Category: Software

One-time Password

For an extra layer of security, you may now take advantage of our one-time password capability.

One-time password? What’s that? Until now, logging into ShalomCloud was a matter of entering an email address and a password. That is still the default.

However, if you enter the synagogue options panel, you’ll see three choices: To not use OTP, or to require OTP for all, or to have OTP be an individual option.

If you opt to require OTP, everyone logging into ShalomCloud will see a second login screen. At the same time, the system will send that user a numeric code, to the logon email; and, if there is a cell phone in the user’s profile, the system will also send the code via text message.

If you make the second factor an option for your synagogue, then you’ll use a checkbox for each individual who prefers to log on via both email/password, and the six-digit number sent via email and/or cell.

Please follow this video to see how to put this capability into action.

One-time password
Process Flags

Some possible future enhancements:

Offering a preference between cell phone and email, to receive the code. For now, since cell phone is a new field in the user record, we’ll send to the email always, and the cell phone if it’s there.

Offering authentication via a phone app, such as Google Authenticator or Twilio Authy. This would mean scanning a bar code with your phone, and then using the phone app to retrieve the login code. This is considered a more secure way to implement MFA (Multi-Factor Authentication), but more complex.

Setting Up the User Portal

Some of you may be aware of the logged-in area of ShalomCloud, but may be wondering how you’d go about setting up the user portal. Wonder no more.

In case you’re unfamiliar with the user portal, this is a place where logged-in users can:

  • See and maintain their own household information.
  • Review any Yahrzeits connected to any member of that household.
  • Pull a financial statement for any period of time. The statement shows any outstanding balances, and shows any payments in the designated period of time.
  • Issue payments–pledge payments, contributions, school tuition, for example.

Setting up the portal is a three-step process:

  1. First, create an email template, that will be used to send each new user information on how to log in.
  2. Then, select the audience, and click the orange button.
  3. Last, review the results.

Here is a six-minute video that steps you through the end-to-end process.

Setting up the User Portal from Norman Snyder on Vimeo.

Here are some articles showing what logged-in users can do.

Portal user selection
Selecting users for the portal

Yahrzeit Letters Enhanced

Enhanced formatting for Yahrzeit letters–by which we mean fonts, colors, sizing, and the like.

At first, ShalomCloud offered a way to control content for Yahrzeit notifications, presuming you would print and mail them.  After that, we bolstered the communication offering by making available email templates.  The latter included a toolbar to control letter sizes, letter colors, background colors, and even picture placement.

However, you, the user, had to choose one or the other–either the fixed format (but with editable content) of the letters, or the fluid format of emails.

No longer!  You may now format your Yahrzeit notifications using the email templates, yet use the email template to send hard-copy letters.  The best of both worlds.

Here’s a video (4m, 18s) that shows this new idea in action.

First batch of changes in 5779

Several small enhancements are now live:

  1. If you print labels from the member query screen, the first line of the label now shows the individual member name, rather than the family formal name.
  2. On the household/family query screen, you can now query by date resigned, and by reason for resigning.
  3. For the notes/memos–you can now receive an email with your individual tasks that are past due (which appear in red), or due within the next seven days.  Your administrator can determine the timing and frequency of those “push” emails–for example, the system can send the emails at 11 pm, seven days a week; or, if that seems too often, perhaps 5 am Monday through Friday.
  4. Pertaining to Yahrzeits, where some notifications are by Hebrew date, while other notifications are by Gregorian date–a single export button now gives you two tabs.  The first tab matches the top part of the screen; the second tab matches the Gregorian portion of the screen.
  5. When producing a directory, beside each email address is the person’s first name.

In addition, there is one change intended to solve a reported problem that manifests itself as the cryptic message “502 Bad Gateway nginx/1.12.1.”

Audit Trail

ShalomCloud now captures an audit trail of changes and deletions to certain critical portions of data–initially, Yahrzeits, Families, and Individuals.  This video shows how it works:

ShalomCloud Audit Trail from Norman Snyder on Vimeo.

In a nutshell, the audit trail captures when the change occurred, by whom, what changed, a version number, and the content of each changed field both before and after the change.

On deletions, it captures the entire record that was deleted–thus enabling you to re-add a record if it were inadvertently deleted.

Send Text Messages! (SMS)

Asked for, and now delivered–the ability to send text messages from ShalomCloud.

Apparently text messages reach over 95% of their intended audience, whereas email is doing well to reach 30%.  Therefore, for short, time-sensitive announcements (service time changes, reminders about classes and events), this might be your preferred channel for reaching a selection of congregants quickly and effectively.

ShalomCloud Text Messaging from Norman Snyder on Vimeo.

Labels–Starting Where You Wish

Suppose you’ve printed several labels, and now have a few more to print, for a selected audience.  You’d like to start where you left off, rather than inserting a whole new sheet of labels.

For example, suppose you’ve asked the system for a list of Board members:

starting_labels_screen1

Now, you want to print labels for this audience–and the latest sheet of labels used the first row and the first label of the second row–a total of four labels.

Simply change the starting label number to 5:

starting_label_position_2

The result will be a sheet that looks like this:

starting_label_position_3

Next time printing labels, you’d start with 12.

Email Templates Now Available

Now live and in production–email templates.

  • Format and save email templates, using a familiar-looking toolbar.
  • Not only static content–able to substitute values from family records, individuals’ information, and Yahrzeits.
  • Watch this video (6 m, 13 s) to see how to create a template, and to see how to send emails using the template.
  • email_templates

Field selection on Yahrzeit queries

Some time ago, in response to how crowded with fields was the Member query, we made available check boxes by which the user could select which fields should appear on the reports and spreadsheet downloads.

The same selection ability is now available on the Yahrzeit queries.  This makes for a more device-responsive, cleaner appearance.
Yahrzeit_field_selection

 

Next set of Yahrzeit Enhancements

Realizing that this is fairly dry material, we nonetheless wish to mention several small enhancements within the Yahrzeit capability:

  1. ShalomCloud has for some time offered “tags,” alternatively dubbed “attributes,” for Households and individuals.  Yahrzeits can also now be associated with tags….which means you can also query and report by those tags.
  2. If your congregation maintains plaques for Yahrzeits, you might be interested in a new query–displaying all the Yahrzeits with no plaque.
  3. In the same vein, the application has long been able to show and display Yahrzeits and relationships to people in the congregation.  Now we flip to the opposite question–showing all the Yahrzeits for whom no relationship exists.
  4. Next occurrence of Yahrzeit, as of a user-entered date.