We are considering 2018 the year of data, privacy, and security, so it is only fitting that the first MatrixMaxx release of 2018 — MatrixMaxx 18.1 — overlaps with all of these topics.
Full patch notes are below, and our free Overview Session was on Wednesday, April 4, 2018, 11am Eastern time on WebEx.
Key TimeStamps on the session recording:
– 21:00 Importer Demo
– 46:00 Integration, Privacy, and Security upgrades, including full https, TLS 1.2, GDPR, hashing, Higher Logic, and Sharpspring
The recording is here:
Also, as a followup from the session, Importer is now available for you to try out on your DEV server. NOTE: You’ll need to access the support center article with instructions on your LIVE server, as we do not connect the help server to the DEV sites.
Enhancements available in MatrixMaxx 18.1 include …
- Individual Data Importer. Almost every client who uses MatrixMaxx has asked for some type of importer function, so here is the first phase of it.
- Phase 1 includes these 4 critical fields:
- Individual Firstname
- Individual Lastname
- Individual Title
- Individual Email
- Detailed Import Help Instructions have already been documented in the Support Center.
- Phase 1 includes these 4 critical fields:
- Consolidated Statement of Open Invoices. The consolidated statement pulls together all open/outstanding invoices for a given organization in the database, for both the organization and anyone attached to the organization. MatrixMaxx 18.1 …
- Adds the intranet-side Consolidated Statement generically into the MatrixMaxx product (so the handful of clients who didn’t previously have it now do). The statement is available from the Company ‘Pending’ page, and there are two versions (one including child companies and one not)
- Adds a new WWW version of the Consolidated Statement option for any clients with the My Account upgrade on WWW Manage Profile. (Most, but not all MatrixMaxx clients, have the My Account upgrade. If you are interested in this upgrade, please contact Matrix. There is a small amount of setup required as it impacts the WWW profile page.)
- First, the association must allow the Contacts (e.g., Primary, Billing) to see the special page of all organization invoices.
- SiteAdmins may turn on the ‘Is ‘My Account’ All Invoices link enabled?‘ option under the ‘WWW Personal Profile‘ section at the bottom of the Custom Settings page on the intranet (Admin – Edit Custom Settings)
- Staff also now have the option, on that same Custom Settings page, to add custom help text to this ‘My Account – Contact Organization Invoice Page
- Not all associations want to allow this, and if you are one of these then you definitely won’t use Consolidated Statement on WWW, either.
- The Contacts (e.g., Primary and Billing) who are allowed to view all invoices for their organization may now also be allowed to see the basic Consolidated Invoice Statement (NOT the one that includes children) on the WWW side
- This WWW consolidated statement version is OFF by default.
- SiteAdmins may turn on the ‘Show Consolidated Statement Report‘ option under the ‘WWW Personal Profile’ section at the bottom of the Custom Settings page on the intranet (Admin – Edit Custom Settings)
- First, the association must allow the Contacts (e.g., Primary, Billing) to see the special page of all organization invoices.
- Meetings: Phase 1 of Classic Registration Optimization. Several clients have requested some type of ‘1-click’ registration for certain meetings, particularly webinars that are free for members. MatrixMaxx has introduced the first set of logic to compress the number of pages in the registration and make it generally easier/faster for the user. [Internal item maxx-3157]
- If there is only one fee available to the logged-in user, MatrixMaxx will now automatically set that one as the selected registration fee
- If the meeting fee is $0, then MatrixMaxx will skip the final review page in addition to the payment page, thus making the flow a page shorter and hopefully addressing the concern that on a free meeting users were stopping at this review page.
- In an release later this year, we will put in the final logic to completely skip the first page of the registration under certain conditions. So a pre-logged in user could literally go as fast as confirming s/he wants to register, and then seeing a ‘thanks!’ page
- If there is interest, we will also consider expanding this logic to Group Registration, but in talking to a mix of users, most of you seem to be using classic registration for webinars.
- Other changes/upgrades/fixes of note:
- Added new WWW Meeting roster: In addition to ‘WWW Roster of all Reviewed/Paid Attending Organizations (Public)’ we now offer ‘WWW Roster of Attending Organizations (regardless of payment or review status) Public’ [matrix internal reference 115439]
- Added companion cell phone as a field to those using companion fields in individual demographics
- Modified label on ‘alternate’ phone to make shorter and take out the ‘pager’ label, as pagers are rarely used anymore
- Fixed an issue with the saved search/export upgrade from the 17.3 release last fall; the saved searches and exports from this function were not being excluded from our ‘space saver’ script which periodically clears out temp searches. This is now addressed.
- IMPORTANT: Some older elements may be cached in your browser. If a page is not formatting properly, or elements are missing or not behaving properly, please do a ‘hard refresh’ on the page prior to contacting Matrix to report an issue. (Using a keyboard, a browser can be forced to pull all elements of a page, again, by holding down the SHIFT key and clicking the browser refresh button.)
Security, Privacy and Integrations
In addition to the code upgrades released in MatrixMaxx 18.1, there have been other efforts going on in this first quarter of 2018. These efforts have including security upgrades, privacy considerations, and fresh integrations. These will be discussed during the Overview Session, and here is a summary …
- Upgrading all Communications to be in the secure TLS 1.2 protocol by June 30, 2018, as part of the new PCI regulations. There was an announcement about this back in January, and we are now down to a handful of clients with legacy applications that need upgrading. We have already reached out to several clients, and the Matrix Services team is reaching out to more.
- Forcing all WWW websites to serve in full HTTPs secure. While this concept has its roots in PCI, its expansion to the full site has been driven by the major browsers upgrading to show obvious non-secure icons and the major search engines down-grading non-secure sites. This is an overlap with the Matrix Services division, and their goal is to have all sites in full HTTPs by the end of the year, if not sooner.
- Encrypting all passwords to full 1-way ‘hash’ encryption, as part of the new PCI regulations and current industry standard. MatrixMaxx started out, as most systems did, with plain text passwords that could be ‘recovered’ by users. However, we have shifted to encrypted passwords with resets, and have slowly been working with legacy implementation to upgrade them. Now, the new PCI regulations are dictating that it is time to finish this up. If your database still has plain text passwords and you haven’t heard from Matrix yet, you will soon.
- Planning for GDPR. This new privacy regulation from the European Union goes into full effect on May 25, 2018. While US-based associations and organizations are not on the initial ‘hit list’ (unlike groups like Facebook, for example) for this regulation, it is relevant to everyone and must be taken seriously. Matrix has been ramping up on these new regulations, and MatrixMaxx is planning a series of upgrades and informational documents to support all of you in complying with these new privacy rules.
- Integration between MatrixMaxx and the Higher Logic Community platform has moved beyond the theoretical to the actual. We now have one of our live clients sending over committee and other access group info to the community, using the Oauth2 SSO protocol. If you have been pondering a purchase of the HL community platform, please contact the Matrix New Biz team for info on integration pricing. In this coming year, we will be exploring integration with their newly acquired email/marketing automation platforms, Informz and RealMagnet.
- Integration between MatrixMaxx and the Sharpspring marketing automation platform is underway. Stay tuned for more info on this later in the spring or summer..
And don’t forget to RSVP for the Overview Session on on Wednesday, April 4, 2018, 11am Eastern time on WebEx. Even if you can’t come, an RSVP is helpful to know that you can’t attend.
RECORDING of April 4, 2018 session: https://youtu.be/hobedmvrnA4