Facebook

Here are a few ways to use facebook with CaringMeals:
1. Become a Fan
Keep up-to-date on the latest news and announcements.
2. Invite your Friends to Bring Meals
You can "share" your plan on facebook and invite your facebook friends to bring a meal directly from CaringMeals. On the "Invite Friends" page, look at the facebook section for a link to facebook.
In the future, we are looking at further integration with facebook including:

• Posting updates to your feed
  
• Profile Pictures
  
• Signon with facebook email/password
  

If you have suggestions or questions regarding facebook and CaringMeals, let us know!

Importing Email Addresses

Virtually every major email system (Yahoo, Google, and Hotmail) can export email addresses (Contacts) to an Outlook CSV format. CaringMeals can now import Outlook CSV files, so you can save typing and quickly invite all your Friends to bring meals!

Here are the steps:

1. Export your Contacts to an Outlook CSV file. When prompted to save the file, choose your "My Documents" or "Documents" folder.
   
   Here are examples from the 3 major email providers:
   
   • Gmail
     
     
     
     • Click Contacts | Export
     
     
     • Select Outlook CSV and click "Export"
       
     
     
     
     
   
   
   • Yahoo
     
     
     
     • Open your Contact List and select Export
       
     
     
     • Click Export Now next to "Microsoft Outlook"
       
     
     
     
     
   
   
   • Hotmail
     Open your Contacts and Click Manage | Export
   
   
   • For other email systems, look for an "Export" function, and select "Outlook CSV" when asked for the format to export. If you have questions, please check with your email provider.
     
   
   
   
   


2. Login to CaringMeals, Open the Plan you are coordinating, and click INVITE FRIENDS TO HELP. You will see this screen:


3. Click the "Choose File" button, and select the file from step #1 in your "My Documents", "Documents", or whichever folder you saved the file.


4. Click UPLOAD, and then you should see a screen like this:If you see one of the following messages:
   - File too big
   - No Addresses found
   - Not a CSV file
   Please correct your file, and try again.
   


5. Enter a note to your Friends, and then click SEND!

This is another feature which was requested by our YOU, our users - Keep sending us your feedback and suggestions! We want to keep providing features which help you coordinate more meals, in less time, with less stress!

Who did I Invite?

As your friend list grows, sometimes you forget who you already invited to a Plan. No need to worry - when you click "INVITE FRIENDS TO HELP" and look at your list of friends, the "@" will be your guide. If you see "@" next to your Friend's name, they have already been invited. (Even if someone else invited that friend to the Plan, you will see the "@" symbol!)

Do I have to Register??

On CaringMeals, we ask you to create a username and password, before entering the site. Sometimes this may feel like a hassle, but here are all the benefits that we can deliver because you register:

- Friends/Address book: The people on your Friends list on CaringMeals are your addressbook. When it comes time to invite others to bring meals, you know exactly who in your circle of Friends can bring meals. You can even find and add new friends on CaringMeals, which you might not have in your personal email list.

- Security: No anonymous users means that you can control who sees your private information. On other sites that do not require registration, people can come and go, but there is no real record of who viewed your information - CaringMeals is secure.

- Friends' Activity Feed: On your "My Meals" page, you will see a stream of activity (similar to facebook), which shows all of the meals, comments, and plans your friends are posting on CaringMeals. You can keep up on the lastest news, and find opportunities to help bring meals.

- Email Delivery: By verifying your email, we can ensure that the important meal reminders will go to a valid email address (not a mistyped address).

- Saved Settings: Under your profile ("My Profile" link), you can save simple information about yourself such as full name, phone, food likes (so others know what to cook for you), and email preferences. Because this is stored in our database, you don't have to retype this information each time you visit CaringMeals.

- Personalized: At the top of your screen, you will see Recently Viewed Plans. Because you login, we can show you the Plans you viewed most recently. Just one-click, and you can see all the details. If you are coordinating several Plans, this is a great time-saver.

The convenience of not registering may appear to be an advantage, but it leaves many features lacking. By completing our quick registration process, CaringMeals becomes a secure, reliable, and fun place to coordinate all your meals!

If you have any questions, please feel free to contact us at caringmeals@caringmeals.com.

More Friends!

The new "Copy to My Friends" feature is one of the most exciting and powerful tools on CaringMeals. Read on, and I'm sure you will see why...

Here is a scenario:
1. Your Friend coordinates meals on CaringMeals for someone in your group.
2. A few weeks later, another person in your group needs meals, and you would like to coordinate the meals this time.
3. You want to invite everyone who helped the first time, but you don't want to have to find and type all of their email addresses.
What do you do??

