What is summertime like in an AtHomeNet community?
It's like sipping a fresh glass of lemonade reading the meeting minutes from the last Board meeting, sending an R.S.V.P for the children's play at the clubhouse this coming Saturday, and adding your next door neighbor's email address to your "Friends" list, all while sitting on your couch using your laptop.

There are so many reasons to login and connect with your community, on your schedule at this time of year. The AtHomeNet team has been busy trying to give you just a few more of those reasons, so be sure to check out "What's New" and "Tips From Support" in this month's edition.

Happy Reading!, The AtHomeNet Team

» back to top


WHAT'S NEW
New Features & Enhancements June 2009

• User Profile Enhancement – Administrators can now choose to show/hide the year on primary and secondary birthdays in the Address Book. Contact [email protected] to set your default.
• eMail Bulletin Enhancement – When sending an email bulletin, administrators can now include "Personalization fields" that will allow you to customize your bulletins. The following unique values can be inserted within a bulletin:
  1. Full Name
  2. First Name
  3. Last Name
  4. Community Name
  5. Current Date/Time
  6. Current Date
  7. Current Time
  212 WebSite Clients will also be able to insert the following unique values:
  
  1. Account Balance
  2. Last Payment Amount
  3. Last Payment Date
  4. Last Payment Check #
• *NEW - Admin Notice Feature – This newly designed feature is our way to communicate with administrators on the website. Check this notice for important messages regarding our service including new features and enhancements, maintenance notices and upcoming seminars or events hosted by our team!
• Mail Delivery Enhancement – We have made some changes with email bulletins that have significantly improved our email delivery rates. The most noticeable difference is in the sending of attachments within an email bulletin. Attached files will now appear as hyperlinks within your email bulletins. This will allow email bulletins sent to all users to be delivered more quickly and efficiently!
• New eMail Bulletin Templates - There are 6 new email bulletin templates. Enjoy!
  • 4th of July (2)
  • Movie Night
  • Swim Meet
  • Business Savvy
  • Online Payment Announcement (with "Personalization fields")
• Check Out the What's New June 2009 Video which covers all the new Website Enhancements

» back to top

Attention All AtHomeNet Westerners!
Clear your calendars for the Must Attend event of 2009! AtHomeNet will be hosting a condensed, west coast version of our Annual Training Camp just for you! Start planning to attend this exciting event scheduled for August 13th at the Phoenix Airport Hilton, in Phoenix, AZ! Join us as we explore training topics and information designed to maximize your expertise as an AtHomeNet Community Website Administrator. Training Sessions will begin promptly at 1:00PM so attendees should arrive by 12:45PM for registration!

Seating is limited so please make your reservations as soon as possible! The cost for AtHomeNet clients to attend the afternoon website training is $60. If you are interested in attending this AtHomeNet Training event, click here to register!

If you are an existing 212 Website customer planning to attend the 212 User Conference, click here for more details regarding that registration. The AtHomeNet website training sessions are included as part of your 212 User Conference package.

INSIDE AtHomeNet
In this month's edition of Inside AtHomeNet, we want to spotlight some of the high points of the internal happenings of the company.

First, AtHomeNet® is now officially registered as a trademark with the federal government. This is an important step for us in branding the company and the services we provide, so when you see our name somewhere with that little ® beside it, you'll know that the AtHomeNet team is working hard to maintain an elite level of service to accompany our name brand recognition.

We're also kicking off the summer with some familiar faces and a couple of new ones. Each year AtHomeNet opens it's doors to interns in our Sales and Support Department providing the opportunity for some of our future professional business executives to get some valuable experience in the industry, as well as utilizing their talents to help us serve our clients better.

This year Whitney Ernst is joining us for her second year as a Special Projects Intern, joined by Patrick Driscoll as well. The Technical Support team is joined by Michael Driscoll and Nik Fuller as Support Interns.

AtHomeNet has also expanded our east coast operations by opening a new office in Florida. Much like the addition last year of an office in Texas, the move comes as the company is concentrating on new client generation and enhancing current customer relations in Florida. Cyndi Sanders will be staffing the office fulltime initially, and is joined by her faithful head of security "Tuddie".

Join us next month for all the latest news, happenings, and inner-developments at AtHomeNet.

