This policy will be revised when needed and reviewed in detail at least annually by the Website Committee Chair for consistency between policy and current practice.
Overview
The TIAA Executive Committee determined that our website plays a critical part in the success of TIAA and so a Website Committee was created in order to design our third TIAA website and supporting database. This committee was created in 2012 as part of the Texas Instruments Alumni Association and typically convenes as-needed meetings and reports to the Executive Committee at their regularly scheduled meetings. The objective of this effort is to communicate with and provide interesting and timely information to TIAA members and former TIers. Former TIers and their spouses may join, renew their membership, and attend and pay for various events offered by TI, TIAA and some vendors via our website. The TIAA website “went live” in mid-March, 2014.
The TIAA President, the TIAA Executive Vice President, the TIAA CIO, the Site Admin, the Staff Admin (TIAA Admin), Communications Committee representative(s), and our web vendor’s representative may be invited to attend the website committee meetings for continuity and communication purposes and may or may not be members of the committee.
Skvare (pronounced “square”) LLC is the provider that was chosen to be our web vendor. It is a small company of experts that specialize in building online systems for non-profit organizations and membership-driven associations. The new website was developed using Drupal which is open-source, content-management software used as a back-end for over 1,000,000 websites. It includes such features as user registration and maintenance, menu management, RSS feeds, page layout customization and system administration. Currently, there are almost 35,000 free, contributed modules available to customize Drupal’s usage and appearance. Skvare is responsible for:
- Customizing changes to our website and database
- Testing and installing new Drupal and CiviCRM software updates
- Maintaining up-to-date security on our database
- Maintaining the production and test databases in-sync
- Monitoring our production database on a 24/7/365 basis
- Providing daily backups of the website and database
- Offering Drupal and CiviCRM training and documentation
- Responding to requests for assistance from the Site Admin, the Staff Admin or the TIAA CIO
- Updating CiviCRM via a periodic feed from TI’s Human Resources department
Drupal interacts with CiviCRM (constituency relationship management) that is designed for the needs of non-profit groups to manage information about an organization's members, events, event registrants, memberships, payments and relationships.
Planning and Cost Control
Members of the Website Committee and the Executive Committee collect inputs from various sources to see what changes might be useful to the TIAA membership at large. This backlog is ranked in importance at our occasional website meetings, the Skvare representative determines the feasibility/effort/cost involved and the final ranking on the backlog is determined by the Website Committee. Overall website costs are controlled by the Website Committee in order to meet the annual budget established by the Executive Committee for this effort.
Database
Our new database was migrated from our old Access data base and required significant editing. The data stored there had a multitude of problems; i.e., name and address capitalization, address problems (RR#, four-digit zip codes, and misspelled cities and states made some postal mail undeliverable), no standardization in city spelling (N. Attleboro, No. Attleboro, North Attleboro), area codes not updated after a retiree moves, suffixes attached to last name rather than in the suffix field, inaccurate birth dates (thousands of New Year’s babies), missing countries, etc.
Databases in CiviCRM contain info on TI retirees as well as former TIers who were transferred to other companies when their particular business within TI was sold; i.e., Raytheon, and spouses of exTIers. The data from TI is stored but not updated by TIAA except during the merges to handle new retirees, address changes, deaths and date of death, etc. That info consists of:
- ID numbers (TI employee number, CiviCRM-assigned number and User number)
- Employee info (complete name, nickname, complete address, home phone numbers, birth date, termination date, date of death and death switch (if applicable), gender, and date of last update from TI HR)
TI decided not to provide birth dates for new retirees in 2019 and the Executive Committee voted in June, 2019, to ask the TIAA Admin to look up missing birth dates using WhitePages (a subscription service TIAA provides) so we could continue to send Happy Birthday notices yearly, identify appropriate obits for our website, etc.
Other items that are collected from members, or which are system-generated, are:
- Home, billing and email addresses
- Phone numbers (land lines and mobiles)
- Source of the data (migration, merge, etc.)
- Current age of retiree (calculated by Skvare from dates of birth)
- Memberships and payment history
- Activities (registrations, reminders sent, etc.)
- Event participation
- Relationships
- Category type (TI Retiree, Raytheon Retiree, other retiree, spouse, honorary membership, etc.)
