Running your association

What each part of the admin does, in the order a committee usually meets it. Every admin screen has a ? link in its header that opens the matching section here.

Where this guide says year group, your site uses the word you chose on Settings > Wording (class, cohort, batch...).

People > Members is the register.

• New member adds someone by hand: the sign-in email must be unused, the member number is the next one, and "Send an invitation now" invites them at once. Nobody knows the password until the member chooses one.
• Filters - year group range, country, city, level, engagement band, "band changed within", year-group representative, mentor, volunteer, in the directory, active, has a photo, never signed in, invited but not signed in. Filtered lists have their own address, so a link from the dashboard opens the list already filtered.
• Change selected (bulk) - set level, set country, set or clear the year-group representative, give a volunteer role, deactivate (a reason is required) or reactivate. Members' own choices - directory listing, privacy, email preferences, bio, photo - can never be changed in bulk. Each bulk change writes one line in the audit log.
• Export > This list (CSV) exports what the search and filters show.
• A member's record has these tabs: Details, Email history (every campaign sent to them, opened, clicked), History (who changed which field, from what to what, and whether it came from the admin, the member, an import or the system), Notes (staff notes, which the member sees in their own data export), Timeline, and Invoices while membership dues are on. Staff whose access to Members is view open a read-only record.

Importing members, gifts and event history

• People > Members > Import reads a CSV from a spreadsheet register, a Google Forms export or an AlmaShines member file (its columns as AlmaShines' help pages name them). Common column names are recognised by themselves (First name + Surname, Class year, Year of passing, Company, Mobile No., ...); a Google Forms Timestamp column is ignored. A dry run shows what would happen and the first problem rows; the full problem list downloads as a CSV. At the end, Invite all from this import.
• Money > Gifts > Import gifts - amounts in each row's own currency, duplicates skipped (by reference, or donor + date + amount), members matched by number or email, appeals by title (optionally created, closed). Never emails anyone.
• Publishing > Events > Import past events - events matched by title and day; each attendee gets a "yes" RSVP and, with tickets on, a checked-in ticket.

Uploaded files are deleted after the run.

Invitations

Members you added or imported have an account but no password. Send invitations (bulk action, or "Invite who never signed in" at the top of the list) emails each of them a personal link that works for 30 days (Settings > Invitations) and opens the "choose your password" form. Reminders go on the days you set (7 and 21 by default), at most two. Sending stops by itself once they sign in, set a password or opt out. Anonymised or undeliverable addresses are skipped and counted. Invitations go out a few a minute, within your sending limits (Settings > Email).

Registrations and vouching

People who register on the site wait under People > Registrations until a volunteer approves them. Members can vouch for people who claim a year group within three years of their own (Vouch in the member area); two vouches make approval faster.

Analytics

People > Analytics - members (growth, year groups, countries, levels), engagement bands and their trend, events (replies, attendance at ticketed events), email (open and click rates of tracked campaigns), giving (per currency, only for people allowed to see money), mentoring and volunteering. Choose 30 days, 90 days, 12 months, the financial year or your own dates, and narrow by year group, country or level. Every chart has "Show the numbers", and every table downloads as a CSV of totals - never names.

Engagement and insights

Each night every member gets a 0-100 score from their profile, sign-ins, community posts, events and contributions; the bands are New, Cold, Warm, Active and Champion. Settings > Engagement & insights sets the weights (they must add up to 100) and where the bands start; Recompute now applies them at once.

The dashboard's Needs attention card adds Insights: members who went quiet this quarter, year groups that have barely joined (when you have school records), donors who gave last financial year but not this one, and events a week away with few replies. Each row opens the matching filtered list, and most have Email these members, which starts a campaign with exactly that audience.

Mentoring

Mentors add a booking link and a note about when they are free. On accepting a request both sides tick which contact details they share. Check-in emails go on the days set on Settings > Member profiles (14 and 42 by default) with a one-click "still going" link; when mentoring ends both sides can rate it (1-5, seen only by the committee). Community > Mentoring report shows requests month by month, time to first answer, completion and ratings.

Duplicate records

People > Possible duplicates lists member records that look like the same person: the same email address (on the account or on the registration it came from, "+label" ignored), the same phone number written any way, a similar name in the same year group, or the same name a year apart - strongest first. They are found every night (Settings > Duplicate records sets how alike names must be); Scan now runs it at once, for example after an import. Nothing is merged without someone deciding.

