The IT Advisor is, strictly speaking, the advisor to the committee, but this role includes a number of administration tasks, e.g. webmaster, Beacon site administrator, which also support the online activities of group leaders and members. In terms of priorities, it has to be:
Committee > Group Leaders > Members
Nevertheless, the IT Advisor is there to help. A solution to your problem, or even just the awareness of it, could make things easier for other users in the future.
Where to Find Help?
[Under Construction]
Senior Skills
This is a BT intended to help the 'digitally challenged' generations. Towards the end there is a list of fact sheets on basic computer skills. These are framed as help for the helper, but still present the necessary information. They may contain a covert BT bias.
AbilityNet
This is a collection of factsheets on general technical subjects from 'voice recognition' to 'strong passwords'. This is aimed at everyone.
AbilityNet also have a helpline for free technical advice on IT problems: 0300 180 0028, Email: equiries@abilitynet.org.uk, Website: www.abilitynet.org.uk
Third Age Trust
The Third Age Trust has a page on the use of Video Conferencing and Social Media. This was started during COVID, but still useful. They seem to be unaware of Google Meet, which compares well with Zoom for free meeting time: 60 vs 40 mins.
If you have a specific problem, like an error code or a potential spam phone number, why not ask the internet? You will have to be prepared to balance your trust and mistrust of the results. Some sites just want to 'sell' you their software, even if it's apparently free. That doesn't mean that they won't divulge useful information in the process. At least a pinch of salt and some cynicism about their objectives is advisable. But they can't make you do anything that you consider unwise.
Simplified GDPR:
One of the legal constraints that we have to constantly consider in our digital and online activities as an organization is General Data Protection Regulations. Rather than getting bogged down in the letter of the law, it is easier to think of this as a simple contract:
If you hold information about me:
- I should know what information you hold (about me).
- I should know what you intend to do with that information.
- You should only use the information as you said you would.
- You should keep the information secure, so that no third party can acquire it or use it.
This covers the spirit and purpose of the regulations. It should be observable in most practical situations.
Recent Change log:
Tips and Explanations
We do not have FAQs (Frequently Asked Questions), as such, but here are some answers to questions that have been asked and explanations that have been provided, often frequently.
In presenting information here, we follow the reverse order, presenting the most general tips first:
Members
Automated Emails
When we use a Beacon service to send personalized emails directly from a selection on our membership database, they will show the address noreply@u3abeacon.org.uk, as sender. However, the reply option in your email will, typically, still work and direct the reply to the original sender of the email. This appears to be an extended feature of the email standard, that does not display correctly, or at least not helpfully, in some current email programs.
Browser Data
Browsers, e.g. Edge, Chrome, Firefox, Opera, etc., are our portal to the internet. They are increasingly powerful tools. Most can now run programming languages and there are extensions that allow you to operate Office suites, e.g. Office 365, in your browser. To do all this efficiently, they collect information about our internet activity, which in turns supports efficiency or customization of frequent or current activities. If you are nervous about that, you can set your browser to clear this temporary data, e.g. clearing your data when you exit the browser. You should be careful, not to clear saved passwords, if you use them. If you clear cache, history and cookies, but keep site settings, that should work. Here are some useful links for clearing browser cache, cookies and history:
There are several browsers, several platforms and different devices, but the pointers above should help you find what you need. You should also be aware, that if you never clear temporary files, your browser process will become bigger and require more of the computer's resource.
- How to Clear the Cache and Cookies in Your Web Browser (University of Iowa).
- How to Clear Your History in Any Browser (How-To Geek).
- There are several browsers, several platforms and different devices, but the pointers above should help you find what you need. You should also be aware, that if you never clear temporary files, your browser process will become bigger and require more of the computer's resource.
Browser Extensions
Another feature of modern web browsers is a wide range of extensions. Many add additional functions to the browser, but I would like to recommend a few that are designed to make the browser, itself, work better:
- Smart HTTPS looks like a good one of these, but there are quite a few others.
- HTTPS Everywhere, I used to use this, but it looks like this is not available now.
- Ad-Blockers, there are various extensions for blocking advertisements. This should considerably improve the internet experience. Some browsers running on Android, e.g. on phones, don't support extensions, so don't have Ad-Blockers, and the difference is immediately apparent.
- uBlock Origin: This is the one I currently use, because of the reviews.
- uBlock Origin Lite: Chrome says that uBlock Origin is incompatible, so I use uBlock Origin Lite there.
- Adblock Plus: This is older and, probably, simpler. It sounds good. The main thing is to have some working Ad-blocker.
- Ghostery, this is advertised as both an anti-tracker and an ad-blocker. It also includes a never-consent option, which should prevent the demands to approve cookies. I must admit, that I don't really know how it works, but I still believe it does.
