Some email process and format changes...

All email addresses must now be verified before use

One of the unique design decisions we made for OnlineSignupSheet.com is to base all sign ups on families, and not on individual users. We feel that, for most small group logistics, it is the family signing up to participate, whether that be for little league, scouting, or study groups.

When families accept invites to join an OnlineSignupSheet.com group, only one participant in that family usually accepts the invite, which allows us to ensure that family members email address was correct (how else would that family member have accepted the email based invite?). This left any other participant email addresses in that family unverified, that is, we were not sure that email address was correct.

The consequence of that unvalidated email is that the email address could be wrong. In this day and age of email spam and other kinds of unwanted email, online applications like OnlineSignupSheet.com must be careful of their email sending reputation, as silly as that sounds. When we send email to invalid email addresses, or worse yet, someone marks an OnlineSignupSheet.com email as spam, our email reputation is damaged, and some internet service providers could begin to reject emails sent from us.

So, starting today, all email addresses entered for participants in a family must be verified before any email will be sent to that email address from OnlineSignupSheet.com. Once a family accepts the an invite to an OnlineSignupSheet.com invite, all other participants in the family, those with email addresses, will be sent an email asking them to verify their email address. Once they complete that process, that family member will then begin to receive event notices and other normal email from OnlineSignupSheet.com.

Existing email addresses in OnlineSignupSheet.com are assumed to be verified, this change will only affect new families being invited to an OnlineSignupSheet.com group.

Emails now have a name associated with the "From" address

Before this release, all emails from OnlineSignupSheet.com came from a no-reply email address. Although this is not changing, there will now be a name appearing next to or instead of that email address, depending on your email client. Emails for group invites or password required or the new validate email address will show as coming from OnlineSignupSheet.com. Event notice emails will show as coming from the person who sent/signed the event notice email. For example, if George Smith sent an event notice email for his group's upcoming softball game, the "From" field of the email will show as coming from George Smith, but still with the no-reply email address. Note: Replying to any OnlineSignupSheet.com no-reply emails, like the ones noted above, sends the email to an unmonitored email inbox.