New Feature: Change Email Address

In response to many requests, today we released a feature allowing members to change their email addresses within Group-O-Matic. To use this feature simply click on ‘Edit Profile & Settings’ under the ‘Control Panel’ section of any group to which you belong.

As always, we welcome your feedback. So don’t hesitate to contact us or leave a comment.

Transparent Change: Another Login Change

A few weeks ago, we made a bunch of transparent changes to our login process at Group-O-Matic to increase usability (see announcement). After some monitoring of those changes, we are very pleased with the results. Today we are making another minor change to hopefully continue the increase in usability.

In the original emails members and group organizers receive when signing up, we are adding a line in these emails noting that their secure access links are like passwords and not to post them publicly. We haven’t seen people doing this, but since it is possible, we want to warn them ahead of time. Currently this is only in a few of the emails going out, but we are considering adding it to all of them.

As always, we welcome your feedback. So don’t hesitate to contact us or leave a comment.

Updated Feature: Notifications when Members Join/Leave

Recently we received feedback from a group organizer at Group-O-Matic with a sizable group that it would be nice to know when members leave the group as well as when they join (and who specifically left the group). Right now there are member counts displayed, but if you have a lot of members, it isn’t easy to tell who left.

We think it makes sense that if you are being notified every time someone joins your group(s), you should get notified when they leave as well. As such, we have updated that feature to notify you when members leave. The text associated with this setting has been modified to reflect this change. This setting is under the Control Panel in a link entitled ‘Edit Profile & Settings’.

Note that all members can choose to be notified when members join/leave, just once after a certain number of members join, or not at all. By default, notifications are turned off for new members and it is a choice for the original organizer when they create their group. If you choose to get notified just once after a certain number of members join, you will not be notified when members leave the group. The latter notification will only occur if you choose to be notified when members join and leave.

As always, we welcome your feedback. So don’t hesitate to contact us or leave a comment.

Transparent Change: From Email Address

Today we are changing the from email address on all Group-O-Matic messages from help@groupomatic.com to groupomatic@groupomatic.com.  (Note: help@groupomatic.com is still a live address and, as such, you can still use it to get help!)  This change is a result of very useful feedback from our group organizers, who noted that the ‘help’ email address can seem like spam.  Ironically, we had chosen that email address to be helpful and avoid spam folders.

After some consideration, we think groupomatic@groupomatic.com is a good choice because it is unique and obviouslly identifies the source. With this change we also took out ‘groupomatic:’ from the beginning of some of our email subjects as this is now redundant with the from address.  This subject change should further increase our email usability by making the subjects shorter.

Finally, we will consider in the future allowing group-specific from email addresses and/or names.  But for now, we want to stick with one from address in an effort to (cross your fingers) avoid getting our mail put into spam folders initially.  As always, we welcome your feedback. So don’t hesitate to contact us or leave a comment.

Transparent Change: Login Changes

At Group-O-Matic, there are no passwords. Instead, members have unique access links they use to access their private group pages. These links get emailed to them when they join groups. Once you click a group access link once, Group-O-Matic remembers you, and if you go back to groupomatic.com, your groups are displayed with links to access your private group pages. This works pretty flawlessly most of the time, and when it does, we think it is a better system than having yet another username and password for a number of reasons we won’t bore you with in this post.

However, sometimes people change computers or clear their “web cookies” and then get confused about how to log back in to their private group pages. Previously we had some links entitled “Lost Link” at the bottom of various pages to help in this process, but these links seem to be too subtle in practice. So today we made a number of changes to help members when they trying to figure out how to log back in to their groups.

First, at groupomatic.com, if you are logged in, we moved the links to your private group pages to the top of the page and made them bigger, making them much more obvious. Previously they were below the search box, and people were searching for their group instead of clicking on the right link. Now the right link is above the search box (and the first text on the page), and so we hope people will notice these links more readily.

If you aren’t logged in, we created a Login link as the first link on the page, and also in a bigger font so its gets noticed. This link goes to the same place as previous Lost Link link at the bottom of the page. The Lost Link page now displays some helpful instructions at the top detailing how to login and the process in general. The original Lost Link links are still present at the bottom of the page but they have been re-titled ‘Lost Group Access Link’. The other links at the bottom are one word, and so this makes the new links stick out more. We figure some people will miss the top link and will instinctively look at the bottom, and so wanted to duplicate the link with different text.