• Review shows the two records side by side, which one to keep (its sign-in, password and access stay), which value to keep where they differ, and what will move: everything that points at the other record - events, tickets, gifts, payments, groups, messages, forum posts, notes, history - is found in the database itself, so data added by any feature moves too. Where the kept record already has the same thing (an RSVP to the same event, the same group) the two are combined.
• Not the same person keeps the pair out of the list for good.
• Merge selected merges several pairs with the default choices. A pair with a staff account is never merged this way; a record with staff access is merged only by a full administrator, the staff account is always the one kept, and two staff accounts need an explicit confirmation.
• Every merge runs as one change (all or nothing), is written in the audit log, and is listed under People > Merged records, where Undo puts both records back as they were for 30 days (Settings > Duplicate records). After that the copy of the merged-away record is deleted.

Short texts to members, through your association's own account with an SMS provider: Twilio, Vonage, or any other provider through a simple HTTP gateway (Settings > Text messages). Switch it on under Settings > Modules.

• Only members who switched texts on get them. A member adds their mobile number on Text messages in the member area and proves it with a six-digit code. Replying STOP (or UNSUBSCRIBE, CANCEL, END, QUIT) to any text switches them off, START back on; so does their page. Replies and delivery reports come back through two addresses shown on the settings page, and each must be signed by the provider.
• Publishing > Text messages - write the text or start from a template (Publishing > Text message templates), pick a saved audience or a year range and cities, Count recipients (with the estimated cost), then Queue send. {first_name}, {name} and the other merge tags work; "Reply STOP to stop." is added (Settings > Text messages). The screen shows characters and parts as you type: 160 characters per part (153 once split), or 70 (67) as soon as one character is outside the GSM alphabet - an emoji or a curly quote - and it lists those characters.
• Senders and prices by country - the number or sender name to use for numbers starting "+44", "+1" and so on, and what one part costs; the cost of each send is shown before and after (the provider's own price where it reports one). Numbers are stored in international form (+15551234567); a local number is only expanded with the dialling code on Settings > General.
• Texts go out every minute within the per-minute and 24-hour limits you set. Every opt-in and opt-out is in the audit log.

Publishing > Pages. A page is either one rich text or built from blocks: text, image and text, gallery, people, questions (FAQ), video or map (YouTube, Vimeo, Google Maps), statistics, call to action, events, latest news, appeal and columns - full width or with a side column. The last ten versions are kept (Restore any of them), and a draft has a private preview link that works for an hour.

• Forums - each year group has its own room, and there is one community room for everyone. Posts use simple formatting (bold, italic, links, lists, quotes) and can carry one photo if Settings > Community allows it; authors can edit or delete their own post for 30 minutes (you choose). Members follow a topic to get replies by email.
• Reports and moderation - members report a post, a profile or a job posting; the report lands in Community > Reports and in Needs attention. From there: show, hide, dismiss, warn the member, or pause their posting for a while. A guidelines page (Settings > Community) can be required before a member's first post, and posts containing words you list are held for review.
• Year-group representatives - a member marked as representative looks after their own year group's room (pin, lock, hide), sees a roster of the members who share their details with them, and can propose an announcement to the communications team. Everything they do is in the audit log.
• Document library - each document is for the public, members or the committee; tags, categories (Settings > Community), search, and "Replace file" that keeps the address. The public library appears at /documents once one public document exists.

• Directory - search plus filters (country, city, year group range, level, industry, employer, skill, help offered, mentors, volunteers) and sorting. A filter only offers values members let the viewer see. Each detail on a profile has three levels: all members, own year group only, or only me; "Preview my profile" shows it as another year group sees it.
• Introductions - a member asks to be introduced; the other side accepts and ticks which contact details to share.
• Membership card - a card with a QR code that anyone can check at /verify/...; print it at card size, or download it as an image or PDF. Reissuing it makes old QR codes stop working. Staff with the events area see today's and tomorrow's tickets with check-in links.
• The installable app - members can add the site to their phone; their card and tickets then open without signal. Signing out clears them from the device.
• Job board - members post openings and referrals; each is checked by the committee before it appears, stays up for the days you set, and the poster can edit, close or renew it (a reminder with a one-click renew link comes before it ends).
• Volunteering - roles and shifts members sign up for (or apply for, when approval is needed); coordinators confirm, mark attended with hours, and download the roster. A reminder goes before each shift.
• Home - a completeness ring with the next steps, people you may know, and cards for your year group's news, open volunteer roles and new jobs.