- TI last location worked
- Obituary link (if applicable)
- Groups and Smart Groups (TI Retiree, Raytheon Retiree, spouse, TIAA monthly Breakfast, etc.)
- Communication/privacy preferences
- Publication preferences
- Tags (Bad mailing address, Do Not Contact notice, TI Employee # valid, marriage indicator and status, first-year-free membership, etc.)
- Change log (dates and person responsible)
- Notes
There are also records on a few Associates (TI contacts and Skvare employees.)
Roles and Responsibilities
The website is continually accessed and/or updated by various parts of the TIAA organization. This is controlled by the type of role assigned to a member by the Site Admin. Roles for TIAA are:
Anonymous (visitors who cannot logged in but can view everything except members-only areas)
Admins (authenticated, logged-in members).
In addition there are several levels of Admins, each with their own roles:
- System Admin (Skvare employees)
- Site Admin (Website Committee Chair)
- Staff Admin (TIAA Admin)
- Calendar Admin (Communications Co-Chair)
- Executives (TIAA officers)
- Members
- Activities Chair (and Co-Chair, if applicable)
- Communications Chair (and Co-Chair, if applicable)
- Community Involvement Chair (and Co-Chair, if applicable)
- Education Chair (and Co-Chair, if applicable)
- Memberrship Development Chair (and Co-Chair, if applicable)
- TIAA CIO
- Travel Committee Chair (and Co-Chair, if applicable)
The Staff Admin; Site Admin; Communication Committee Chair and co-chair; Calendar Admin; CIT Chair; Travel and Event Chair; members, spouses of members; and Skvare personnel may update select areas of our website or databases depending on their role. These areas are controlled via appropriate system permissions; i.e., read-only, add, edit, or delete. Inputs from other committee chairs or TI HR are handled by the Staff Admin, Site Admin or TIAA CIO. Members may view and update their own record and the record of their spouse at any time.
Skvare personnel update members’ records only during the random TI HR merges.
Security
In this electronic era, security is very important due to the use of credit card info (which is not stored by TIAA), along with retiree’s names and personal information. TIAA employs Skvare and PayPal to ensure our data security. Comprehensive documentation is required in order to obtain the SSL (secure socket layer) certificate used by Skvare to ensure secure transactions between web servers and browsers. This certificate is resubmitted and validated each year by Skvare. The actual certificate was granted to the Texins Association Clubs [US] because they are the “parent” of all the Texins clubs, including TIAA, and owned the necessary State of Texas registration.
Merge
A download of retiree data normally occurs three times a year. Upon a request from the Website Committee members, the TIAA CIO contacts TI and requests a data pull of specific data fields on TI employees who are “bridged” until eligible for retirement. (TI stopped providing old retiree data January 1, 2019.) The following fields are requested from TI:
ID (empl#) / LastName / FirstName / MiddleName (or Initial) / Suffix (e.g., Jr, Sr) / Address 1 / Address 2 / City / St / Postal / Zip-5 / Country / Phone / Term Date / Death Date / Death (yes/no) / Gender / DateLastChanged
The TI CIO edits some fields on the file (makes all dates into yy/mm/dd format, converts zip codes into five digits, adds the date of the merge to each record, etc.) and provides a file of new retirees and “bridgers” to Skvare. Skvare then performs the following actions to update the database with this information:
Preparation
- Provides TIAA Admin with an Excel spreadsheet of those records whose addresses need to be updated.
Importer logic
The following actions are made by the TIAA Admin on TIAA’s database for all new retirees and “bridgers”:- after receiving the edits from the TIAA CIO.
- Adds data to TIAA Migrated Contacts fields
- Sets Group = TI Retiree
- Sets Tag = “EmpNum Valid
- Sets Category type = TI Retiree
- Sets Home Address Info = address info from TI
- Sets the various defaults for directory listings and publication selections
- Corrects any punctuation or capitalization errors from the update info
- Checks for duplicate records
- Sends a postal invitation to join TIAA along with a current newsletter and a TIAA brochure to all new retirees who have never been a member.
Website
A problem that immediately appeared was the incompatibility of the various web browsers and operating systems. (Some of our members are still using software which are not supported ) If our members are to enjoy all of the abilities of our new website, we recommend that they use either Chrome or Firefox which are free applications.