» back to top

AtHomeNet Training Camp 2009 Early Bird Special
Save the Date - Wednesday, September 16, 2009 in Duluth, GA. Join us as we explore a wealth of training and information designed to maximize your web site expertise! As always, AtHomeNet's annual training camp will be filled with information and sessions on the exact topics that interest you! The attendance price is $60.00 per person, which includes a variety of sessions on features, functionality, and new developments along with a complimentary lunch.

Registration begins on July 15th. For those registering by August 15th, we are offering an early bird rate of $50! AtHomeNet "Techsperts" will be available for individual questions and "mini-sessions" on a one on one first come first serve basis. As usual, the AtHomeNet team will be there in full force raising the bar and guiding you through the host of events, and you won’t want to miss out on your chance for entry to win gift cards and other goodies. Sign up for pre-registration by clicking here.

Look What Your Website Can Do Now!
Your Community Website is filled with a lot of great features and functionality to make connecting with your neighbors and staying current with happenings and important events right here in your neighborhood. "Look What Your Website Can Do Now" is an email bulletin template you can send out each month to inform your residents about some of the great functionality that your community will find exciting and useful.

eMail Bulletin Groups - We all like to stay involved in the clubs, activities, and upcoming events that interest us. Your website allows you to receive email bulletin updates about events held by the groups, clubs and committees that you sign up to receive. Of course, sometimes the email bulletin groups you will want to receive will change, due to your involvement and interest changing. Now, updating the types of notifications about events that we get based on changes in committees, groups and interests has never been easier.

Your website now allows you to manage what email bulletin groups you subscribe to through the "Subscriptions" tab. To Here, once you login you can add or remove the subscriptions to updates based on topics that interest you This feature insures that you only receive email bulletins from the groups that you willingly subscribe to, granting you the ability to make changes as your interests or involvement in different groups/committees changes.

Enjoy!

» back to top


TIPS FROM SUPPORT
Personalized Email Bulletins! - With the summer season now in full swing, eMail bulletins are a great way to communicate with your residents. Whether it's sending a bulletin on pool socials or management office issues, eMail bulletins are designed to help you keep your residents informed! As indicated in our What's New section, we have just added further enhancements which allow your email bulletins to be more personable! With the ability to insert the resident's names, current date, times and community name the residents can feel more connected and in tune with your community.

A great example of this feature in action is to use the newest email bulletin template to announce an upcoming 4th of July community event. The custom designed templates are a great way to add some "pizzazz" in your bulletin. The new 4th of July template already comes pre-loaded with your community name, so just use the "code snippet" option and insert the "first name" to offer a customized greeting for your residents! You can then change the text and pictures to include your community event details. To get started,

• Login as an administrator
• Click eMail Bulletins
• Choose to 4th of July template option under "Select an eMail Template"

This is just one example of how it could be used; we encourage you to explore all of the Email bulletin templates we have available. The AtHomeNet team will continually add to the selection of eMail Bulletin templates offered as a part of our ongoing enhancements so if you have suggestions for more, please send them to [email protected].

» back to top


MANAGER'S CORNER
Vacation Ain't Just For Kids
So now that summer is upon us and the kids are out of school you may find yourself wondering, "Where did all the board members go?" It's inevitable that Board member attendance at meetings is likely to drop over the summer. Some simply take the kids to the grandparents for a week or so - others take off for the whole summer!

One way to keep board members abreast of community affairs is by utilizing the "Board Room" or "Board Only" area of the community's website. Within this area are features like Task Manager - that allows for the tracking and managing of Board tasks such as Architectural Requests and more. There is also a Board Documents feature that allows you to post and store important board reports and documents including current financial and delinquency reports as well as meeting minutes and agendas. One way for absent board members to communicate and stay in the loop is through the use of the Board Message Board where members (and the manager) can add messages from anywhere they have internet access and receive notifications anytime a new post is added.

The interactive element of the websites provide the opportunity to enhance and strengthen the lines of communication and help expedite the work flow so that maybe…just maybe, you can create a little time for a vacation too.

