Public Portal Notifications Upgrade

The Public Portal Notifications system for our Agenda and Meeting Management Select solution, formerly CivicClerk, has been upgraded to integrate with the existing CivicPlus Notifications service. The upgrade brings additional control to administrators and provides end users with a single location to manage their CivicPlus subscriptions (only available for other solutions that leverage the CivicPlus Notifications service). This article will explain the account migration process and provide answers to some of the commonly asked questions about the Public Portal Notifications upgrade.

 

 

Account Migrations

In order to facilitate this upgrade and to ensure that you continued to have functional notifications directly after the upgrade, we automated the creation of Subscription Lists within CivicPlus Notifications. A Subscription List was created for every Meeting Type that previously existed on your Agenda and Meeting Management Select site. Users with Public Portal accounts that are subscribed to at least one of these Meeting Types have been imported into the appropriate Subscription List(s).

 

Administrators with appropriate access can configure notifications as desired.

 

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Has the "Publish to the Public Portal" process been impacted?

No, this update did not impact the Public Portal content publication process. The management of agenda content, meeting PDF creation, and Public Portal content publication has not changed in any way.

 

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What benefits did this upgrade bring?

With the integration into the CivicPlus Notifications service, you have gained additional control over what your Public Portal notifications look like and what information you can see about sent messages. This includes the ability to modify the header and footer for Subscription Lists, to update your Sender Name and Reply-To email address, and to view sent messages and analytics.

 

This upgrade also provides the ability to import subscribers into a list.

 

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Did this change impact other notifications sent through the system?

All notifications now utilize the CivicPlus Notifications system for email delivery, but the new functionality described above is only available for Public Portal notifications. Other notification types, such as Admin or Board Portal notifications, do not leverage Subscription Lists and therefore cannot access these additional tools at this time.

 

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Did Public Portal users receive any communication about this upgrade? Did Public Portal users see any change?

No, we did not send any direct communication to Public Portal users. We have automatically imported users into Subscription Lists that match the notification settings they had configured prior to the upgrade to make this upgrade as seamless as possible for those users.

 

The format of the emails received by subscribers has changed slightly, though the body content of your template did not change.

 

The formatting changes are composed of the following: the body of the message is wrapped in a centered box, the subject of the email is visible at the top of the message body within the box, the message now contains a link to view the message in the user’s web browser, and the message now contains a link to quickly unsubscribe.

The body content of your message has not changed. The body content of your emails is determined by your Email Templates within Select, and this upgrade did not introduce any changes to that content.

 

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Do I need to take any immediate action before I publish new content to the Public Portal?

No immediate action is required before new content is published to the Public Portal. Your pre-existing configurations were migrated over to the new system at the time of release, so notifications continue to work without any additional action needed on your part.

 

You can take advantage of new features, such as subscription list header and footer modification, at any time.

 

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Are additional permissions needed to take advantage of the new features?

While the majority of settings can be configured through the Agenda and Meeting Management Select interface, there are some features that are managed directly inside the CivicPlus Notifications platform. In order to access these settings you must either be an owner of your CivicPlus Organization or someone with appropriate permissions must make you a member of a Group that can access Notifications.

 

The following new features require access to the CivicPlus Notifications platform to manage:

• Create/modify/delete subscription lists
• Modify the header/footer data for subscription lists
• Import subscribers
• View sent messages and analytics

The following new features require access to Agenda and Meeting Management Select Settings to manage:

• Associate/disassociate a subscription list to a Meeting Type

All other existing features of email notifications continue to be managed through the Select Settings.

 

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How do I get access to CivicPlus Notifications to manage related settings?

To access CivicPlus Notifications you must either be an owner of your CivicPlus Organization or someone with appropriate permissions must make you a member of a Group that can access Notifications.

 

If you do not know who your CivicPlus Organization owner is please reach out to Support for assistance.

 

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I have other questions. What can I do?

If you have additional questions you would like answered, please reach out to Support.

 

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Resources

• Add Group Members
• CivicPlus Organizations Overview
• Import Subscribers
• Modify Subscription List Header and Footer
• View Sent Messages & Analytics
• Publish Files to the Public Portal
• Manage Meeting Type Subscription Lists

 

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