Committee chairs, co-chairs and members decide what and how their particular areas function, document this info in the appropriate Guideline(s) and review it each year for changes. The Site Admin normally updates the guidelines on the website based on their inputs.
Menus
There are twelve main menus and 34 submenus on our website:
- Home
- News (five submenus)
- TIAA (seven submenus)
- Health/Finances (two submenus)
- Activities/Networking (five submenus)
- Education (three submenus)
- Community Involvement (four submenus)
- Travel (two submenus)
- Membership (six submenus)
- Slideshows
- Calendar.
- Index
Calendars
The website calendar is a central repository of all TI- and TIAA-involved events and meetings and is used to create our publications and provide real-time information for retirees. When an event or meeting is set up on this calendar, it is coded as to which function is involved which automatically splits it into calendars dedicated to our members’ interests. These calendars are:
- an Upcoming TIAA Activities calendar showing all TIAA and TI planned activities for the next 60 days but no meetings;
- a Community Involvement calendar of volunteering efforts;
- an Education calendar showing planned seminars; and
- a Travel and Events calendar for tours, concerts, games, etc.
The current event codes are also identified by colored titles:
- Alumni Meetings (if any) are in brown
- Community Involvement (various volunteer activities) are in green)
- Education (various educational seminars) are in violet)
- Other are in gray
- TI sponsored (such as free admission to the Arboretum, the Perot, the DSO, etc.) are in orange
- TIAA meetings (a schedule of all committee and subcommittee meetings including the annual Business Meeting) are in brown
- TIAA sponsored (such as the golf tournament, the TI retiree luncheon, etc.) are in red
- Travel (normally day trips within 100 miles of Dallas) are in blue
Events
Events and activities are generated by TIAA Committees, TIAA Officers or TI and the following steps must be followed in order to make sure our communications are accurate:
The Calendar Admin contacts all of the various Alumni groups once a quarter to verify email addresses, meeting dates, locations, etc. and records any necessary additions or edits on the main calendar and in the Alumni Groups submenu.
A member of a committee or subcommittee writes up a tentative description of an event in their area and emails it to the Calendar Admin to be recorded on the Drupal calendar. (The dates may be tentative – such as early, mid or late — but it still allows other committees to avoid conflicting with planned events.) The Calendar Admin verifies that there is no conflict with other significant events (ignoring most TIAA committee and Alumni meetings) or with any national or religious holidays. If there is a date problem, the appropriate committee is notified and a resolution is made by the committee which, in turn, notifies the Calendar Admin of the result and the event is set up including the date, start and stop times, a short description event addresses, links to event site (if available), an image of the event, etc.
The Calendar Admin and the Staff Admin work together on all events, except Alumni and Committee meetings, to set up registration forms where our members may sign up for an event or put their name on a waiting list.
Members may sign up and pay for an event via PayPal Pro on our website.
Communications
Electronic communications are arranged by the TIAA CIO per the Communication Committee or Site Admin inputs. iContact is the bulk, email processor TIAA employs to distributes the eCalendar, eNews, eNotes and eLetter for TIAA. A list of any “bounced” email address from these communiques is sent to the Staff Admin who either contacts the member for a new email address or deletes the email address on CiviCRM if it does not belong to an active member.
The Communications Committee extracts events from a real-time view of the website calendar via software called upcoming-event-listing. This is done on an as-needed bases for our various communications and layouts and picture sizes are adjusted as needed. Communications then sends a preliminary copy to all involved committees for possible corrections and emails the final PDF version to the TIAA CIO for distribution to our members based on predetermined criteria. This criteria may be viewed on the Guidelines for Communication Committee on our website. There are various criteria used in our email and postal mail communications. Skvare has created a real-time E-mail-List-Maker which the TIAA CIO uses to create appropriate lists for either iContact, the TI Mail Room or an outside vendor. (All deceased members or a contact’s record that is classified as “Do Not Contact” or “Bad Address” are first eliminated from the TIAA E-Mail- List-Maker.)
Postal mail is arranged by the TIAA CIO and Staff Admin from Communication Committee inputs using either TI’s Mail Room or an outside vendor. Once a year our current vendor (F&MC) checks our address info against the U.S. Postal Office’s address change log which covers the last five years and notifies us of bad addresses.
