SMS/MMS communications

Hello Damian,

Thank you for this suggestion. Our team has been discussing this topic since the Atlanta convention, and our Senior staff has been investigating this before then. One of the main considerations is the balance between price and security. Some of the more secure services our team has liked could prove cost prohibitive. Alternately, there are actually services that will allow sending free SMS and text messages, however these services will also record and archive all the messages. Third party message recording is not an acceptable option for our customers.

I am going to submit your SMS/text integration suggestion to our DEV team formally on your behalf. While I cannot garuntee when or if this suggestion might be implemented, each suggestion is carefully evaluated by our team. If I receive any feedback I will let you know. Have a wonderful day.

 

I would like to add my voice to others in support of this. As an organization, Rotary is trying to appeal to younger potential members. What they're telling me is that email is not an effective way to reach them, whereas sms messaging can be. Thank you.

 

Our club is also interested in being able to send SMS messages to people listed in our contacts. We host a market place twice a month and currently use a third party to distribute SMS messages to customers who visit the markets to remind them when the next market will be held and of any specials our market stallholders are planning. We are more interested, therefore, in being able to send messages to external parties than to club members and would like to use the contacts area to store their details. Has there been any progress in this area? As alternative is there an API available for ClubRunner that we could program to do this?

 

Hello Angela (and Douglas),

We are currently developing a tool to be able to send messages to other Rotarians using our free ClubRunner mobile app.

However we are not developing a tool to message non-Rotarians inside our app at this time.

Angela I will submit a user request on your behalf though - to allow Club contacts to show up inside the mobile app (for Club Executives). This way Club Executives would have their Rotary club website contacts accessible inside our app. I've put your name on my request so if I receive any feedback from our team I can let you know.

Douglas, we have other Rotarians say the same as you - that email is not as widely used for their younger Rotarians. We hope our CR mobile app messaging system would be a good solution. This is still in development so I am unable to provide you any timeline of completion.

Note that currently using our CR mobile app you are able to phone or text any individual Rotarian by choosing their name and clicking their phone number inside the app.

Thank you both for posting. If you have more questions please feel free to post here again, you are not just helping each other but the other Rotarians who read these message threads too.

 

A mobile messaging app would be very useful. Please include an all members feature. I have used the phone feature. It is way faster than having to look it up in the website data base.

 

I second this, it is a much wanted function to be able as a Club Executive to send text messages to members. To do it from the CR app is perfect.

 

Hi John and Mats,

Thank you both for responding. I've gone ahead and inserted the link to this entire message thread into our CR app messaging documentation. This way we can see all the members who've responded in this thread, and can get back to you once this feature goes live. (It's likely there will be a public announcement once this occurs too).

As always, feel free to post any other questions you may have.

 

Mickey - where did this topic go after Oct 2019?

A President-Elect is looking for this functionality with her members. I cannot find any further information in the Community.

 

Hello Bruce,

Thank you for checking in on this feature request.

Notices and Messaging in the mobile app continues to be a popular request, this is something we’re still considering for the future. Since this functionality is not present in the mobile app, I’ve added your name to the current user feedback we are tracking for this feature. However at this time I am unable to offer any guarantees or timelines of implementation for a feature like this, this is something our team is still working on.

If you have more questions please post again.

 

I want to join the requests to have text messaging. This is an important feature that we need. Thank you.

 

Mickey; Please advise status on this.

 

Hello Garth,

Thank you for posting.

This functionality is under consideration for future updates to the mobile app, but we do not have any further details that we can share at this time. As noted previously I am unable to offer any timelines or guarantees. If you have more questions please post again.

 

Please add one more request for this feature.
Thank you.

 

Just wanted to check on any updates to text messaging options. Thanks.

 

Hello Kristina, Rick, and Community Members,

In July 2023, we released the ClubRunner Broadcast Notifications feature, for clubs with their own club version of ClubRunner. You can view all of the ClubRunner updates released in July 2023, from this page on our website:

What's New July 2023

Members with a Club Access Level of '50 - Club Executive' up to '30 - Site Administrators' can send notifications to all other members, or just other Executives, who have downloaded and logged into the ClubRunner Mobile App, with the steps in this article on our Knowledgebase, clubrunnersupport.com:

https://www.clubrunnersupport.com/kb/articles/how-do-i-send-a-broadcast-message-with-notifications

Kindly note, that the Broadcast Notifications are not quite the same as SMS/MMS texts, and are Notifications, similar to mobile notifications you would receive that new content has been posted by someone you follow on other online platforms.

Any members can download and log into the ClubRunner Mobile App for free, from these links on the Google Play, and Apple App Stores;

Click here to download the CR App from the Google Play Store: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.doxess.clubrunnermobile&hl=en_CA&gl=US

Click here to download the CR App from the Apple Store: https://apps.apple.com/ca/app/clubrunner/id434696377

I hope this helps with trying out our Broadcast Notifications feature on our complementary mobile app!

Please let us know how it goes, and if you have any other questions.

 

So, you are saying...If someone has not downloaded the CR app they will not receive text/notifications?
If that is the case, honestly, not a useful module, as the mobile app is not useful to majority of my club.

 

Hi Sandy,

I’m glad you’re sharing your feedback about the mobile app and I want to understand how we can make it better for you and your club. If you’re not aware, we’ve had some updates to the mobile app over the last year or so that you may have missed out on. For example, you can use the mobile app to:

• Have members update their own profile and profile photo.
  • Administrators can also use the app to update other members, and this extends up for our districts staff and AGs.
• View upcoming events for the club, the district, and other clubs within their area.
• Members have nearly instant access to contact details for other members of the club and district, including key officers.
• Privacy controls to ensure that the information that is available is based on their choice.

The mobile app is where we expect regular members to get the most usage out of ClubRunner, as it's easy to use and contains a majority of the features they will use day to day. We’ve committed to making the Mobile app the best experience for day to day club members and have several new features planned.

We would love to hear what else can we do to improve the app to make it more useful to your club. It sounds like SMS functionality is one, but if there are others please let us know.

 

I strongly support the SMS functionality. Like other Clubs most of our members would either not have downloaded the mobile app (even though they have been told about it) or at least don't have it permanently logged on.

 

We’ve heard back from a number of clubs that are having lot of success with Members appreciating the Mobile app by having a meeting where the goal is to get everyone on to download the app, and sign in.

Once you get it installed on their devices, and they login, they will not be logged out normally. Only if they explicitly go out of their way to do so. This can really reduce the barriers to getting members using the app, and benefitting from it.

If your members have tried the app, and they had any feedback good or bad, we’d love to hear it.

I do want to confirm that we are still looking at where we can plan to introduce SMS style features for Nova and our clubs. I also want to confirm that more than likely there will be costs associated with providing SMS features for customers, over and above the standard ClubRunner subscription, which are out of our control.