- Secure Connection Preference: Modern browsers use HTTPS in preference to HTTP, where the S stands for secure. You can get extensions which ensure that you use the secure option, if there is one.
How to get Browser Extensions?
The details of how to install extensions vary slightly between browsers. I am including here some links to instructions with pictures for some popular browsers:
Emergency Contacts on your phone
It is helpful for us, as a local u3a, if you can put some information on you phone about who to call in the case of an emergency. There are various ways to do this. Both of the main types of smartphone have built-in facilities to do this:
There are are also specific apps you can install that keep information about contacts and medical details accessible on the lockscreen of your phone, e.g.
On an android phone, there is also a brute force option, because you can just write your contact on the lockscreen, then it's always there, always visible. Here's a short video on this method.
The national u3a (TAT) used to provide cards, so that members could carry their own emergency contact information, but they have discontinued those. I does not seem fair to require the local u3a to administer emergency contact information, either collectively at the group level. Remember that this is information about a third party who has no direct relationship with the u3a, and may not even be aware that someone wants to store their information. It's, at the same time, too complex and too trivial. Requesting that individual members carry their own emergency contact information works out to be much cleaner, in the information age.
Group Leaders
- Group Leader Alias: This is just a link which redirects email from a group address, in our domain: u3ameltonmowbray.org.uk, to your personal email address. It looks like an email address, but it has no mailbox, and you can't send email from it. When such an alias is set up, you will be asked, by our mail provider, one.com, to confirm your email address. They just want to know that there is a person on the end of the alias, who will react to the emails. Confirming your personal address is a precondition for the alias coming into effect. You may also be asked to confirm your email again, if the definition of the alias changes, e.g. when a leadership team changes. This is a relatively simple test. We trust that this is not too onerous.
- Group Mailing Lists: You will want to keep a mailing list, to send messages to your group members. A simple way of doing this is in a mailing list in your email program. These are sometimes organized as group entries in your address book. You are just grouping a set of email addresses under one title, for convenience. You probably use this already for other groups.
- Group Mailing Lists and GDPR: However, there is a problem with using a mailing list. If you send an email in the normal way with your mailing list as the To: recipient, all the recipients can see all the other addresses in the list. That might be in breach of our data protection policy. There are two current solutions for this:
- Agreement within the group: If all the group members on the mailing list agree, that they are willing to share their email address with all the other members of the group. Then, you have effectively modified your data protection contract, adding an exception for the group members. You can get your members to sign a waiver, and preserve this decision on paper, or you can just maintain it as a verbal agreement. You can, then, carry on using a mailing list, as usual, and all group members can, also, use the same list of emails to communicate within the group. This probably works best for smaller groups.
- BCC, blank carbon copy: The email format has several different types of recipient. You can add someone who is not the addressee with a carbon copy, CC: field. The metaphor is probably from internal memos. A BCC: field was originally included to send a copy that the addressee (To:) doesn't see. I guess that copy might have been for your boss. You can turn that logic on its head, and only include your mailing list in the BCC: field. Then nobody sees who else received the email. That's good for GDPR compliance, but it's a bit tricky explaining why it's a good thing. As this is a standard business practice, there are various web pages explaining both the method and the logic:
- Mail Merge: this is the general title for a method of mail distribution, that is intended to send personalised emails, based on a template email and a list of names. The application that it was meant for was bulk emails for marketing. Because one email is sent, automatically, to each recipient, the mailing list does not appear in the email, so there is no risk that an unauthorised recipient will receive it. As can be expected, there are numerous commercial packages which offer this, alongside other tools to support marketing and customer relations, but the basic functionality is also offered for free, or at least at no extra cost, as an extension to email environments or embedded within office applications. Like the BCC method, this is, to some extent, subverting an application with a different purpose, to maintain GDPR privacy conventions. You are free to take this as an explanation of why it may feel, as if a tiny bit of trickery is required to get mail merge packages to do what we want. (Why is it called mail merge, when it's for distribution and disemination?)
- Thunderbird Extension: Thunderbird is a free open source email environment, provided by Mozilla, who also make the Firefox browser. Mail merge is offered as an extension to download. The email template is written as any other email, but with tokens that can be substituted for entries in a table, like a minimalist database. Then the extension can be called to send a personalised email, on the basis of one email for each entry in the table. Several options are available for the table of names, including CSV (comma-separated values).
- Microsoft Office: There is a suggested method for achieving a mail merge method in Office, it involves co-ordinating Outlook, Excel and Word. However, this is cumbersome and, probably, overkill. The basic functions that you need are already present in Word, and any use of Outlook, or any database package can remain implicit, as far at the user is concerned.
- Google Workspace: The mail merge method that Google offers relies on coordinating packages in Google Workspace. That's fine if you have a Google Workspace licence. Actually, Google do have a programme to make free licences available to charities. So we include some details here: