While the vast majority of modules, features, and workflows have been moved to the browser version of MC Trade - not to mention the dozens of NEW features we've added! - there are some legacy features that are still operational in the desktop that will not be brought over to the browser version. These items are generally underused, get poor feedback, or otherwise do not contribute to the overall user experience in MC Trade. The list below provides detailed reasons for deprecating each item, as well as alternative options for those features.
Please note that if there is a feature you use in the desktop that you do not see on this list, it may already be in the browser. Check out this list.
Web Input Forms
- Why: the Web Input form technology is out of date and difficult to maintain in terms of compliance and improvements. It is based on legacy HTML web controls that cannot be updated by users unless they know how to write HTML and other coding language. The payment processing cannot be maintained moving forward for PCI Compliance. Finally, the data submitted in these forms cannot be dynamically populated. There is no way for them to flow automatically into profiles other than a few basic contact/payment values, resulting in extremely cumbersome data entry processes.
- Alternative solution: Our browser Form Builder that replaces Web Input was released in 2019. Since then we have expanded the many features and configuration options available, and also added options for Donation, Renewal, and other form types. The data is accessible and flows seamlessly into new or existing profiles, or allows for easy merging to existing profiles, saving hours of staff time. These forms are completely self-service, and do not require coding or waiting on Support to make updates for you.
Surveys
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Why: The survey tool has always been very limited in scope on the options for collecting data, and analytics on the results of the surveys do not meet most customers needs. Reproducing this functionality in the browser would not serve the needs most surveys require.
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Alternative solution: For ad-hoc surveys in which the data does not tie back to membership profile data for long-term tracking, use a third-party tool such as Survey Monkey, Google Forms, etc. The Weebly content management system has a simple survey tool as well, that can be embedded in any of your static content web pages and accessed through the CMS. Finally, for surveys that you want to tie back to database fields like Affiliation Codes or Custom Fields, General Form types in the Form Builder are a good option.
Business Connect
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Why: usage of this tool drastically decreased over the past 10 years and we have very few customers using this legacy tool, which has largely become ineffective/obsolete for direct connection given new options.
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Alternative solution: for basic member referral connections, we recommend enabling the Contact form in the online directory so that users can directly connect with your members, without creating a “middle man” situation. For more private member-to-member connections and engagement, a more robust solution like CommUnity is the best option.
Prospect Protection
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Why: the ability to truly lock down profiles and sales opportunities by user has never been able to be fully enforced in the desktop, and the browser technology in particular makes it difficult to ensure that users have the flexibility needed to manage their own prospects while restricting the ability to access others.
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Alternative solution: clear tracking and reporting on Sales Opportunity data and audit reports will ensure that all prospects and sales opportunities are being managed by the correct employees.
Informz Integration Manual Sync
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Why: The Informz classic platform is dated and difficult to properly maintain as a native integration. We are seeing many of our customers move away from this platform, and instead intend to continue investing further in our MailChimp integration and potentially look at other more common options such as Constant Contact, who has a more modern API that we can integrate with.
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Alternative solution: The automated sync is powered through our API, and not the desktop interface, so that will continue to trigger if you have it configured to automatically sync. For manual syncs, the Query Tool can be used to build and save mailing lists based on a range of data sets, and these searches can also be saved as Web Content records and emailed on a regular basis to staff for importing into Informz. Additionally, the Profile Selector bulk actions tool can be used to create a Contact Record for emails sent out of Informz when necessary.
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Informz Classic Upload instructions:
Subscriber Upload
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Overdue Invoice Notifications in Portal
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Why: We anticipate revamping this feature to be configurable outside of the invoice-specific level and apply across all of the new front-end pages including the new portal, event registration, and forms at a future date.
Job Bank
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Why: the Web Input Form technology that the legacy Job Bank relies on is out of date and difficult to maintain in terms of compliance and improvements. It is not able to be fully integrated with true SSO of the new portal pages, and the management of incoming responses is manual and cumbersome.
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Alternative solution: Personify’s Job Board is a lightweight, simple solution that was designed with workflows to encourage job postings based on industry best practices. The revenue share model ensures a low overhead cost and the SSO integration allows you to enable member pricing.
Revenue Recognition Dynamic Chart
- Why: over the years we've seen a huge array of ways that our users choose to defer and then recognize their revenue, with variation in terms of the timing, accrual vs payment based recognition, date to recognize in the period, as well as adjustment handling. The Revenue Recognition search screen and dynamic chart in the desktop is used by very few customers, and instead most have opted for a custom report (or our standard summary report) to handle revenue recognition reporting. Through customer feedback we've determined that there are many improvements and additions we could make to the recognition features in MC Trade, and we're looking at adding that to our roadmap for later next year.
- Alternative solution: we've added a new report, Deferred Revenue Recognition with Adjustments, to our list of standard reports. This is an updated report that takes into consideration the most common customization requests that we receive, and we've linked from our Standard Reports menu as well as the Dashboard Financial Reports. If further customization is needed, you can contact our Support team for a quote on a custom version of the report that serves your organization's specific accounting needs.
VoterVoice PUSH Profiles to VoterVoice
- Why: maintaining a two-way integration with a third party system is a high-risk form of integrating, requiring a lot of resources to maintain compatibility and eliminate errors from the many different formats/types of data stored by our customers. We have very low adoption on the VoterVoice integration overall, but particularly with the portion that pushes data from MC Trade into VoterVoice. We are unable to maintain this portion of the integration with quality moving forward, and are therefore ending support for that function. The VoterVoice data sync that pulls congressional/district data in to MC Trade IS still supported.
- Alternative solution: VoterVoice supports uploads from a CSV file which can easily be pulled either from the Profile Selector or a saved Query Tool export in MC Trade, which is a common way that VoterVoice users build their contact lists: https://votervoice.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/360005253874-Creating-Updating-Your-Contact-List.
Miscellaneous Database Fields:
Why: we have evaluated the usage on some of the fields in profiles and throughout the system, and found many to be used in an alternate way that was not intended, or more commonly not used at all. Often they cause confusion and clutter on a profile that leads to a bad user experience.
Alternative solution: these can be created as Custom Fields or Affiliation Codes where applicable, or custom reporting options may be available depending on use of the field values.
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Profile URLs
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Billing Service Period Overrides
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SSN
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Credit Rating
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Salutations
- Next Contact Date
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Line Item Commission Amount Fields
- Project Search and Summary screen (Tasks and Project Templates are supported in the browser)
- Listing Expires/Expires date fields
- Contact record Hours field
Processes:
Why: some of the desktop workflows will be come obsolete with the elimination of the fields and features listed above, or are not used by the majority of our customers. These processes will no longer be supported in the browser.
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Send Standard Mail
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Web Content Approval
- Add Contact records within a Sales Opportunity
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Manual Credit Card Refund Processing
- Update Invoice Due Dates in bulk
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Update billing revenue items/anchor months in bulk
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Fax Integration
- Delete creation/posting batches in bulk
- Import a Query
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Encryption/Encoding Tools
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Download Core Data