.
>> Throughout the week, I have been grappling with various problems brought
>> forward by the new Internet Society membership system.
>>
>> Leaving small problems to the side, there are two main problems that the
>> Internet Society UK England Chapter is facing:
>>
>> 1. The inability to download a list of all our members in Excel format.
>> When we started using the ISOC AMS system, we transferred all of our
>> member's details to the AMS. We even registered with the Data Protection
>> Registrar, in case the details were going to be leaving the UK. Whilst the
>> Internet Society runs the AMS system, we believe that we are the data
>> controller. Now we cannot retrieve the data of our own members and the
>> question comes as to "who owns members"? I remember this debate poisoned
>> discussions in early 2000 when the Internet Society was about to collapse
>> for lack of funds and at the end of the day, the matter was dug into the
>> ground and full access to the membership records given to the Chapters
>> about their own members. Now the new system makes things a lot harder for
>> the Chapter to view and download records of its own members. This simply
>> cannot be the case.
>>
>> 2. Emailing members using the system: here there are two main problems:
>> first, it is now impossible to email a subset of our members, it's either
>> all of them, or 1 of them, but there is no ability to select a subset of
>> members, for example living in town X, and email them. Functionality loss -
>> which I had already pointed out during the demonstration calls a few months
>> ago, but it appears that someone has deliberately decided to ignore this
>> important feature. That's a technical thing that should be fixed easily.
>>
>> The second problem, possibly more of a problem because I do not think
>> that it is technical, but is a "feature" that was added, is that we now
>> appear not to be able to email all of our members. With the decision of
>> ISOC to go through the toughest regimes of GDPR acceptance by asking for
>> explicit acceptance of GDPR terms, we went from 3400 to 1490 members.
>> Whilst this is a pill that's difficult to swallow, I understand the purpose
>> and conservative direction that ISOC took for this - the culture of "safety
>> first" prevailing these days. That said, we now have another challenge, in
>> that out of these 1490 members, we appear to only be able to email 1098 of
>> them - because it appears that 400 of our "members" have "decided not to
>> receive emails".
>> First, I think that the email opt out button is very badly marked, as it
>> cuts you off all communication and signs you off all of the mailing lists
>> that you might have subscribed to. In my test, I have managed to sign
>> myself off email mailing lists without being able to find a way to put
>> myself back on them - for example the Internet Policy..... But worse still,
>> I have found that my own colleagues in the leadership team have opted out
>> of emails - perhaps unwittingly.
>>
>> What good is a Chapter member that opts out of emails?
>>
>> How in the world will I get in touch with members that have opted out of
>> emails? Are these people completely cut-off from the Internet Society? Are
>> they receiving *any* communication at all from the Internet Society, or is
>> it only the Chapter that is blocked from being able to email them? Do they
>> know they have opted out?
>> To me, these 400 people that the Chapter cannot email are as good as dead
>> wood - why not remove them from Internet Society membership as well?
>>
>> I'd be interested in your comments if you are faced with similar problems.
>> Kindest regards,
>>
>> Olivier MJ Crépin-Leblond
>> (personal views)
>>
>> _______________________________________________
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>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> As an Internet Society Chapter Officer you are automatically subscribed
>> to this list, which is regularly synchronized with the Internet Society
>> Chapter Portal (AMS):
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>>
>
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