Friday, February 28, 2014

Transition

Fellow Members,

Thank you for stopping by the blog. It’s true, we’ll have a mobile app this coming Monday, March 3, but the transition is going to take some time over the weekend so we’ll need to stop recording trades in Community Weaver as of 11:59PM on Thursday, February 27. Time Trader will be back up on Monday morning by 9AM. So, if you do trade over the weekend, you’ll be able to record those trades on Monday.

Please read on for the details behind this move.
As part of the transition work that you should all be familiar with, we’ve also been looking at how to address the functionality of Community Weaver and how to provide some added features that most of you have been requesting, most significantly, a mobile app. Those of you who have requested these in the past may recall that the hard part was never finding out if/when those changes would be implemented.

Additionally, Friday, February 28, is when Time Trader’s annual dues need to be paid to TimeBanks USA to use Community Weaver for the next year. As a board, we were trying to figure out how we would raise the necessary money each year.  Thankfully, Family Service Rochester continues to support us in this transition and said they would cover this year’s dues for us. But that would just delay the inevitable; how to pay the dues in future years. And there was not any projected outlook for the features our members wanted.

As we were investigating the features requested by members, we came across another software program being used in 155 time exchanges across the country.The software is called Time and Talents and comes from hOurWorld.It has a mobile app available for both Apple and Android (search your respective app store for ‘hourworld’). It also has features that allow for urgent trades and many additional features. The board has been testing the new software for about a month now, and we know that the basic features of Community Weaver are functional in both the web based software and with the mobile app along with the additional features requested.

So, the board decided to change software because not only did it offer many of the features and functions that members have been requesting, but it is also a free system that has been created and maintained by traders in many exchanges.  We believe that using the free software is financially responsible on our part and in line with the values and beliefs of Time Trader.

Important features of this new software include creating public and private groups, trading by vicinity, and trading globally. We will explain how each of these could be used in a separate blog entry.

If you’d like some quick overviews of the new software, you can check out these videos:

Brief History (3 min.)

To get you started with the new software, you will need to check out this member help document. It talks about the first steps for logging into the exchange, changing your password, checking out your profile, checking that we transferred your hours correctly, etc. The document states what the default password is set to. Because passwords on all websites are encrypted, there’s no way to pull your old password over to the new software, which is why there’s a default assigned. Of course, the ‘forgotten password’ function is always there and, based on experience, takes about a minute to submit, receive the email, and create a new password. The longest time in that process depends on your email provider.

If you go to the hOurWorld link, you’ll actually see a ‘Member Login’ link on their home page. If you click that, you’ll be able to follow the steps in the member help document to get started Friday evening but because the admins want to spend some time this weekend checking to make sure things transferred correctly, we are requesting no transactions be recorded until Monday morning. Click around, create groups, and check out the features that didn’t exist in Community Weaver. For now, the trading stop is mainly so we can spot check balances and make sure no one lost nor gained hours in the transition. If you happen to see an issue in your balances while you are looking at your account, please let us know by sending an email through the "Contact Us" button in the title bar of the new Time Trader site after you are logged in.

Currently, there are no public groups in Community Weaver. Anyone can create one and you should feel free to create as many as you want. If the admins see what they consider duplicates, we will work with the creators to consolidate those into one group.

Another note that’s important to point out about this new software; several times over the course of our testing, requests for enhancements were made by admins in many other timebanks. Those requests were implemented very quickly. For instance, mid-February, the main contact for Time and Talents software sent an email on Thursday, requesting admins to send in new enhancement requests. On Monday morning, he sent out a note indicating that there were 4 new features added based on the requests. A week later, more enhancements were added. Many of these, like global trading, are able to be turned on by the local exchanges and do not necessarily affect the current operation, i.e. they are add-ons, not so much changes to functionality. So, as we see a need for a new function, they are much more able to quickly and easily implement it for us.

Now, due to the change in software, the board expects a learning curve. The getting started document will indeed get you started, and it is a must-read. However, we know some members will want more hands on help understanding the new software. If you are among them, please let us know. If there’s enough interest, we’ll set up group events where we can walk people through creating requests, responding to offers, creating groups, emailing groups, etc. If there’s an individual that wants a one-on-one session and may be willing to facilitate one of these group sessions, we can make that arrangement.

We believe this is the best decision as we move Time Trader forward and we appreciate your willingness to jump in and figure out the new software. We do believe you will appreciate these new functions and come up to speed quickly.

Rob Harveland
Board Treasurer