There are various criteria used in both email and postal mail communications; i.e., members only, living within a specified distance from Dallas, etc. All deceased members or a contact’s record that is classified as “Do Not Contact” or “Bad Address” are first eliminated from the communications list.
Accessibility
Generating and updating our website is accomplished by various TIAA members and the following is an overview of this process. Members-only areas are designated by (*), Officers-only are shown by (**) and areas that are generated by the software are marked by (***).
| Menus and Submenus | Content Responsibility | Update Responsibility |
|---|---|---|
| Activities | Activities Committee | Staff Admin |
| …Activities Calendar (***) | Activities Committee | Calendar Admin |
| …Annual Retiree Luncheons | Activities Committee | Site Admin |
| …Golf Tournaments | Activities Committee | Site Admin/CIO |
| …OMOT Art Exhibitions | Activities Committee | Site Admin/CIO |
| Alumni Groups | Calendar Admin | Calendar Admin |
| Amazon.com (*) | Site Admin//CIO | Site Admin/CIO |
| Calendar | Committee Chairs, TIAA Officers, TI | Calendar Admin |
| Communications | Communications Committee | Communications Chair |
| …eCalendar | Calendar Admin | Calendar Admin/CIO |
| …eLetter | Communications Committee | Communications Committee/CIO |
| ...eNewsCommunications Committee | Communications Committee | Communications Committee/CIO |
| ...eNotes | Communications Committee | Communications Committee/CIO |
| ...TI Alumni News | Communications Committee | Communications Committee/CIO |
| Community Involvement | Community Involvement Committee | Community Involvement Chair |
| …Other Volunteer Opportunities | Community Involvement Chair | Community Involvement Chair |
| …TI Foundation | TI Foundation | Site Admin |
| …Volunteer Calendar (***) | Community Involvement Committee | Calendar Admin |
| …Volunteer Incentive Program | TI Foundation | Site Admin |
| Contact Us (***) | Staff Admin | Staff Admin/Site Admin |
| Education | Education Committee | Staff Admin/Site Admin |
| …Education Calendar (***) | Education Committee | Calendar Admin |
| …Education Seminars' Archives | Site Admin | Site Admin/CIO |
| …Other Educational Opportunities | Education Committee | Site Admin/Staff Admin |
| Featured Story | Communications Committee | Communications Committee Chair |
| Health/Finances | ||
| …Financial Resource Info | ||
| …Health Resource Info | TI HR | Site Admin |
| In the News | Communications Chair | Communications Chair |
| In Memoriam (*) | Staff Admin/Site Admin | Staff Admin/Site Admin |
| Join (*) | Member/Staff Admin | Staff Admin/Site Admin |
| Membership Development | Membership Development Committee | Staff Admin/Site Admin |
| …Benefits | Membership Development Committee | Staff Admin/Site Admin |
| …Recent Obituaries (*) | Site Admin | Staff Admin/Site Admin |
| …Vendor Offers (*) | Staff Admin/Site Admin | Staff Admin/Site Admin |
| My Account (*) | Member/Staff Admin | Member/Staff Admin |
| Photo Gallery | Site Admin | Site Admin/Calendar Admin |
| Renew (*) | Member/Staff Admin | Site Admin/Staff Admin |
| Slideshows | Site Admin | Site Admin |
| TIAA | Executive Committee | Staff Admin/Site Admin |
| …Annual Business Meetings | Activities Committee | Site Admin |
| …Books by or about TIers (*) | Site Admin | Site Admin |
| …Constitution and Bylaws | Leadership Team | Site Admin |
| .. Leadership Team | Leadership Team | Site Admin |
| …FAQs | Committee Chairs/Staff Admin/Site Admin | Staff Admin/Site Admin |
| …Guidelines (**) | Committee Chairs | Site Admin |
| …Organization Chart | Leadership Team | Site Admin |
| Index | Site Admin | Site Admin |
| Travel | Travel Committee | Travel Committee Chair |
| …Travel Calendar (***) | Travel Committee | Calendar Admin |
| …Other Travel Opportunities | Travel Committee Chair | Travel Committee Chair |
Updated by Ronnie Brandenburg on September 5, 2020.
