INTRODUCTION... 3 JNEWS... 5 LISTS... 6 SUBSCRIBERS NEWSLETTERS SMART-NEWSLETTERS / AUTO-RESPONDERS MEDIA MANAGER...

Transcription

1 USER GUIDE

2 Table of Contents INTRODUCTION... 3 JNEWS... 5 LISTS... 6 SUBSCRIBERS NEWSLETTERS SMART-NEWSLETTERS / AUTO-RESPONDERS MEDIA MANAGER STATISTICS QUEUE TEMPLATES CONFIGURATION HELP / EDUCATION CENTER / LIVE SUPPORT ABOUT

3 Introduction The purpose of this user guide is to navigate Proteon users on how to effectively apply jnews to their chapter objectives. Our Mission To create world class membership portals for our non-profit and association based customers. Our Vision People have the solutions within themselves and need a tool (technology) and a way (process) to achieve those solutions in a practical, affordable, easy and professional way. Our History Our founder is a 23+ year veteran of the IT industry. He is also a family man who faced exceptional challenges when his two sons were diagnosed with autism. For a long time Mike Holstein kept his two worlds apart, working in the IT industry as a job to provide the necessary care for his family. This was simply not enough. Fed up with the conflicting disinformation regarding the causes and the treatments of autism, Mike finally used his extensive experience and knowledge to directly help both his and other families by developing websites for charitable causes like the Autism Society of Ohio, the Rich Center for Autism at Youngstown State University, the Arc of Ohio and the Arc of Hamilton County. With this, Mike saw a great thing. He saw a way that people could come together, using a common portal, to share information, share successes and disappointments, to come together as an online community for the betterment of the organization and those served by the organization. Mike realized he could not only achieve his goals of healing his sons, but he also could help others achieve their goals by offering similar solutions to meet the needs of professional organizations. To help keep the costs for the charitable sites low, Mike used these 'lessons learned' to provide the same online community model to other professional organizations to meet their member s needs. He understood that this wasn't going to be the typical site development /site hosting company. He believes that a true solutions provider should do more that provide a solution then walk away. A true solutions provider is a partner from beginning to end. Our work doesn't end when we develop and cut over a client site, it really is only the beginning of a long-term commitment. It is a true partnership. With this non-traditional model, Proteon Software has evolved into a vibrant growing organization, providing world-class custom portal solutions for online communities of any size and any mission. As a certified Project Manager and instructor Mike and Proteon Software partnered with multiple chapters of the Project Management institute to design and develop membership-driven online solutions. These early chapters have become some of our Flagship Partners featured on this site. The vision has succeeded. Proteon Software is the leading Open Source custom portal solutions provider for non-profits and member associations. With our growth we have not strayed from our core value of helping charities by providing reduced cost solutions. 3

4 Our success with non-profit professional clients allows Proteon to continue to fund charitable portals. If a client has a particular charitable organization, we can offer that organization a reduced-cost web portal. In some cases the charitable portal can be developed and delivered totally free. This vision does work. Mike's two son's are proof-positive that this vision works. First, through the online community that Mike helped build, he was able to develop a program which has given his family and his sons the necessary tools to deal with and overcome their autism. Then taking it a step further by building a community of like-minded people's experiences and a shared vision. 4

5 jnews jnews is a Joomla component that allows you to send blasts to your communities. jnews sends s blasts to the lists of recipients in your selected lists. NOTE: When your site is set up you will have a list of members already created by Proteon. This list is updated nightly from the PMI.org upload. 5

6 Lists Lists are a group of subscribers with addresses, you want to . Example: Member List Director List Sponsor List Study groups Zip Code/Postal Code groups List subscribers can include members and non-members. Each chapter will already have a list of their membership. It will be named DEP List or Chapter Members,, depending on when you started with Proteon. Only your Chapter Member list is refreshed nightly from PMI.org. All other lists require manual editing. Let s create a new list. 1. Select COMPONENTS>jNEWS>LISTS 2. Select NEW for our new list. 6

7 3. Along the top there are four tabs to input information and review. 4. The DESCRIPTION: a. Published. Leave as default. b. Visible In frontend.. This allows you to see it from the list of lists. Leave as default. c. Description: i. List Name.. This is the name of your list. If it s a study group be sure to include the year as there will be many study groups throughout the years. Create a naming convention and follow it. ii. List description.. Here you will provide a description/purpose for the list. 7

