Developer Diary #14

09/08/26

This one comes hot on the heels of the last diary, and it is almost entirely about one thing: email. The Emailer has had its biggest overhaul since it was first built, and there are a couple of quality-of-life improvements for anyone who spends their evenings in the Members section too.

As always, please do log in and have a play around. There's a lot to explore this time.

What's new in this release?

Personalisation placeholders in your emails

This has been one of the most-voted requests on the Feature Board, and I'm really pleased to see it land.

You can now drop placeholders such as [[ first_name ]] into anything you write in the Emailer or the event invite editors, and each recipient receives their own personalised copy. A row of buttons under the message box inserts them for you as little highlighted pills, so there's no syntax to remember, and they work in the subject line too. As well as names, there are placeholders for ranks, your Lodge name, your own name as sender, and (on invites) the event details.

Before anything goes out, the system reads your message back and warns you if a placeholder is misspelled or can't be filled in for the recipients you've chosen, so nobody ever receives a letter addressed to [[ frist_name ]]. And if you use the [[ ]] fill-in blanks in the Event Planner for summons and minutes, those are untouched; they work exactly as they always have.

See it before you send it

Alongside Send, both the Emailer and the invite editors now have a Preview button. It shows the email exactly as your first recipient will receive it: your Lodge crest, the proper email styling, your signature, and every placeholder filled in with real details.

If you've ever hovered over the Send button wondering quite what sixty Brethren are about to receive, this is for you.

One Sent box, with folders

Until now, the Sent box only really showed messages sent from the Emailer itself. Ballot invitations, form dispatches, event invites and invoice runs all went out by email, but left no record you could check afterwards.

Now, everything the system sends on your behalf lands in the one Sent box: Emailer messages, ballot invitations, forms, event invites, invoices and receipts, each labelled by type so you can filter to just the ones you're after. "Did the subscription invoices actually go out?" is now a ten-second check rather than an act of faith.

On top of that, you can organise sent messages into folders of your own, such as "Installation 2026". File a message as you send it using the option under the message box (you can create a new folder right there without leaving the page), or move things around later from the Sent box. This one came straight from the Feature Board.

Custom Email Templates

The third piece of the puzzle. If you send the same covering email every month, you can now write it once and save it as a template: there's a "Save as template" option under the Emailer's message box, and you can also save any past email in your Sent box as a template.

To reuse one, click the gold Templates… button at the end of the placeholder row, on the Emailer or any of the invite editors, and pick from your list. Combined with placeholders, this means the monthly summons email that used to be retyped from scratch is now two clicks and a quick read-through. You can also tick Use for invites on one template, and it becomes the starting message whenever you invite Brethren or Contacts to an event, in place of our standard wording.

Templates belong to your Lodge, so if you run more than one unit, each keeps its own set. And to keep all of this findable, the Emailer section now has three tabs across the top: Emailer, Sent and Templates.

Bulk Edit for Members

Away from email, another one straight from the Feature Board. There is now a Bulk Edit option in the Members section: a spreadsheet-style grid of your members where you can tidy many records in one sitting, rather than opening them one at a time.

Every change saves itself as you make it, you can move around with the arrow keys just like a spreadsheet, and you choose which columns you see (it remembers your choice for next time). It's particularly handy after an import: the importer now offers to drop you straight into the grid, filtered to the members you've just brought in, ready to fill the gaps a spreadsheet import always leaves, such as dates of birth and prefixes.

Stepping through your Members

A small change that makes a surprising difference. Member and Contact records now have previous and next arrows, so you can step through your current members A to Z without going back to the list each time. The record stays on the same tab as you move, which makes checking one detail across the whole Lodge, say everyone's Grand Lodge certificate date, a much quicker job. Resigned and deceased members are skipped, and the arrows disappear when you reach either end.

Dining List exports, your way

The Dining List CSV export now opens a small options window before it downloads. You can choose how names are formatted (separate prefix, name and rank columns, or the same "Known As" and Masonic formats used on place cards) and which of Type, Notes, Dietary Requirements and Rank to include. This came from a Secretary who plans his dining in an external tool and needed the export to match it. If you've bookmarked the old export link, it still works and gives you the full spreadsheet as before.

Bug fixes & other tidy-ups

• Files attached to event invitations from your Document Archive were arriving with a long jumble of letters and numbers as the filename instead of the name you chose (e.g. "Summons"). Recipients now see the proper filenames.
• Removing an External Link from the Dashboard was a one-click action, which made accidental deletions too easy. It now asks you to confirm first.
• The printable Member PDF Report has moved: you'll now find it as its own card on the Member Reports page, rather than tucked into the menu on each member's record.
• The Members sub-menu has been tidied so Candidates sits after Contacts, and the Add Member, Add Contact and Bulk Edit buttons now look like the actions they are.
• The Emailer compose page now uses the full width of your screen; it was getting cramped as the tool has grown.

Documentation

The help centre has been updated alongside all of this: the Tools & Emailer guide now covers placeholders, the preview, folders and templates, and the Members guide covers Bulk Edit. If you're ever unsure how something works, the documentation is the best first port of call.

What's coming next?

In the last diary I said the provincial view, a single place to see reports and activity rolled up across several Lodges, was the big piece on the workbench. It still is. Email elbowed its way to the front of the queue: placeholders, templates and the Sent box were all among the most-voted requests on the Feature Board, and they build on one another, so it made sense to deliver them together. The provincial work continues.

If you haven't visited the Feature Board in a while, I'd encourage you to have a look. Nearly everything in this release started life there, and your votes genuinely decide what gets built next.

As always, thank you for supporting The Working Tools. The system continues to grow because of your feedback and real-world use. If you know a Secretary in any Order who might benefit from what we're building, please do point them our way for a free trial.

More soon.

S&F,
Karl