Jenny Qian Author Bio & Tendenci Blog Posts | Tendenci - The Open Source AMS for Non-Profits & Associations

2017-11-15

Tendenci 7.4.0 Release Notes

Release Summary

The team at Tendenci has been working to make improvements to our T7 software. The batch of updates noted in this release are mostly centered on: the Tendenci Nav, Reports, and Newsletters. You can look for these changes on your T7 site.

Notable changes:

New top menu (for both admin and logged in users)
Newsletters format update and clone feature
Reports format update (including invoices, memberships, ..)
Events views – Added sub menu for month view, week view, day view
Separated join approval and renewal approval for membership notices
Wysiwyg editor – Enabled the image title input field in the image dialog. Added class dropdown to the tinymce link dialog box
Updated the directories categories to make it easy manage
Added drag-drop functionality to the testimonials
Added memberships overview report
Added a link on Profile page to view past events.
More minor changes

Fixes:

(Security) Disabled GZipMiddleware to prevent BREACH attacks
(Security) Prevent fraudulent simultaneous reuse of PayPal transactions
Resolved the issue regarding manage.py hangs when caching is enabled. Re-enabled the cache for site settings.
Resolved the subprocess venv issue.
Fixed exports for directories, jobs, resumes, pages.
Fixed “Most Viewed Files” report.
More fixes

Tendenci Nav

The Tendenci Nav has been reorganized to help you find what you’re looking for. We hope you’ll take the time that review your new Tendenci Nav and get familiar with some of these changes. Here’s a screenshot of what it should look like:

*For all of these updates, some sites will display slightly different fonts and design features based on the site theme.

Tendenci Nav Screenshot T7 — Screenshot of the new Tendenci Nav in T7

Reports

Updates in the Reports module includes consolidation of all reports into their own Tendenci Nav item.

This release also includes an update to the Invoices module, making invoices faster to browse visually in a table-based format. To view invoices in the new navigation on your site, click: Reports > 5. Financial > Invoicing.

Newsletters

The Newsletters module works almost exactly the same as before. We have made a few features a little bit easier to use. For example, if you’d like to re-assign the newsletter to a different group, you can now do so even after you’ve generated the Newsletter in the first step. We’ve also made some layout improvements that take advantage of Bootstrap’s framework.

The “clone” feature has also been added to this module. With clone, you can send a test e-mail, then clone it and send it to your target audience rather than copying and pasting the contents from the first send.

Have software updates you’d like to share? Fork us on Github!

Special thanks to @PaulSD for lots of fixes and update!

2017-07-13

Tendenci 7.3.2 Release Notes

Improvements

Video thumbnails are now pulled directly to the page from the YouTube API for YouTube videos when Embed.ly is not available (due to the monthly cap) eliminating the need to upload these separately.
Updated versions for the dependencies django-simple-captcha (to 0.5.5) and Pillow (to 4.2.1).
Added Categories to the Admin Backend.

Fixes

Fixed the Members graph on Dashboard.
Removed the extra space from CAPTCHA image.

2012-11-30

30 Days of Thanks: The Power of Co-operation

Hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving! This year we had a really big turkey (18 lbs) from HEB. While enjoying the roast Turkey, I’m grateful to all of those who made it possible – the poultry farmers, the transport workers, the grocery staffs… It’s the power of co-operation.

When thinking about what I’m thankful for, the list can be long. Besides my family, friends, those who helped me grow, who inspired me, who encouraged me, who made me laugh… one thing always pops into my head – it was an experience started with extremely dangerous situation, but ended with a miracle.