8 iii. List Template.. Here you will choose from the list of newsletter templates to apply when sending to this specific group. d. Sender: i. Sender name. Enter who the will be sent by. ii. Sender . Enter sender . iii. Reply-to address. Enter the address you would like recipients to reply to if they have any questions. iv. Creator of the list. Leave as default. 5. SUBSCRIPTION: jnews 8 a. Auto Subscribe Users? Remember this option is available only ONCE at the creation of the list. Your options are: i. Sync No Users. This option won t automatically add from the joomla data base to the list. Leave as default. ii. New Users. If you choose this option you are asking the system to add all new users to the list from the nightly upload. iii. All Users. This would be if you needed to create a list of all the members in the system at that time. The new list would not get updated nightly. A list of all your members has already been created for you. You won t need this option. b. Unsubscribe Settings: i. Send unsubscribe message. Leave as default YES. ii. Unsubscribe . Format an to be sent to subscribers when they unsubscribe from the list.

9 6. NOTIFICATION: a. Subscription Settings: i. Send subscription notifications. This will send an to the list owner when new subscribers join the list. ii. Subscribe notify message. Fill out accordingly if required. b. Unsubscribe Settings: i. Send unsubscribe notification. This will send an to the list owner when an existing subscriber leaves the list. ii. Unsubscribe notification message. Fill out accordingly if required. 9

10 7. FRONT-END MANAGEMENT: a. List Subscription Access. This is where you will identify how people are getting added to a list. If you will be adding members via CSV upload or manually you will only select Administrator and Super Users in this section. b. Mailing Add/Edit Access. Leave as default. 8. Once complete select SAVE. This will redirect you to the list of lists along with the one we just created. 9. At this point we have set up our list name and parameters but we have no names/members in our list. Once you are in your list you can click on NEW to add each subscriber individually or import a CSV sheet that captures all the subscribers to this specific list. The next section will speak to how this is done. 10

11 Subscribers Subscribers are the people who subscribe to the list with an address. If you selected a member in community builder you would see all the lists they subscribe to. What we are going to do is upload a CSV file to complete our list. 1. Go to the list you just created and click on SUBSCRIBERS(0): 2. This redirects you to the SUBSCRIBER section and gives you the IMPORT icon up top. Select IMPORT 3. Here you will select which list the upload will import into and select the CSV file to be imported: 4. Your excel file must be saved as a CSV. The file requires two columns, without headings. a. Column 1 Full name (First Last) b. Column 2 address 11

12 5. Select IMPORT 6. A message located above the subscribers will be shown if done successfully: 7. If you don t get the message above and the system logs you out to sign back in again, your file has not been saved as a CSV. Please check your file and try again. If all else fails place a ticket with the Proteon Helpdesk. 12

13 Newsletters By now you have created your article and want to send information out to your lists. Let s get started. 1. Select COMPONENTS>JNEWS>NEWSLETTER: a. Select NEW for a new newsletter. b. Or highlight an existing newsletter to use as a template for your newsletter. Then select COPY. 13

14 2. SUBJECT. The newsletter will not save without a title. The title is the subject line so be careful what you place in this section. Create a naming convention and follow it. 3. SEND DATE. (2 options) a. Click on the calendar icon. You will notice the calendar loads oddly. At the bottom of the square select the minutes, then hour, then date. This selection has to occur in that order or the date doesn t register. b. Leave blank if you intend on sending the newsletter right away. c. TIP: For reminder s simply copy the first newsletter then change the subject and send date to reflect the 1 st /2 nd reminder. 4. PUBLISHED. Once the newsletter sends it will update to yes automatically. Leave as default. 5. VISIBLE IN FRONTEND. This allows you to see it from the list of newsletters. Leave as default. 6. HTML MAILING? Leave as default. 7. TAGS. Click on tags to insert an existing article otherwise key in the information you need to share: 14

15 TAGS>CONTENT. Select CONTENT then select the ARTICLE to highlight it. Confirm the Content ID number matching the article ID you selected. Here you can choose between the full article, intro only and the title only. This will depend on the volume of content for your specific blast. The best way to know what works for you is to start creating newsletters and playing around with the settings. i. TIP. Insert {tag:unsubscribe} at the end of every . This allows subscribers to be removed from the list at any time. Insert Content when complete. i. Sometimes the system will place the link outside of a predesigned template. If this happens simply relocate the link and cut and paste into the desired position. 15

