Your contact profile is your record in the association’s CRM. It includes your name, address, phone numbers, job title, and other details your association tracks. In the Portal, you can review and update that information yourself.
Before You Begin
Prerequisites
- You are signed in to the Portal, and your sign-in is linked to a contact record.
- Your association has set up a profile form for members. If it has not, this page is empty, and you should contact the association.
Update Your Profile
- Go to My Profile › Manage My Profile.
- Review the fields on the form. Your association chooses which fields appear, their names, and their order, so the form can look different in each Portal.
- If your email address field is blank, the Portal fills it with the address you used to sign in. You can still change it if the form allows.
- Make your changes.
- Choose the form’s save control.
Result
The page confirms that your profile was saved. Depending on how you arrived there, the Portal then sends you to one of three places: the page you were trying to reach before you were asked to update your profile, a page your association set for members completing their profile for the first time, or, most often, the Portal home page.
Tip
Changing your email address here updates it on your contact record, including event registrations and other records already linked to that contact. Those records keep working, and the email change does not affect them.
Your profile usually displays an address from a specific address field, such as Home Address. If your address update does not seem to take effect, check whether your association’s form includes that field. Editing a different address, or using a form that leaves out the address field your profile displays, will not change what appears. When you update an address and save, Rhythm also verifies it and records its map coordinates. That happens only when you change the address, not when you update other details on the form.
If your form has separate First Name, Middle Name, and Last Name fields, be careful with last names that have more than one word. When you edit the combined Name field and then click into Middle Name or Last Name, Rhythm cannot always tell whether the words are a multi-word last name or a middle name and last name, so part of your last name can move into Middle Name. If your association instead asks you to enter a middle name in your First Name or Last Name field, that value becomes part of that field everywhere it is used, including registrations and purchases.
If a social profile link on your profile is wrong, such as a Twitter or LinkedIn URL, ask your association to add that field to the profile form. Once the field is on the form, you can open your profile and clear or correct the value yourself.
Your First Time Updating Your Profile
The first time you save your profile, your association may show a longer form for new members if it set one up. After that first save, you always see the shorter update form instead. Rhythm chooses the form based on whether your profile has ever been saved in the Portal, not on how your record was created. If staff created your record for you, you still see the longer form the first time you visit.
Tip
If you are new to the Portal and finish this longer form, you may be sent to a page your association set up for new members, such as a page where you can complete a membership. If nothing happens, or you expected something else to happen, ask the association what should come next.
Fields You Cannot Change
Some fields on your profile may be locked:
- Your name and your credentials. If your association restricts changes to these fields, they become read-only after you have saved your profile at least once. You can still edit them the first time you save your profile, but after that, only association staff can change them for you in the Console instead of the Portal.
- A few demographic fields, if your form includes them, are never saved from this page, even if you fill them in. If your association collects that information, it collects it another way.
Everything else on the form is normally open to change, including your address, phone numbers, and job title.
Warning
Your record’s status and organization do not appear on this form, but other Portal pages can still change them. Setting your own organization gives you access to that organization’s other people; see Manage Your Contact Information in the Portal for what that means.
Your Profile Photo
If your form includes a photo field, uploads are not restricted to a particular file type or size. The storage behind the field allows files as large as several gigabytes. In practice, very large images, such as a full-size headshot of many megabytes, can appear to upload successfully and then fail to display after you save, leaving a broken image. For the most reliable results, resize the photo to a few megabytes or less before you upload it. Use a square or portrait-oriented image, because both shapes display best on your profile and in directories.
Tip
If your photo does not display correctly after saving, try uploading a different image file. If that does not help, upload any other image first, and then upload your intended photo again; this has cleared the problem in some cases.
Photos imported into your profile from another source use the same public storage location as photos you upload directly. That lets them display correctly in your association’s public directories without requiring visitors to sign in. If an older imported photo still does not display to visitors who are not signed in, ask your association to raise it with Rhythm Support.
If Saving Fails
If the form cannot save your changes, it tells you the save was unsuccessful and keeps what you typed so you can try again. Common causes include a duplicate email address already used by another contact, when your association checks for that on the Portal, or another validation rule on one of the fields. Correct the field named in the message, then save again.
If you fill in Work Address or Home Address, you need to enter a complete address with at least the first address line and the postal code. A city or state alone is not enough. If a change to your contact role does not seem to save, ask your association to check that the Contact Roles field is included on the active profile form. Removing and re-adding that field has resolved this for some accounts.