Index:

• What is an account?
• Accounts vs Memberships
• Accounts and Roles
• Accounts and Subgroups/Labels
• Blocked vs Active status
• Notifications
• Setup mode

What is an account, and what can it do?

Accounts are used by your members, contacts and community to interact with your group. If you need a choir member to be able to login and access music and RSVP to events, they need an account. If you have contacts you want to send a newsletter, they need an account. If you have community volunteers or a donor who helps support you, they should have an account.

This will let you store their information, keep it up to date, and help to organize them to make contacting and tracking everyone easier. Accounts also allow users to update their own profile information, view and RSVP to events and purchase items in your store. The level of access they have is then determined by their assigned roles.

Accounts versus Memberships

When you go to add or import an account, you may see the option to add a membership - so how does this differ from an account?
Accounts are the base way of storing information about a person. They are the entry in your rolodex, if you will.

A membership record can then be added to an account, and this allows you to store a historical record of their membership within your group. This is very useful for keeping track of someone you perhaps was a previous member for a few years, but now is a volunteer. Or, it can allow you view their account profile and review when their upcoming dues payment will be based on their membership expiry.

Accounts and Roles : Levels of Access

You can control what each user can see and do in the site by giving their account a "role". The major roles are listed below, in a decreasing order with regard to level of access:

• Admin - can view and manage everything, and configure the site. They can contact support for assistance, and can access all information within the site, as well as make major settings changes on the Admin Settings & Tools pages. Can see all yellow menu items as well as the blue items.
• Manager - can view and manage member and financial information, and content. This role is perfect for a user who needs full access to all content, but should not be an administrator of your account. They do not have access to the Admin Settings & Tools pages, but can see all other yellow menu items. Can see all blue menu items. Their profile will be displayed on the "Leadership" page.
• Coordinator - can view member information and manage normal content. "Normal content" is all non-financial based content, so they do not have administrative access to the Store area, but can add, edit and delete content in other areas, such as music or events. Can see all yellow menu items except for the store items, and the Admin Settings & Tools. Can see all blue menu items. Their profile will be displayed on the "Leadership" page.
• Assistant - can take attendance for events. They see the events area only.
• Member - can view and manage their own information. Full non-admin access to menu items, allowing them to see all content that has been assigned to them, such as music. Can see all blue menu items. Cannot view the profile info of others, but can see names listed on the Members page. Their profile be displayed on the "Members" page.
• Parent - can view and manage their own information, as well as any connected children. This role is only available at the Premium license level with the enabling of parent & child settings. This role is very similar to Members, but Parents do not appear on the "Members" list. Can see all blue menu items. They will have buttons on the top of most pages to flip between their view and their child's. Cannot view the profile info of others, but can see names listed on the Members page.
• Applicant - can view and manage their own information. Limited menu access - they cannot view the Members list. Assigned automatically to accounts that have purchased a Membership requiring approval via the store. Useful for assigning forms or events to accounts going through an audition process.
• Community - They will see the public home page, any purchases they've made in the store, and can see events where "all accounts" have been invited (or they have been invited through a label attached to their account). This is often the role for ticket purchasers, donors, and mailing list contacts, or initial "guests" that have logged in a second time.

What if they have no role assigned?

If an account does not have a role their access is very, very limited. They do not see any of the logged-in menu areas, but they can make purchases within the store. A no-role account is often the account that is created when "guest checkout" is enabled, and a user makes a first-time purchase.

You can read more about Guest Checkout here.

Accounts and Subgroups / Labels

Accounts can be divided and organized with subgroups and labels. This can help to organize and identify smaller groups within your main organization, allowing for separate invites to events and music assignment.

• Subgroups: Best used for groups where the accounts within them are aware of the group they're in. Accounts can see the subgroups to which they have been assigned. Often used for: Multiple choirs/choruses within one site, smaller ensembles within a group, committees, teams, etc.
• Labels: Labels are private, and can only be seen by higher level roles, such as Admins and Managers. Labels are often used for internal organization where the account assigned does not need to necessarily know the label they've been given: Often used for: Identifying different types of contacts, such as Donors, Patrons, Advertisers, Parents, Volunteers, etc.
  
  

Blocked versus Active Accounts

Most accounts that you add will need to be in the active status setting in order to be useful. This is because if an account is blocked, they cannot login and cannot receive any email.

You may want to block an account if you need to keep their contact information for historical records, but they are no longer a member of your group.

Notifications

The site has many automatic notification to help keep your accounts informed of what's new and any actions they are required to take.

Accounts with roles will be invited and reminded to login. Accounts without roles but who are active will not receive login invitations, but they can be sent mailing list emails and other notifications. They will still be able to login if they request a new password on the login page.

Blocked accounts will never be sent any emails or notifications.

Setup Mode

When your site is first set up, it will be in "setup mode". This suppresses all notifications except those sent to anyone with the Admin role. This allows you to see what the notifications will be like as you add content and get your site up and running - but it will not send to any members until you take the site out of setup mode.

You can take the site in and out of setup mode on the Admin Settings & Tools under "General Settings". There is a yellow notification at the top of the page when you are in setup mode.

You can read more about setup mode here.