16 8. Along the right side are three tabs: a. The LISTS tab is where you will select the audience for your newsletter. If you are making any changes to the default settings you will need to click either APPLY (save and stay on page) or SAVE (save and leave page) for the changes to take place before moving to the next tab. b. The SENDER tab is where you will define: i. Insert your CHAPTER NAME. ii. address the bulletin is coming from. iii. REPLY TO address for replies. iv. If you are making any changes to the default settings you will need to click either APPLY (save and stay on page) or SAVE (save and leave page) for the changes to take place before moving to the next tab. 16

17 c. The ATTACHMENTS tab is where you would upload an attachment that is required to assist the bulletin. 9. Click PREVIEW and take a few seconds to see how the will look once sent to members/non members. Make sure it s exactly what you need. 10. Before sending it out to the masses SEND A TEST to yourself just as a final confirmation that the information is displayed the way you intended. Make sure your NAME and is filled in correctly and click on the SEND TEST icon. a. TIP. Send test s to multiple accounts (Gmail, outlook, yahoo, etc) to see how each might get distorted. 11. You should see a blue message: 12. If you are ready to send the right away Click SEND, in the send column. A pop up window will load and provide you with a recap of the lists you are sending to. 13. Click on SEND again only if the volume is under 400 recipients. a. TIP. Leave this window open until ALL the s have sent. If you close before this task is 100% complete the remaining list will go into the queue. (Refer to queue section) 14. If your list size is larger than 400 recipients schedule your blast. This allows the Proteon send mail server to send the s at a pace and across multiple IP addresses in a way that won t get flagged as spam. 15. If in step 3 you scheduled your blast then you good to go. If you didn t simply edit your newsletter and follow the directions given in step When you come back to the list of newsletters notice the yellow light bulb to the left of your newsletter. This indicates a scheduled newsletter has been set. 17

18 Smart-Newsletters / Auto-responders Smart-Newsletters and Auto responders are not supported by Proteon. Media Manager The media manager allows you to organize and store photos for newsletters and articles. 18

19 Statistics This offers statistics management on the newsletters sent out (number sent, opened newsletters, HTML or text only). 1. Predefined Date. Here you can filter your search. 2. Report type. Since the Listing report type is more user friendly please select listing and click on REFRESH. 3. Mailing Reports. This is a list of newsletters that have been sent out within the Predefined Dates you selected. a. Mailing Subject.. This is your subject line. b. Sent in HTML.. This is how many s were sent in html format. c. Sent in Text.. This is how many s were sent in text format. d. Views (from html mails). This represents how many s have been en viewed. e. Mail Pending.. This represents how many s have not been sent and are pending. f. Total Sent.. This represents how many s went out. 4. You can click on the subject to get more information around the that was sent. Select the details tab to view the specific addresses. 19

20 a. HTML read. The lists of all who have read the . b. HTML Unread. The list of all who have not read the . 20

21 Queue If you re looking at this section I can assume that you sent an unscheduled newsletter and during transmission the sending process was interrupted. Follow the directions below to send the newsletter to the remaining recipients. 1. Select COMPONENTS>JNEWS>QUEUE: 2. Click on PROCESS QUEUE to continue sending an interrupted OR click on EMPTY QUEUE to cancel sending the . Leave this window open until all the s have sent. 21

22 Templates Templates are the area where you will pre-develop page layouts to make new newsletters with a similar design. Let s say you have study groups, luncheons, dinners, PD days, all of these can have their own newsletter template if you so desire. If you have little time or man power you can place a Helpdesk ticket with Proteon and have them create your template. Let s create a template. 1. Navigate to COMPONENTS>jNEWS>TEMPLATES. 2. Notice you have a few templates to work with and modify. Choose one of the existing templates to modify by clicking on the title. 3. You can change the Name, Alias, Thumbnail, Description and design layout. Be sure to click SAVE prior to exiting the area or your changes won t stay. 22

23 4. How do you apply a template? Open up a newsletter to be sent to your community. Once you are in the edit mode click on the template icon up top. 5. A pop up window will come up with your template options. Choose the template you need. 6. Choosing your template can only occur at the beginning of your newsletter creation. Once you save or exit the newsletter editing area the template option disappears. 23

24 Configuration Configuration holds all your site settings with jnews. Please do not change anything unless you ve been directed to do so by Proteon. If you have any questions please submit a Helpdesk ticket. Help / Education Center / Live Support These services are replaced with the Proteon Helpdesk. Please contact Proteon for all assistance. About This is summarized information about the jnews component for your website. 24