Community FAQs
The Sage Nonprofit Solutions online community is a great place to connect with your peers and with Sage. In our forums, you can ask questions, get answers, and share your knowledge and experience. You also browse featured articles, subscribe to our blog, read the latest nonprofit news, post jobs and apply for jobs.
Here are some frequently asked questions. If these do not answer your specific question, please use the Contact Us link at the bottom of the page to submit your question.
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Q. How much does it cost to join the Sage Nonprofit Solutions Online Community?
A. Access to the community is free! The only exceptions are the product-specific forums and the Sage Partner forums. Access to these forums is included at no additional charge as part of your Sage Business Care (or Sage Partner Care) plan for the applicable product.
The community also offers some optional tools and services that you may purchase through an online shopping cart. You will not be charged anything unless you specifically sign up for one of these optional services and purchase it through the shopping cart.
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Q. How do I get started?
A. First, you need to register for the community. Click on the “Sign Up” link at the top of the page and follow the prompts. Then, if you want to access the product-specific forums, you’ll need to add your Sage Nonprofit Solutions account # to your profile. To do that:
- Click on “My Profile” under the “My Sage” tab
- Click on the “Edit Profile” button
- Click on “Organization Information”
- Answer “Yes” to the question “Do you own Sage Fund Accounting or a Sage Fundraising Product”
- Add your account # and click “Verify”. If the account # is valid, you will get the message “Your Sage Nonprofit account number has been verified.”
- Click the Submit button.
If you are having difficulty entering your account #, please see the Troubleshooting section below.
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Q. Will I have to visit the website to check if any new forum topics or comments have been posted? I don’t want to have to go check.
A. No, that won’t be necessary. There are three options to have forum content delivered to you: 1) RSS feeds, 2) email subscription to all topics, and 3) email subscription to individual topics. Choose whatever works best for you.
- On the main forum page, you may subscribe to one or more RSS feeds by clicking the orange RSS icon(s)
for the desired forum(s). The RSS feeds contain all forum content.
- On the main forum page, you may email subscribe to all topics in one or more forums by clicking the envelope icon(s)
for the desired forum(s). When you hover over the icon with your mouse, the tool tip says “Email subscribe to all topics in this forum”.
- By default, you are automatically email subscribed to the individual topics in which you participated. You may also subscribe to other individual topics by clicking the ”Email Subscribe to This Topic” link shown at the top of the message.
If you are having difficulty with RSS subscriptions or email subscriptions, please see the Troubleshooting section below.
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Q. How do I create a blog?
A. When you first create a blog, we take you to a form where you enter a description about your blog and what it is going to be about, etc. After that is set up, you will be able to “Post a New Entry” which allows you to add an actual post or article to your blog. The description you initially enter about your blog will show up as a header, when the user goes in to view your blog.
Once set up, your blog will be displayed as a new tab in your user profile. So if you go to your profile, where you see a tab called “Organization Profile” in the green box, you will see a second tab saying “Blog”.
NOTE: Not every blog post will show up on the Community > Blog page, because that would be potentially too long of a list to display. However, the most popular posts (once they are the newest or get commented on) will float to the top and show up in the “Popular Post” box.
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Q. How do I post a job? The online community seems like a great place to find people with nonprofit and government experience.
A. From the Find menu, select Find an Employee. A form will be display for you submit a job posting. This is a free service!
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Q. How do I update my email address on my profile?
A. Please use the Contact Us link at the bottom of the page to let us know your new email address, and we will be happy to update it for you. Be sure to specify your user name. We do not need your password.
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RSS Feeds
Many people are unfamiliar with RSS feeds. If that describes you, then this section is for you!
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Q. What applications can I use to subscribe to RSS feeds?
A. Many people like to get RSS feeds in their email program. Microsoft Outlook 2007 and Outlook 2010 both support RSS feeds, and so does Mozilla Thunderbird (free). There are even free add-ons for Outlook 2000/XP/2003, which do not natively support RSS. An example is RSS Popper.
Most modern web browsers, including Microsoft Internet Explorer (v7+), Mozilla Firefox, and Apple Safari support RSS. Google Reader is another very popular free RSS reader.
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Q. Microsoft Outlook is a very common email program. Do you have instructions for how to get RSS feeds to show up there?
A. Yes. There are several different ways set this up. We have recorded some videos to show you how easy this is.
• Easiest – Click here to see how to use Firefox to set up RSS feeds so that they will show up in Outlook. [2min, 50 sec]
• Click here to see how to set up RSS feeds directly in Outlook 2007/2010. [2 min, 58 sec]
• Click here to see how to use Internet Explorer to up set up RSS feeds so that they will show up in Outlook. [4 min, 53 sec]
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Troubleshooting
If you are having trouble with the online community, check to see if the issue you are having is listed below. If not, please use the Contact Us link at the bottom of the page and we’ll be happy to help.
