My investment club is a member of bivio, I was trying to
join & it ask for the authorization code. What is that????
    lovejklm@omega1w.net

June Lovelace writes:
> My investment club is a member of bivio, I was trying to
> join & it ask for the authorization code. What is that????

You got an invite via email. It contains a link with an authorization
code to join your club. Simply click on the link and follow the
instructions. If you are already registered with bivio, don't try to
re-register, just login. You use the same bivio User ID for all your
bivio clubs.

The email may be in your spam folder.

If you can't find it, contact your officers, and have them go to
Administration > Invites.

Cheers,
Rob

Rob Nagler wrote:
> June Lovelace writes:
> > My investment club is a member of bivio, I was trying to
> > join & it ask for the authorization code. What is that????
>
> You got an invite via email. It contains a link with an authorization
> code to join your club. Simply click on the link and follow the
> instructions. If you are already registered with bivio, don't try to
> re-register, just login. You use the same bivio User ID for all your
> bivio clubs.
>

This solution is impractical. A month ago I initiated, and
sent out 20 invitations. As of a week ago, no one had
joined; so I personally/directly e-mailed reminders. Now 2
got in, but met the "authorization code" block. At this
point their invitations are either in the Recycle Bin, or so
far down their Inbox they couldn't find them.
The above solution doesn't address WHY they get the code
request, nor what they SHOULD do.
> The email may be in your spam folder.
>
> If you can't find it, contact your officers, and have them go to
> Administration > Invites.
>
> Cheers,
> Rob

Thomas Hardy wrote:
> Rob Nagler wrote:
> > June Lovelace writes:
> > > My investment club is a member of bivio, I was trying to
> > > join & it ask for the authorization code. What is that????
> >
> > You got an invite via email. It contains a link with an authorization
> > code to join your club. Simply click on the link and follow the
> > instructions. If you are already registered with bivio, don't try to
> > re-register, just login. You use the same bivio User ID for all your
> > bivio clubs.
> >
>
> This solution is impractical. A month ago I initiated, and
> sent out 20 invitations. As of a week ago, no one had
> joined; so I personally/directly e-mailed reminders. Now 2
> got in, but met the "authorization code" block. At this
> point their invitations are either in the Recycle Bin, or so
> far down their Inbox they couldn't find them.
> The above solution doesn't address WHY they get the code
> request, nor what they SHOULD do.
> > The email may be in your spam folder.
> >
> > If you can't find it, contact your officers, and have them go to
> > Administration > Invites.
> >
> > Cheers,
> > Rob
Well, I AM an officer. If I don't know, what would I tell
them? If I invite them again, they'll just encounter the
same problem. Again, the problem isn't being addressed nor
answered. I ask bivio, and they tell me to contact an
officer. I feel like I'm dealing with AT&T's Indian help
desk.

Tom,

I can certainly understand your frustration. I hate it when things I don't
understand go awry. Please understand that bivio has been swamped by clubs
switching over, and it's also tax time. Their hands are full. These guys
are really good, and I know they will give you some attention as soon as
they can.

In the meantime, let's go with a couple things. First, have you polled your
members to see how many are having trouble? Is it just June Lovelace? Or
are their others? You said it yourself that after 3 weeks, you didn't have
any takers. After sending a reminder, you had two that got logged on. Find
out who is having issues, and ask who their Internet Service Provider (ISP)
is.

Let's go with Rob's suggestion about the spam folder. About 90% of the
problems with invitations is caused by the ISP blocking the bivio
invitation. I don't have a spam folder, but people with AOL and some of the
others do. You would find it with your Inbox, Outbox, Draft Folder, etc.
All a person would have to do is click on the Spam folder and see if there's
anything from Bivio in that folder.

If your members don't have a Spam folder, then they need to call their ISP
and let them know that a message from www.bivio.com is not getting through.
The ISP can check its server to find and forward the message, or they can
adjust their server to let bivio messages come through. I'm not yelling,
but I want to make this clear: THIS IS NOT BIVIO'S FAULT.

We sure wish it was! Their tech support is much nicer than some of the
ISPs. <grin> Anyway, this is how we have fixed this problem in the past. It
happens. I did have to stomp my foot with the ISP, but I can tell you from
personal experience...the squeaky wheel gets the grease!

If you can't get anywhere using this method, write to support@bivio.com.
Club Cafe is a meeting place for members. It's not always manned by tech
support or the owner, especially duing tax season. All we can do on this
board is hold your hand!

Good luck to you!

Lynn Ostrem, VP and Education Chair
garbagecop@earthlink.net
Crow River Investment Club
www.bivio.com/crowriver

Hi, Thomas!

Welcome to bivio!