There is a Solution!
1. Open the Plan your Friend coordinated before.
2. On the right side, under the "Activity Summary" area, you will see the link "Copy to My Friends" in the Visited This Page section

(This link is not visible to the Coordinator, since all of the people on the list are already friends with the Coordinator)
3. Click "Copy to My Friends" and in a few seconds, all of the Friends listed below will be copied to your Friends list.

The next time you want to coordinate meals, you will be able to quickly invite all of the Friends who helped with the previous plan. Without knowing or typing an email address, you can instantly expand your network of Friends.
Just another way CaringMeals helps you coordinate more meals, in less time, with less stress!

No Comments?

Comments are one of the best ways to keep everyone informed of the latest news on your plan.
Here are a few notes on using Comments:
- Comments are emailed to the coordinator and each person who signed up to bring a meal. (You will not receive an email notification of your own comment)
- The comments are visible to everyone who can view the plan (All of the coordinator's friends)
- When your friends go to http://caringmeals.com/mymeals.php, they will see all of your comments under their "Friends' Activity" tab.

We are working on ways to further improve comments as a communication tool - stay tuned!

You 've Got Mail!

You create a plan, schedule a few meals and invite 20 friends. Then you wait... And wait... Only 3 or 4 people view the plan (you can see on the right side). What is the problem?

1. People don't check their email often (or at all) - Many of my friends (and I'm sure many of yours) do not regularly check their email.
Solution: Call your friends who have not logged in to CaringMeals. If you see others at a meeting (church group, baby shower, party, etc.), just remind them to check their email!

2. Spam Blockers - We take precautions to make sure our emails do not raise suspicions of Spam Blockers, but sometimes overzealous programs can flag our emails as Spam.
Solution: Ask your friends to check their Spam Folder. Also, all of our emails come from caringmeals@caringmeals.com, so you can suggest others add caringmeals@caringmeals.com to their address book.

3. Sign up on behalf of your friends - If you know someone will be unlikely to check their email, but they want to bring a meal, you can use our "On Behalf" feature to signup for a meal.
Solution: See the blog entry No Email, No Problem.

The concept of coordinating meals on the Internet is still a new concept. Getting your group to adopt this new way of doing things may take some time at first, but in the end, we are confident everyone will agree this is a much better (more efficient) way to coordinate meals!

What do You Like?

One of the challenges in bringing a meal for someone else is choosing foods that they will like. Now, when you signup or edit your profile, you can tell everyone what you like (and don't):



How do you use this information? On a meal plan, everyone will be able to see the likes/dislikes of each receiver (if they updated their profile). This will make it easier to choose and prepare a meal everyone will enjoy.

Go ahead and update your profile today!

No Email, No Problem

Do you know someone who wants to bring a meal, but isn't an email user? No problem. With our "On Behalf" feature, you can signup on behalf of someone else. Here's how it works:

1. Let's pretend, that Carla tells me that she wants to bring a meal on November 2nd. She isn't an email user, so she can't access CaringMeals.com and sign up herself.

2. I login to CaringMeals.com, open the plan, and click "BRING MEAL" next to November 2nd.

3. I'll see a screen as shown in the picture above. I enter "Carla" in the box, and her phone number in the comments (so she can be contacted if needed).

That's it! When others view the meal schedule, they'll see something like this:

Everyone can see that I signed up, but Carla is the person actually bringing the meal.

My Friends are Your Friends

One of the most powerful features of CaringMeals is the ability to easily find friends.
Wherever you see a person's name, you can click on it and see their profile information (if you are not their friend, you will have to send a friend request). As you scroll down the page on your friend's profile you will see their list of friends. See someone you know? Just click "Send Friend Request" and they will be added to your friend list!

This can help when you share meal coordinating responsibilities with someone else. If your friend coordinates a Plan and invites 30 people, you can simply click on your friend's name (Under "Who Is Coordinating These Meals?") and send friend requests to the people you know.
This can save time entering email addresses, and help you find new friends who can help bring meals!

How Many Friends to Invite?

When creating a new Plan and inviting friends to bring meals, people often wonder - How many friends should I invite?

I recommend basing the number of invitations you send on the number of meals you have scheduled. A good guideline is:

Invitations Sent = 3 x Meals Scheduled

For example, if you have 10 meals, plan to invite about 30 people.

Why invite so many people? It is likely that a certain number of people you invite will not check their email (infrequent computer users). Others may be away for a few days or on vacation. Some may open and view your Plan, but be unable to bring a meal on any of the days. So by inviting many more people than meals, you are much more likely to find people to bring meals on all the days you scheduled.

It is great to see a schedule of meals with a friend's name next to each one!