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Q. Why can’t I access the product-specific or partner forums?
A. There are a few reasons why this may happen.
- You created a “Generic Profile Account”. You must have a Sage Customer Account Profile to access the product-specific or partner forums. The Generic Profiles cannot access these forums. If you need to change this, please use the Contact Us link at the bottom of the page let us know. Be sure to specify your user name. We do not need your password.
- You have not entered a valid account # in your profile. To do this, see the “How do I get started?” question above.
- You do not have a current Sage Business Care plan (or Sage Partner Care plan ) for the applicable product. Please call 866-658-2378 or use the Contact Us link at the bottom of the page for assistance.
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Q. Why do I have to log in every time I visit the website? Why won’t it remember me?
A. As long as you do not click the “Logout” link, then you should remain logged in. Simply close the tab or browser when you are done with your visit. If this does not resolve your issue, then check your browser settings. If your browser is configured to clear cookies or active logins when you close it, then you will be logged out regardless of the settings on Sage's end.
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Q. I subscribed to RSS feeds using Internet Explorer, but I’m not getting any RSS items to show up in Outlook. What’s wrong?
A. Internet Explorer uses the Microsoft Common Feed List. The likely problem is that the “Sync RSS Feeds to the Common Feed List" option in Outlook was not checked at the time you subscribed to the feeds. Checking the box later will not automatically add the feed in Outlook. To resolve the issue:
• First make sure the “Sync RSS Feeds to the Common Feed List" box is checked.
-- In Outlook 2007, look in Tools>Options>”Other” tab>Advanced Options.
-- In Outlook 2010, look in File>Options>Advanced.
• Then open Internet Explorer and press Ctrl+Shift+J to display the RSS feeds to which you’ve already subscribed.
• Right-click each feed and select “Delete” to remove the feed.
• Then re-subscribe to the feed. It should now show up automatically in Outlook. Look in the Navigation Pane for “RSS Feeds”. If there is a plus sign next to it, click it to expand this section and show all of the feeds to which you are subscribed.
See this video for more info. Skip ahead to 3 minutes into the video to see how this problem is solved.
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Q. RSS Feeds are disabled in Outlook for me. I confirmed this by right-clicking the RSS Feeds item in my Outlook Navigation Pane. I can see that the “Add a New RSS Feed” item is grayed out.
A. Your IT department may have a group policy in place that prevents you from subscribing to RSS feeds with Outlook. Or, more likely, it’s disabled because that’s how it was configured with a default administrative installation of Outlook. There is a registry setting that controls whether RSS is enabled in Outlook or not. WARNING: Editing registry settings can be dangerous business if you don’t know what you’re doing, and your IT department may not approve. Modify your registry settings at your own risk. The registry key is HKEY_CURRENT_USER -> Software -> Microsoft -> Office -> 12.0 -> Outlook -> Options -> RSS. In there, you’ll see an item named “Disabled”. Right-click it and select Delete.
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Q. I’ve got RSS feeds set up, but they take a long time to refresh. Why? Is there anything I can do to speed this up?
A. RSS update frequency is typically controlled by the RSS reader you are using. RSS publishers can, optionally, set a maximum frequency at which a check for new postings should occur. Sage currently has this set to 2 minutes. To see if your RSS reader allows you to change the frequency of updates, see the Help documentation for your RSS Reader. If you are using Microsoft Outlook, see http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/outlook-help/change-settings-for-rss-feeds-HA001229947.aspx?CTT=3 for more information.
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Q. After I read a particular RSS item in Outlook 2007/2010, it gets marked as unread. When someone posts additional comments on that thread, I don’t get an additional RSS item. Instead, the original RSS item is updated with the additional comments. However, the item is still marked as unread. How am I supposed to know when updates have been made?
A. There is an option in Outlook for that. You need to select the “Any RSS feed item that is updated appears as a new item” box.
• In Outlook 2007, look in Tools>Options>”Other” tab>Advanced Options.
• In Outlook 2010, look in File>Options>Advanced.
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Q. I email subscribed to a forum, but I am not getting any email notifications. Why not?
A. There are a few reasons why this may happen.
• There may not have been any new topics or comments posted since you email subscribed.
• The email notifications come from nps.community@sage.com on behalf of the specific forum to which you are subscribed for example: fundaccounting@sagenpsforums.com. To prevent forum email from being classified as spam add nps.community@sage.com and any specific [forum name]@sagenpsforums.com to your safe or trusted senders list. You may also want to white list the domain sagenpsforums.com to enable emails to pass through the security and spam controls your organization may have set up.
• If you were getting email notifications at one time (for a product-specific forum or a partner forum) but it just stopped working, then your organization’s Sage Business Care plan (or Sage Partner Care plan) may have expired. Please call 866-658-2378 or use the Contact Us link at the bottom of the page for assistance.