Welcome to the Scribes area of the Suffolk Provincial Grand Chapter Website. We are always looking for ways to make this website more useful to you and will welcome new ideas and content. If you have any suggestions or items of general news or events please send them to us.
Please go the Scribes Area Drop Down Menu to Upload your Summons, where you will also find The Toast List along with Useful Information, Forms, etc.
HERMES
June 2020
Dear Scribe E,
Firstly on behalf of the Province can we thank you for all the unseen work that you do on behalf of your Lodge/Chapter; but we are now going to ask you if you would take on a little bit more.
The Suffolk Provincial secretariat is pleased to introduce some exciting changes to the way in which we communicate electronically around the Province and carry out many of our administrative functions.
You will shortly receive an email from the provincial office containing four pieces of information –
• A link to a website
• A new email address/user name unique to your Lodge/Chapter
• A unique password
• Some notes of guidance
We have now set up specific email addresses for each of the individual Lodges, Chapters and most of the Active Provincial Officers who hold office for more than one year. These email addresses will be permanently linked to the office in question and will be passed by the office holder to their successor, thus ensuring continuity. Those who are Secretary or Scribe E of more than one Lodge or Chapter will receive a separate notification for each.
Most importantly, use of the new addresses will form the first stage of the introduction of project Hermes of which you are already aware.
In addition, and going forward, they will provide other extremely useful features including –
• Robust and secure email – we are using the world’s largest and most secure email solution.
• Improved communications with the Provincial Executive – you will always know the email address to send your communications to.
• Ease of management – the email account passes on to your successor providing a record of all previous Lodge or Chapter administrative activities.
• The Provincial Office will no longer need to maintain a database of each Secretary’s/Scribes E’s personal email address.
• They can be used for all your Lodge or Chapter Communications – this will be your email account for all Masonic activities.
• HERMES – when you sign into your Lodge/Chapter account on Hermes, this will be your username and will be passed on to your successor, protecting your own personal email account.
• Future plans – in time, we plan to have further functionality, such as document storage requiring password protected access; this will make sure we can maintain security.
• Highly accessible – you can use any computer, tablet or Smartphone to access your email account.
You will find that when Hermes is introduced it will include many invaluable features to assist you with the administration of your Lodge or Chapter but it will require a certain level of computer competence; equivalent to internet shopping or online banking.
You may therefore decide that this is an opportunity to solicit the assistance of your Assistant Secretary or Scribe E, or another member who has the necessary skills, to aid you with this transition.
We fully appreciate that you all currently have personal email addresses which are used for Masonic purposes but would strongly ask you to adopt this new initiative which you will find has significant advantages going forward.
Regards, Roger and Nick