Our story occurred on the Christmas day (December 25) 2000. At dusk, we encountered the ice rain (freezing rain) when entering Little Rock, Arkansas. Our car lost control, sliding and spinning 360 degree on the highway. Fortunately, there was no vehicles around us at the moment. After we moved a little further, we saw ambulances and several cars lying in the ditch. So we decided to leave the highway and take the service road. Pretty soon, the road was all covered with ice. Cold, dark and slick. Our car could fall into to the ditch any time. To make things worse, the road became more and more steeper – there was a slope ahead of us! Since our car was heavily loaded, it refused to go any further after slowly moving a little while. (very unfortunately, I was sick that day and wasn’t able to do anything). Seeing some people were pushing their cars, my husband got out of the car and joined the (self organized) help team. Soon, they came to help us and pushed our car to the top of the slope. Finally, at that night, we were able to reach to the closest hotel (Holiday Inn), safe and sound. This is the time I witnessed how people co-operate and help each other to get out of the difficult situation. Without that, it’s hard to imagine what we would end up with at that night. It was a miracle. I’m so grateful.

Speaking of co-operation, long time ago, I heard this story. A priest asked God what is the difference between heaven and hell. God let him see two rooms. in one room, a group of people gathered around a hot pot of broth but starving and unhappy. Why? Each one held a long-handed spoon. The spoon’s handle was so long that they couldn’t feed themselves. In the second room, another group of people held the same long-handed spoon, gathering around the a hot pot of broth but laughing and singing. They were happy and well fed. God told the priest that the first is hell, while the second one is heaven. In hell, everybody is greedy, all they care about is themselves. In heaven, everybody co-operates with each other. They use the long-handed spoon to feed each other. The moral of the story is that we can choose to make our world either miserable or full of happyness.

“United we stand”. Co-operation and teamwork are essential to the success in the modern society. While we appreciate all the new technologies we’re possessing, we know that, in essence, they are the fruit of co-operation and teamwork.

2012-07-162014-11-02

New Event Registration Update

Tomorrow (Tuesday), the Schipul team will be rolling out a new update for the event registration process that will give you more flexibility over how event registration works for your members.

Please note: This change only effects sites running on Tendenci 5 – the newest version of Tendenci

The major changes are:

1) People can register multiple registrants with different price on the same invoice.

2) Event editors can specify whether or not guests info is required. Under the Registration section of the event add/edit pages, there is a checkbox Require Guests Info, check it if you’d like guests’ info (name, email, etc) to be showing on the roster report.

3) Site administrators (super users) can control how people can register for their events by changing the setting “Anonymous Event Registration” http://yoursitedomain.com/settings/module/events/#id_anonymousregistration. There are 3 options for this setting: open, validated and strict. The default value for existing sites is validated.

a) Open – Allows people registering for events to choose any price for themselves and their guests.

b) Validated – Allows people to see all prices when registering, requires a valid site user email address for each price to check that they qualify. They do not have to be logged in, and they can register guests using the guests’ email addresses.

c) Strict – Allows people to see all prices when registering, requires the user to log-in, a valid site user email address for each price to check that they qualify. They can register guests using the guests’ email addresses.

IMPORTANT! If you are a site administrator (super user), please check and update this setting to best meet your business requirements later this week. We will be following up directly with current clients who we know use memberships and calendar events for help with which setting is right with you.

4) Members can enter their member IDs for the member-only price. If you don’t want the Member ID field to show up on the registration form, you can turn it off by changing the setting “Event Registration Requires member ID for member pricing” http://yoursitedomain.com/settings/module/events/#id_requiresmemberid.

5) Admins (super users) can override with different price for different registrants when registering multiple people.

6) Discount code can be applied (if applicable) to each individual registrant instead of one registrant for each registration.

7) Sortable feature is added to the roster report to allow site administrators (super users) to sort registrants by last name, first name and company.

8) On the Roster report, you can now check people in electronically at events by clicking a check box under the column Attend.

We hope you will enjoy these updates!

For more on event module settings, check out this Tendenci help file.

2011-05-182011-05-19

New Export Update

We’ve just made some updates to the export for users, user group members, memberships and course attempts. As your site grows with more and more users or members, so does the time taken to process the export. As a site administrator, you probably experienced timeout sometimes when trying to do an export, especially if you have a large user or member base.

With the new update, the export runs silently in the background. Once it’s done, you will receive an email in which it will tell you where to download the file. Usually it takes about 5 to 20 minutes. But in case you don’t get the email for some reason, you can click the link on the confirmation page to check if your file is available.

Your export file will expire in one week – we think it should be enough time for you to download. As for the link in the email, it is completely secure – only an admin can access it.

