479 NEWS
Coming Soon: New Member Dashboard
At our most recent General Membership meeting our web development team provided a demonstration of two upcoming new websites for Local 479, the result of more than a year of planning. The first is a new public-facing website (a preview of which was posted yesterday), the second a members-only site, referred to as the Member Dashboard. [photograph in header to this note by member Paige Jarvis].
Let’s take a look at just a few of the highlights from the upcoming new Member Dashboard.
The login screen for the new Member Dashboard:
Jobs Section
Availability List Online
An important upgrade to our Member Dashboard allows each member to administer their availability on a weekly basis, with day-by-day granularity using a simple checklist. This page streamlines the availability list building process for users in the field and for our office administrators and we believe that users will find this particularly useful.
Crew Lists
PDFs of crew lists provided to the local by productions.
Production Lists
A frequently updated list of current feature productions, television productions, and the rumors list (which depends on information provided by all of our members to remain relevant).
Agreements Section
This section hosts all the contractual agreements between our local and the studios, from ASA to HBO, including commercials and low budget productions. These are the same contracts that your Business Agent and Field Reps use for protecting our members and you are encouraged to study the contracts under which you work.
Benefits Section
This section will provide members with information and FAQs in several subsections, including medical insurance, medical reimbursements (including forms), the Annuity and Pension plans, and quite a bit more. The office staff will update the FAQs as necessary so that you may be able to find solutions to your questions when consulting this information in the hours when the office isn’t open (since so many of our members work unusual hours).
Meetings Section
Meetings to previously recorded General Membership and Executive Board meetings are provided in PDF format, along with directions to the local.
Reports Section
Running Reports
Best Boys and Department Keys looking to hire additional crew will be able to run focused searches of the database by craft, availability and other variables associated with member profiles. This new feature will radically improve the experience for our members and the staff who update this data weekly. A standard PDF will still be available from the public website, but we believe you’ll find running reports a far more effective solution. Additional tabs for Special Skills and Special Certifications will provide rich search methods for our users.
FAQs/Policies Section
This handy section provides members with access to PDFs of policy manuals issued by the Local and the International, as well as handbooks and forms. Importantly, this section features the Local 479 Constitution, the rules that define the practices of our local. Every member should familiarize themselves with this document. Note that this section was identified as “FAQs” during early design development (take a look at the other screen shots). The design team will likely rename this section to “Policies” prior to launch.
Contact Section
We encourage members to add the office number and address to your contacts list on your phone so that you never have to look it up, but it’s included here for your convenience. This information is replicated on the public-facing website’s Contact section.
My Account Section
This section allows each member to update their contact information, their crafts and skills, and to view statements of paid and unpaid dues. Something new that’s coming with this update is the ability for members to make payments via the website, allowing working members to take care of their obligations to the local even if they’re working.
Members can look to see how much they’ve paid in 3% assessments and to observe their special craft certifications (note that the office must vet these certifications and will post them for members who need these documents for their craft).
Coming Soon!
We’ve been looking forward to the roll out of this vastly updated Member Dashboard since we began this project in 2015. Our primary mission was to put as much control in our members’ hands, giving you each the tools you need to handle your business quickly and efficiently. We’re in the home stretch now and look forward to providing our users with the best experience possible. There are more improvements on the drawing board and we’ll tackle those once this project has been launched.
