Guest
24 Mar 2016 13:36

Hi Mint Joomla,

I am currently using OSE Membership and considering to replace it with Emerald as an Association membership management solution. I have looked around the site and taken a look at the DEMO and so far it's ticking boxes.

However I have a few concerns and questions I would like to know before subscribing.

As stated I currently use OSE to manage our memberships and my primary concern is making sure it is possible to migrate, all data to Emerald Which includes the below:

  • Membership Plans
  • Membership History - Current start/expiry dates

I currently have 4 custom fields built into OSE during the user account registartion, from what I have read Emerald does not handle this, the only way to achieve this is using the Joomla Registartion or Easy Social (Neither of which are being used currently in our environment and without extender joomla registration it is not possible to add custom fields). Also I currently use Community builder as a profile and list management system which integrates with OSE. OSE pushes my custom field data into the corresponding fields in Community Builder, this data is then viewable from the front end by select people using the list feature. As User Registartion is not done by Emerald is this achievable using easy social? The custom fields need to be used with the invoice system and emails that go out to users?

One key feature that i must have is a Membership ID. The Membership ID is automatically generated upon successful registartion and is configerable for each plan. Once a user subscribes their membership ID does not change it stays the same even after renewing their membership. Is this something that Emerald offers or is it something that will require customization?

Payment Options Is it possible to configure each plan to offer more than one option? Currently i provide offline payment and PayPal is this possible in Emerald?

Emails to users I have read that this is configured using the alerts system. For Example: (Send alerts on success subscription Alert that is sent to user when subscription successfully activated.)

How configurable is this? I really need to be able to add a PDF slip to this email, is this possible or can this be customized? This slip will include the data from the custom fields.

Please see URL to website: http://gki.org.uk

If you need to take a peek at how OSE is currently configured, especially for Migration please let me know. I can provide an Akeeba Backup if needed

Thanks Chris

Last Modified: 30 Mar 2016


Sergey
Total posts: 13,748
25 Mar 2016 06:08

Guest As stated I currently use OSE to manage our memberships and my primary concern is making sure it is possible to migrate, all data to Emerald Which includes the below:

  • Membership Plans
  • Membership History - Current start/expiry dates

If you go to migration in demo site, you will see that there is one click migration for OSE Membership. It means in few seconds you can migrate all the data.

Guest I currently have 4 custom fields built into OSE during the user account registartion, from what I have read Emerald does not handle this, the only way to achieve this is using the Joomla Registartion or Easy Social (Neither of which are being used currently in our environment and without extender joomla registration it is not possible to add custom fields).

That is right. Emerald does not have registration process built-in. But it have 3 subscritpion modes.

  • SAR - Subscription After Registration. registration is normal throug any registration extension and then subscription is on demand, whenever user wants to access restricted area.
  • SDR - Subscription During Registration - This is when Emerald add subscription selector field to registration form. Right after registration user is redirected to payment gateway. But this is limited to Joomla core and EasySocial right now.
  • RDS - Registration During Subscription. There is nor registration form here. When user click Subscryme or try to access restricted area, he ends up on payment confirmation page. He only enter email and click checkout. Account is created, email with access details is sent and user immediately redirected to payment gateway.

This cover pritty much everything. Unfortunately Emerald does not work as other extensions. So when you migrate to Emerald you have to Expect that certain thins will work differently. Probably you will have to change your subscription flow to one of those that are offered by Emerald.

Guest As User Registartion is not done by Emerald is this achievable using easy social?

Actualy if you want I might probably do CB integration and add plan selector to CB registration form. But this will be separate custom coding. Around $50.

It is acheivable with ES. Emerald dooes not care what extension was used to register user.

Guest The custom fields need to be used with the invoice system and emails that go out to users?

What custom fields? Example please.

Guest One key feature that i must have is a Membership ID. The Membership ID is automatically generated upon successful registartion and is configerable for each plan. Once a user subscribes their membership ID does not change it stays the same even after renewing their membership. Is this something that Emerald offers or is it something that will require customization?

We do not have anything like this. But you can easely do this. For example in subscription history you could show real user ID as Membership ID. You can also attach some random md5 somethign. SO ID will looks like this 1245-FDG5R where 1245 is an ID of the user and FDG5R is some hash.

Guest Payment Options Is it possible to configure each plan to offer more than one option? Currently i provide offline payment and PayPal is this possible in Emerald?

You will configuer payment options for each plan separately. It means that you can even configure different plans to be purchased through different PayPal account.

The answer is YES.

Guest Emails to users I have read that this is configured using the alerts system. For Example: (Send alerts on success subscription Alert that is sent to user when subscription successfully activated.)

How configurable is this? I really need to be able to add a PDF slip to this email, is this possible or can this be customized? This slip will include the data from the custom fields.

How are you going to generate PDF slips? You can always insert a link to that file. You cannot attach anything to success subscription email. You can only change title and text of that email. Emearld does not generate PDFs. It only generate HTML versoins of invoice.

Guest Please see URL to website: http://gki.org.uk

What can I say. The idea behinf OSE and Emerald is very different. My suggestion, if you desided to go with Emearld, do not try to replicate what was done by OSE. That concept will not work. Just look how Emeardl work and what it offers and take most out of it.

I know you get used to certain things and routines. It will be much better if you re-adjust yourself to new concept. Otherwise migration to Emerald may fail for you.

With AEC EOT announced, Emarld became an oldest membership extension for Joomla. We had more than 30 000 Emerald users during last 9 years. We had very big feedback and feature requests. We had learned every possible scenario for membership sites. And the way Emearld works, is what we think is best.

Although we are opn to new feature requests.


Guest
25 Mar 2016 10:59

Hi Sergy,

Many Thanks for your response.

The custom Fields in question can be found below, currently these are built into the OSE registration form:

  • Date of Birth
  • Grade
  • Club
  • Instructor

All 4 fields are used in the emails/invoice. Is it possible to get these put into Emerald? Or can emerald call the custom fields in CB/ES?

The membership ID has to be seperate from the userid as this is plan specific. Is this something that can be customized? I can provide an example of how it works in OSE if needed?

The membership ID is numeric, no letters and each plan has a different start number

With OSE the invoice is a PDF slip that is atatched to the email that the user recieves. HTML invoices are not compatible with a lot of email providers and when i used this method before i got a lot of complaints. Also it is not so easy to download and store the invoice in a seperate loaction if its embeded in the email.

How configurable is the invoice, please see attached an example of a slip my slip

Thanks Chris


Sergey
Total posts: 13,748
30 Mar 2016 12:13

Guest All 4 fields are used in the emails/invoice. Is it possible to get these put into Emerald? Or can emerald call the custom fields in CB/ES?

Right now there is no way to put into email value of registration fields. But we might concider to add this functioanlity.

Guest I can provide an example of how it works in OSE if needed?

Let's try. Skype serhioromano.

Guest The membership ID is numeric, no letters and each plan has a different start number

This is confusing. What if user have 2 different plans? What would be membership ID?

Guest HTML invoices are not compatible with a lot of email providers and when i used this method before i got a lot of complaints.

Invoice is HTML but we never send it to email or through email. User can go to orders page, open invoice and print it or sace as PDF.

Guest How configurable is the invoice, please see attached an example of a slip my slip

Invoice is a Joomla view layout. Co you can create template override and change it to whatever you like.

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