We hope you enjoy the export with this update. Thanks!

Related export help files:

2010-11-192014-11-02

Taste of Korean – Korean Festival at Discovery Green

One day from Discovery Green‘s web site, I found there was a Korean Festival event to be held on Oct.23 at Discovery Green in downtown Houston. Since I had never been to a Korean event, we decided to go. It turned out it was a wonderful event. lots of fun – traditional Korean drums, dance, food, kong fu…

Here are some highlights:

Korean drums play an important part in the traditional Korean performing art. Love those drums.

The traditional dance was played beautifully.

Farmers dance – originally performed as part of farm work.

Kong fu

Hand crafts and food

Overall, the performance was great. Food was decent with reasonable price. We also have learned a lot of Korean culture from there. And the event was free!

Interested in the events at Discovery Green? You should visit their web site at www.discoverygreen.com. They serve a wide variety of events year around.

2010-11-17

Say ‘Noâ€ to the ‘Bugsâ€

Jack Welch in the book ‘Winningâ€ said: ‘Prevention is by no means a perfect science, but it’s your first line of defense against a crisis. Don’t rely on hard experience to build your immunity’ unless you have to.â€

That’s great advice for anyone and even better for a programmer. In programming, a little bug can cause a big problem, even crisis sometimes.

Some of the lessons I’ve learned:

1) Test fully and test everything related, not just the part updated.

2) Avoid pushing out code to sites in the last minute of a Friday afternoon if possible. Sometimes it’s tempting, but it’s better to wait until a Monday. So you’re around if anything happens.

3) Document or comment the code adequately. Well documented code helps to reduce bugs, especially for the code used far less common.

And it helps to have super rock support stars who act quickly!

2010-06-12

Some Safety Tips on International Travel

Summer is here, which means more vacations and travels. If you’re planning an international trip, here are some tips that might help you to make your trip safe and smooth.

If you’re going sight-seeing, it’s better to go with a tour group through a travel agency. This way, the travel agency may tell you a lot of ‘Dos and Don’tsâ€, and will facilitate the visa application process, arrange your trip more tightly, and allow you to visit many more places within a limited time, instead of having to find out your schedules, prices, local languages, cultures, monetary exchanges, etc all by yourself.
Remember the 3-1-1 rule for carry-on luggage. 3-1-1 = 3.4 ounce (100ml) bottle or less liquid or gel, 1 quart-sized zip bag, and 1 bag per passenger placed in screening bin. This will speed up your airport security check.
Keep important documents (passport, visa, etc) and cash in a safe place. Some places don’t use traveler checks or credit card, so make sure you bring enough cash.
Consult your travel agents, tour guides, or your old friends about tricks in bargaining at markets if you’re going to shop abroad. In some countries, a lot of merchandise is negotiable; the deal price versus listed price may surprise you!
Be aware of counterfeit money or fake merchandises. We don’t see it very often here in USA, but it’s a big issue in some other countries.
Never rush to purchase a surprise antique, royal-belonging, or alleged authentic famous artifact. Use your common sense. If something is too good to be true, it probably is.

Travel safe!

2009-04-23

New Option “Require Approval” Added in Membership Type

This morning we rolled out a new update for your Tendenci
memberships module. As a site administrator, you now have the control
of whether a membership application is automatically activated or needs
to be approved.

To change this option, just edit your membership
types. If the "Require Approval" is checked, every application of this
membership type signed up by a user, whether it's free or non-free
membership, will be set to pending and requires approval by an
administrator. On the other hand, if this check box is not checked,
memberships will be approved automatically unless they are not free and
not yet paid.

For more information on how this works, please visit the help file Membership Type "Require Approval" Effect.

2008-11-06

New Report Update on Members with No Member ID

If you are a site administrator and your site is using the membership module, then this update is for you. As a site administrator, you will notice that the membership report – members with no member ID – is easy to populate the member IDs now. Simply click the button next to the member records, and member ID will be populated to its user record immediately. This report is linked from the memberships report console (http://www.yourdomain.com/en/memberships/reports/).