NOTE: Due to changes in industry practices, Discussion lists that are mentioned in this article are no longer available in MatrixMaxx.
Our 21.4 MatrixMaxx release rolled out the evening of Tuesday, December 14, 2021. Please take a few minutes to review these patch notes, as all notable changes are documented here.
You can find the recording of the December 16th Overview Session here.
MatrixMaxx 21.4 Generic Enhancements
These enhancements are now in the generic product. If you have the module that these are attached to, you’ve now got these! (reminder: association-specific customizations may override generic functionality)
WWW Side Refresh! (Overview Video Timestamp 3:15)
The MatrixMaxx-generated WWW pages were a breakthrough concept and have been extremely convenient for our users. Now it’s time to make our front-end user functionality even better. This release kicks off a series of enhancements to improve our WWW offerings, starting with design improvements on the current pages, and expanding to new WWW page offerings and expanded API capabilities (allowing 3rd party CMS platforms to more easily pull data and create custom rosters, directories, calendars, and meeting info pages) (internal reference P1637 and P8493)
- WWW Individual View Profile: The top of the View has been redesigned to give it a fresher, more modern appearance that better incorporates the image/photo, which at this point most clients have activated on WWW (internal reference P8493&M82768 )
- Tip/Reminder! You as staff control whether or not the individual may view and edit their profile image on your WWW profile pages. Even 5 years back, associations were more hesitant to offer this, for a variety of reasons. But today the idea of being able to edit your profile photo has become ubiquitous. Your MatrixMaxx siteadmin(s) may check these settings on the Maxx Intranet at Admin -> Edit Custom Settings -> WWW Personal Profile
As more clients implement PDF invoices and Bulk emailing to support their renewals process, it has become apparent that sometimes there is not time for staff to contact all of the Member Contacts with missing emails.
- There is now a new criteria available on the Membership Application searches: ‘Limit to applications without a valid email‘ (internal reference P9159&M83239)
- Select “Yes” to only show results for which the system could NOT find an email.
- This criteria is useful for associations who pregenerate their renewals and then want to email them out. Instead of needing to take the time to correct any members with missing emails, they can use this field as a criteria to then ‘Print Invoices’ and paper mail to these members.
- Note: This field should always be used in conjunction with other criteria, for example year, payment status, etc. Used by itself, the search will potentially time out due to high numbers and processing time.
Other Enhancements and Changes (Overview Video Timestamp 15:35)
WWW Password Reset/Recovery: Based on feedback from multiple clients, we have changed the titles of this series of pages from ‘Forgot Password’ to ‘Get Password’ so that it is more appropriate for a wider variety of scenarios (Internal Reference 127031)
- Tip/Reminder! You as staff control much of the help text on the login/password pages. Your MatrixMaxx siteadmin(s) may check these settings on the Maxx Intranet at Admin -> Edit Custom Settings -> General/Login
Activity stamps for former staff will now include the CompanyID in addition to the Company Name, for reference. For example: ‘Katie Holmes left Matrix Group International, Inc. (19D0000B28A)’ Please note! this is for activity stamps moving forward! (Internal Reference 127513)
Automatic links to ‘My Account’ were added a few releases ago to the generic Balance Due emails, if the association had ‘My Account’ enabled on the WWW Personal Profile settings (Admin -> Custom Settings). Now we have extended this functionality to the generic Confirmation Emails (Internal Reference P9161&M83088)
New Communication Type added to support our changing ways of communication: Video Conference (Internal Reference 127595)
Communications Search upgraded to allow searching by membership type and status, for both company and individual memberships (Internal Reference P9155)
Fundraising ‘Donor List‘ report enhanced with an option to sort by Name with or without giving level (Internal Reference 127523)
and last but not least …
We’ve added new, beautiful Winter Images to the MatrixMaxx Intranet Login page and we’ve Updated the Animal Cams available on the MyMatrixMaxx Dashboard widget! Note that you may need to refresh or re-select widgets for them to update their stream source. (Internal Reference MAXX-3311)
API and Integrations
API version 21.4 introduced additional elements to the newer High Level (HL) API. (Overview Video Timestamp 20:00)
- [Beta] Token-based API access as an alternative to server IP restricting. Existing IP Whitelist access can potentially break in certain circumstances because we modified the code to also work with token-based access
- High Level calls have all been modified to support more flexible arguments; every high level endpoint has been touched.
- High Level Events/Meeting call is more robust. Existing Low Level calls should not be impacted.
- High Level user profile (individual) call: significant change to how membership is represented in the call response. We believe we have notified all 3rd parties utilizing membership data in this call, but we don’t necessarily know which or how all 3rd parties are using our calls.
- Refactored some existing Low Level calls to compliment newer HL calls. Existing Low Level calls will not generally be impacted, but there could be subtle differences in non-commonly-used calls. e.g., Search Criteria in the low level API can break because we have done some refactoring so we can use it in the high level API
Upgraded Integration with CommPartners Elevate LMS (Overview Video Timestamp 27.15)
- We have multiple clients using CommPartners Elevate as their LMS
- Until now, our integrations have been basic SSO, and CommPartners has been handling the transactions as needed
- Now we have built an advanced integration where the transaction can occur in MatrixMaxx (e.g., As a Commerce Store order) and then this transaction pushes over purchase info for the user to Elevate LMS (Internal Reference P9159&M83239)
- We have also done more to make this integration faster/easier to implement, as many of our clients are looking to CommPartners as their LMS provider
Available Paid Add-ons/Upgrades
These exciting features require a little bit of implementation/configuration for the clients who want to utilize them.
Email routing through Amazon AWS SES to improve Deliverability! (Overview Video Timestamp 30:35)
- Over the past year, we’ve been experimenting with routing MatrixMaxx’s emails (both transactional confirmations/notification emails and also list emails from MailingMaxx) thru Amazon’s AWS SES (Simple Email Service), and these beta clients have across the board reported improved email delivery rates!
- In this release, we have coded a new Delivery Report which uses AWS SES logs to replicate the info that staff have come to rely on when sending list messages, so with this piece in place we are ready to offer this upgrade to more clients
- Important considerations that will impact timing and scope of this upgrade:
- whether or not your MatrixMaxx server has been upgraded to a newer tech stack, yet (if not, and you want AWS SES, we’ll move you higher on the list!)
- Your current bounce rate. If you are averaging higher than a 10% bounce rate – as some of you unfortunately are – you will not be able to route thru AWS SES until your association has been able to clean up your emails. You may have resources internally to undertake this, or you may contact us for assistance!
- whether or not your association is sending any list emails thru MailingMaxx (most of you are, but some of your are not), and in particular are you using Discussion lists where Members of the List can Post?
- Please Contact Matrix to learn more and get pricing!
COMING SOON! Multifactor Authorization (MFA) for staff Intranet Logins
- You are probably already using 2-Factor Auth (2FA) or multi-factor Auth (MFA) on other systems, and in 2022 we’ll be bringing this to the Intranet-staff side of Maxx as an available feature! Stay tuned!