Finally, we think some people will still search for their group.  If they do that, previously they would have gotten to the public group page for their group when looking for their private group page.  Now, if they are logged in, they will automatically go to their private group page.  (This is similar to the change we made when we updated the Optional Subdomains feature–see our previous announcement.)  If they are not logged in, we added a message for current members about logging in the Join Group section.  And of course, if they try to join again, they will receive a similar message (this has always been the case).

As always, we welcome your feedback. So don’t hesitate to contact us or leave a comment.

New Feature: Private Group Descriptions

Today we released a feature allowing groups to upload their logos (see our announcement) to Group-O-Matic.  In conjunction with this feature, we are also releasing a new feature allowing group organizers to add a private group description to display next to their logo and/or group name on their main private group pages.  This optional private description will display only on the main private group page for each group.

For this private description, group organizers can choose the same description they are using for their public group pages (where new members join), a different description, or nothing.  We think it will allow group organizers to remind their members about the purpose/organization of the group, and provide new members with this initial information as well.  But they can choose to write whatever they want!

As always, we welcome your feedback. So don’t hesitate to contact us or leave a comment.

New Feature: Group Logos

It has been suggested to us that some groups have logos, and that it would be great if both public and private group pages at Group-O-Matic could be customized with this logo information.  We agree!

In response, we are pleased to announce that all groups can now upload their group logo, or just a friendly icon or picture.  Logos will be displayed at the top of private group pages and in the About Group section in public group pages.  Currently we are re-sizing logos to 100 pixels.  We suggest cropping logos to eliminate all whitespace before uploading them.

To use this feature, simply click on  ‘Change Group Settings’ under the ‘Organizer Control Panel’ section, and then look for where it says  Group Icon/Picture.

As always, we welcome your feedback. So don’t hesitate to contact us or leave a comment below.

Updated Feature: Events on Public Page

Last week we released a feature (see our previous announcement) for all Group-O-Matic groups showing the next/last event on public group pages so that prospective members could get a sense for group activity.  After receiving some feedback, and as we suggested, we are expanding this feature.

Now, instead of just one event, all future events (scheduled or being scheduled) will be displayed along with the last ten past events.  This event information has been separated out from the other group information (like the group description) so it is more noticeable.  Past events and upcoming events are additionally separated from each other.

As always, we welcome your feedback. So don’t hesitate to contact us or comment on this post.

New Feautre: Next/Last Event on Public Page

Each group at Group-O-Matic has a public page where new members can join the group, for example this page.  We have received feedback from group organizers that it would be useful if event information could be included on this page.  We agree!

In response, we now display the name and date information of the next event for the group.  If no next event exists, we display the last event for the group.  If a group doesn’t have any events, nothing is displayed.

We recognize that some group organizers may want to display more event information than this, and want more control over their public pages in general.  We agree with this sentiment as well and are working on more options.   In the mean time, please enjoy this new feature.

As always, we welcome your feedback. So don’t hesitate to contact us or leave a comment below.

Updated Feature: Optional Subdomains

As you may know, Group-O-Matic has a feature where groups can create optional subdomains for their groups, e.g. yourgroupname.groupomatic.com.  This subdomain feature was intended to help groups in recruiting new members.  However, some groups have reported it would also be useful if it worked for existing members as well, and if it doesn’t, it is quite confusing.   We agree!

In response, we have updated the optional subdomain feature to additionally work for existing members.  Now if an existing group member goes to the group’s subdomain, they will be automatically redirected to the groups’s private page.  Everyone else will be automatically redirected to the group’s public page, as previously.

If you are already using the group subdomain feature, you do not need to do anything to take advantage of this update.  To use this optional subdomain feature, just click on ‘Change Group Settings’ under the ‘Organizer Control Panel’ section, and then look for where it says Subdomain. It’s that easy.

As always, we welcome your feedback. So don’t hesitate to contact us or leave a comment below.