• Deletion requests - People > Deletion requests shows a deadline badge for each request (Settings > Privacy & cookies: answer within 30 days by default), with overdue ones in Needs attention. The member's acknowledgement email gives the answer-by date.
• Keeping data only as long as needed - Settings > Privacy & cookies can remove rejected applications, contact messages and email open and click tracking after a period you choose; blank keeps them. "If it ran tonight" shows the numbers first. It runs at 03:15 and every run is in the audit log.
• Cookie consent - visitors choose analytics and marketing cookies separately; "Cookie settings" in the footer reopens the choice.
• A member's data export includes their profile, activity, the emails they received and clicked, and the notes staff wrote about them ("Notes written by staff") - every staff note field says so.
• Erasure - anonymising a member removes their name and contact details, their stored change history values, their forum photos and follows. The Undeliverable addresses list keeps the address on purpose, so a "do not email" request survives.

System > Backups shows the newest backup, where they are written (a private folder outside the website), what each holds and the cron lines that keep them coming; Settings > Automatic backups switches them on or off. Each night's backup is the database (database.sql.gz) and the uploaded files (media.tar.gz, documents.tar.gz); once a week the newest one is restored into a scratch database and every table counted, to prove it restores.

Back up now (the button at the top of System > Backups) takes one backup straight away, for example before an upgrade. Nothing runs in your browser: scheduled tasks pick the request up, normally within a minute, and the page shows how it goes - asked for, running, done, or failed with the reason in plain words. One backup runs at a time (a request made while the nightly one runs waits for it), another can be asked for 10 minutes after the last, and the button never deletes an older backup - the nightly run thins them out as before. It works while automatic backups are switched off too, for the one backup you ask for. Where a backup cannot run at all - scheduled tasks are not running, the database is not MySQL or MariaDB, or the host has switched off PHP's exec() for cron jobs - the button is greyed out and the page says why. Each request and what came of it is in System > Audit log (backup_now).

Download (beside a backup on System > Backups) is for full administrators, and only for encrypted backups: with a backup passphrase saved (next paragraph), every backup taken after that gets the button, and a backup that is not encrypted is never offered. You type your own account password again first - five wrong ones lock the step for 15 minutes, and an administrator who only ever signs in through single sign-on needs a password on their account for it. The browser then saves one file, backup-DATE.tar, holding the encrypted files and the manifest (unpack it with tar -xf backup-DATE.tar); nothing is unpacked or copied on the server for it, and the link behind the button works for two minutes and for your account alone. Every download is in the audit log (backup_download), and the full administrators, and staff who hold the Users area, get an alert. Opening the files needs the backup passphrase, as below. A very large backup can take longer than your host allows one web request: if a download keeps stopping part-way, fetch the backup folder over SFTP or with your host's file manager instead.

Encrypt the backups (Settings > Automatic backups): with a backup passphrase saved, every file of a new backup is encrypted with AES-256 and gets .enc on its name, so a copy that leaves the server - downloaded, or kept by your host's own backups - cannot be read without it. The passphrase is stored encrypted, never shown again, and never written to a log or a backup. The weekly restore test uses the saved passphrase. Write it down somewhere safe, away from the server: without it nobody, us included, can open an encrypted backup. A file opens by hand on any computer with OpenSSL 1.1.1 or newer, which asks for the passphrase:

openssl enc -d -aes-256-cbc -pbkdf2 -iter 600000 -md sha256 -in database.sql.gz.enc -out database.sql.gz

Changing the passphrase applies to new backups; older ones still need the one they were made with. Removing it (Remove the passphrase) makes new backups plain again.

System > Updates shows the version of this copy, lists the database updates a new version brings, and applies them with Apply database updates - see Upgrading, step 6. "Check for new versions" (off by default) asks the licence server whether a newer version is out for your licence; only a signed answer counts, and when none comes back the check says the service did not answer. When a newer version your licence covers is out, Download and install downloads and checks it, then Install version X installs it in a few minutes and puts every previous file back by itself if a step fails - see Updating from the Updates screen. A development copy (no alumdeck-build.json) cannot be updated this way. New versions are also announced by email with the download link.