A Glimpse of the Club’s New Membership System

by Mike Garrett

The Club is making a major investment in replacing its current membership system software with a new system, known as NextMAS. This is essential for several reasons, a key one being to provide a new system that is supportable into the future; the current system is dependent on a single person.

NextMAS has progressed a long way, but it is still too early to predict when it will be ready to “go-live”.

With NextMAS, all members who have supplied an email address and are 18 or over will be “member users”, with their own NextMAS user account. They will be able to log in to NextMAS and view and edit all their own personal data. Within each household there will be one member user who is the “Primary Membership Administrator” (PMA) with the ability to view and edit all data for the household, to renew members within the household, and add more persons to the household. The PMA can optionally designate one other user within the household as “Secondary Membership Administrator” (SMA). The SMA has the same powers as the PMA – except cannot assign a new PMA or SMA. Typically the SMA would be a spouse/partner.

The username for each member user account will be the email address, which must be unique. Prior to go-live every potential member user will receive an email inviting them to choose a password. Any members created subsequently will receivea similar invitation. The user account will give access to thewebsite members’ area and to the web shop.

All data as in the current system will be carried across toNextMAS. When renewing, the NextMAS application form willautomatically be pre-populated with member data (something that the current system cannot do).

The renewal/joining process cannot be fully automatic. The AAC(UK) Office still has to print the membership card(s) and post them to the member(s). However as soon as the Office has completed this, NextMAS will email a confirmation, and this will include a “digital membership card” which can be used temporarily until the physical membership card arrives by post.

NextMAS has more sophisticated management of addresses. Some members have a residential address which is different from the address (eg a PO Box) as used by postal authorities. NextMAS will handle this. The residential address is the address to which any repatriation will take place. Will take place. Members probably don’t want to be repatriated to a PO Box. Some households include a person (eg a son who is a student) who actually has a separate residential address. NextMAS will handle this. This will also accommodate “households” that are school groups or similar. However some membership categories require residency at a common address in order for discounts to apply, and this will be enforced. The Newsletter will be sent to only one address per household.

We would expect most members to interact with NextMAS via its web interface. Nevertheless it will still be possible to apply for membership using the traditional paper application form.

Mike Garrett mastering the IT

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