My club is still in the 90 day free trial period so I may
not have a complete answer to your question. I can only
speak from my brief experience of registering the club.

After I set up the new account, I invited the rest of my
club members to join "online" by sending an invitation to
each of them. Most responded on the same day. A couple
needed to be reminded (one member was reminded 8 times
before he finally woke up to smell the profits!!!!) and I
had to re-send their invitations. All are now "online". We
did not experience any problems with the "authorization
code" that you encountered.

I found page 24 of the following guide to be helpful:
http://www.bivio.com/f/bivio-guide.pdf

Give the invites another try and if that doesn't work there
are several frequent cappuccino drinkers in the Club Cafe
who will provide a nudge to support to resolve your issue.
In the meantime, I assure you that bivio is definitely not
outsourcing their support team to a third world nation! Tax
season has them inundated at the moment... this is not an
excuse, just a logical explanation of why you might not have
gotten a quick response from the team.

Best wishes,
Bob Hooper
New Pueblo Investment Club
Tucson, AZ

Thomas Hardy wrote:
> Thomas Hardy wrote:
> > Rob Nagler wrote:
> > > June Lovelace writes:
> > > > My investment club is a member of bivio, I was trying to
> > > > join & it ask for the authorization code. What is that????
> > >
> > > You got an invite via email. It contains a link with an authorization
> > > code to join your club. Simply click on the link and follow the
> > > instructions. If you are already registered with bivio, don't try to
> > > re-register, just login. You use the same bivio User ID for all your
> > > bivio clubs.
> > >
> >
> > This solution is impractical. A month ago I initiated, and
> > sent out 20 invitations. As of a week ago, no one had
> > joined; so I personally/directly e-mailed reminders. Now 2
> > got in, but met the "authorization code" block. At this
> > point their invitations are either in the Recycle Bin, or so
> > far down their Inbox they couldn't find them.
> > The above solution doesn't address WHY they get the code
> > request, nor what they SHOULD do.
> > > The email may be in your spam folder.
> > >
> > > If you can't find it, contact your officers, and have them go to
> > > Administration > Invites.
> > >
> > > Cheers,
> > > Rob
> Well, I AM an officer. If I don't know, what would I tell
> them? If I invite them again, they'll just encounter the
> same problem. Again, the problem isn't being addressed nor
> answered. I ask bivio, and they tell me to contact an
> officer. I feel like I'm dealing with AT&T's Indian help
> desk.

Thomas Hardy writes:
> This solution is impractical. A month ago I initiated, and
> sent out 20 invitations. As of a week ago, no one had
> joined; so I personally/directly e-mailed reminders. Now 2
> got in, but met the "authorization code" block. At this
> point their invitations are either in the Recycle Bin, or so
> far down their Inbox they couldn't find them.
> The above solution doesn't address WHY they get the code
> request, nor what they SHOULD do.

One of the difficulties we have at bivio is making it easy-yet-secure
to join a club. We initially had 7 day invitation periods. We
extended this to two weeks, and finally four weeks. We find one month
works for most clubs, since monthly meetings are the norm.

Sometimes club members are very afraid of opening emails. There is a
lot of "phishing" on the internet, and it might look like someone is
trying to break into their account. Another thing that happens is
people get afraid there's a lot of work involved in registering.

We have talked about extending the invitation period to 8 weeks, but
tell the users that is only valid for four weeks. This would help out
treasurers, because members often wait till the "last day", which is
often actually after the last day, sometimes by a week or two. :-)

You might set up a laptop connected to the internet at a meeting, and
register all the members there. It's a bit more work than having
members click on the link in the email messages we send out. However,
it's not that hard. You just have to know the authorization code for
each member, and have them register and type in the authorization
code.

As you may have guessed, the vast majority of clubs don't have a
problems registering their members. No system is perfect, but we've
spent 8 years improving bivio so what's there is near optimal given
the broad slice of the world's population we serve.

Cheers,
Rob

> You might set up a laptop connected to the internet at a meeting, and
> register all the members there.

Thanks for one more resolution, Rob. Don't know why I didn't think of that.
I can relate to June and others since I get invitations to join clubs to
build their homepages. As computer savvy as I think I am, I've experienced
log on problems on occasion, usually when I haven't done it for a long time.
The resolution was always due to my own inability to read the directions
properly. I agree that it's rather daunting for someone new.

I have new members coming into our club. I think I'll take your advice,
send invitations, but have them sign up in my presence so I can see if there
is a specific place where they get hung up. If I can find one, I'll report
back to you.

Welcome back!

Lynn Ostrem, VP & Education Chair
garbagecop@earthlink.net
Crow River Investment Club
www.bivio.com/crowriver