» back to top


COMMUNITY IN THE SPOTLIGHT
Silver Lakes RV & Golf Resort
Located in beautiful Naples, Florida about 5 miles north of Marco Island, the gated Silver Silver Lakes RV & Golf resort sits just minutes from Florida's Gulf Coast beaches. This area is famous for its world class fishing, dining, and shopping. Silver Lakes is home to over eight hundred residents who make the bustling neighborhood one of the most socially active communities in Naples.

The community itself was founded around 17 years ago with the idea of creating a peaceful yet exciting retirement community. The residents at Silver Lakes enjoy a host of lush amenities including two club houses, a 9 hole executive golf course, and a host of other facilities. They play an impressive cornucopia of sporting activities such as tennis, horseshoes, newly introduced "Pickle Ball" (a sport similar to Badminton & tennis) which is played on a tennis court as well.

The majority of the residents in Silver Lakes utilize their website for everything from reading "Hot Topics" updates and checking their calendar for social events, dances, and other happenings; to viewing the immensely popular photo albums feature (which serves as a virtual visual encyclopedia to the host of events the community holds). Their photo albums feature alone has received upwards of 6700 hits!

Having had the website for the past 3 years, Silver Lakes Administrator Janet Conway says that she has seen site usage increase exponentially since the time they launched it. "We have over 76 planned activities, clubs and events; Aerobics, Ballroom Dancing, Garden Club, Book Club, The Silver Lakes Chorus, Sailing Club, Sewing, Ping Pong, Writing Groups, and much more. We use the website to list all of those," she commented as she was going through some of the events planned for their extremely active fall and winter season. "People appreciate the value of the communications."

The majority of Silver Lakes residents thrive during the nine to ten major social events the community holds during that season. Events such as Cruise night, Evening in Paris, a Sock Hop, and October Fest keep the Silver Lakes residents happy and busy! Last year over 300 people volunteered to be involved with one or more of the events that took place in the community.

With a diverse group of residents, mostly retired that range from their 40s to their 80s, it's easy to see why there is so much going on in Silver Lakes. Though most of the residents are seasonal, with the community being the most occupied between October and April; a good number of residents stay year round.

Looking at their website, it's easy to see why residents of Silver Lakes refer to their community as "Our piece of Paradise." AtHomeNet proudly recognizes the Silver Lakes RV & Golf Resort as our June 2009 "Community in the Spotlight."

» back to top


212 SOFTWARE (TOPS) USER GROUP
Use Personalized Email Bulletins To Encourage Dues Payments! One of the great advantages of having an 212 Community Website is that we exchange owner account information which allows owners to view their account balances, last payment amounts, last payment date and payment types. With the added bonus of allowing personalized email bulletins, you can now use the insert options to include these very details in an email specific to that owner. This is a great way to offer a helpful reminder encouraging your owners to pay their dues in a timely manner. If you are an Online Payment customer, you can even provide your online payment link in the email which would allow them to make their payments online with a credit card! This is a great solution to helping you increase payment options for your associations.

Use the Online Dues Payment email bulletin template to help you offer a professional looking email with the details you need. Once the template is loaded, you will have the option of inserting the following items to personalize your emails:

• Owner Account Balance
• Balance As of Date
• Last Payment Amount
• Last Payment Date
• Last Payment Check #

This is just one example of how it could be used. You can insert your own customized text and pictures to make the bulletin unique to you and your management company.

As always, be sure to follow these tips to ensure current and accurate transfer of owner data:

1. Keep your 212 Software files up to date! The 212 Internet Updater is one of the most important tools in your arsenal. As such, you should run the Updater via a scheduled task to keep current. This ensures that your local version of 212 software matches the most recent version from 212’s Software Internet Server.
2. Ensure that the 212 Website Scheduler is set up to run nightly. Check your 212 Website Scheduler to ensure that you have defined a website upload task to happen nightly each day of the week after your office closes. Suggested times are between 10PM EST and 2AM EST.
3. Be sure to check the 212 Community Uploader progression screen for possible issues or errors. If the uploader was not successful in transferring files, it will be important to note which steps of the upload caused the failure. See screenshot as an example. This information should be immediately sent to our Web Support team for resolution.

Further questions can be directed to our Web Support team at [email protected]

» back to top

---

THANK YOU!
Thank you for being a loyal AtHomeNet family member. We will continue to provide you valuable information and announcements about exciting new changes in the months to come!

Sincerely,
The AtHomeNet Team

» back to top