I'm more and more impressed with Visual Pro Matrix

In addition to the Donor Manager, I've also been working on another major software project. It's an update to an Academic Records Management program that I've been working on at various schools in various versions over the past 10 years.

For this latest version, I decided to build it on the Visual Pro-Matrix framework. Although the learning curve is not insiginificant, the more and more I work with Pro-Matrix, the more I like it.

Basically, it is an add-on to Visual FoxPro that helps manage the development of complex software projects. It is a framework, an advanced data dictionary, plus a very rich set of object libraries that can really enhance the development of programs.

I don't like the way that it does everything, but everything is customizable it has a tremendous feature set. It is going to be a major asset to this software.

I'm writing this for Wesley Biblical Seminary in Jackson, Mississippi (www.wbs.edu). We're making it as flexible as possible so that other schools who might have need of a program like this could benefit as well.

If you track things like this, it has a similar feature set as TROUSERS (www.trousers.org), but goes beyond it in a number of area (way beyond it in several areas).

If you have a need for database programming, I'd recommend taking a look at ProMatrix. They are also working on a .NET version and a ASP.NET version as well to help automate .NET development for the desktop and the web.

It can use about any back end database (native Fox Tables, SQL Server, MySQL, Oracle, Sybase, etc.), and fully supports an n-tier architecture (if you know what that means, you know why it is important).

New version of High Impact E-mail has been released

For the past several years, I've been using a really great program called "High Impact E-Mail." This program works as an add-in to Outlook and Outlook Express and give very nice, very professional predefined html e-mail templates.

I notice the other day that they have a new version out (version 3.0). Read about it here.

Highly recommended.

I noticed that this new version includes personalized html emails. What fun! Actually, that's a feature that is in the newest Donor Manager (as I write this it hasn't been released yet -- still some more testing to do before public release), but the professional templates they give are are simply beautiful.

I know that some people dislike html email (really dislike it!), but I like it, and this is a great app to help the design challenged, like me!

New feature from Microsoft Word

I ran across this on reviewing.blogspot.com and I couldn't resist.

Agressive SPAM filters

Now, here's an interesting thing.

I got a Donor Manager bug report from a user. I hit reply and sent a note back to the user.

Boom. I get an error message from AOL saying that I was sending unsolicited bulk email and the message was rejected.

The interesting thing is, I was sending the mail through my mail.donormanager.com mail server to a user @sil.org. The only place AOL was involved was that I was using an AOL connection to get on the internet.

Now, where is AOL involved in this, I'd like to know. As near as I can tell, the message never passed through an AOL e-mail server.

And, I asked the recipient if he was using AOL (eg: was his @sil.org account being forwarded to an AOL account). The answer was no.

Go figure.

So, I sent re-sent the same message. It bounced again.

I wrote a new message (with essentially the same content) ... it passed through.

I got on tech support chat with AOL. The guy who tried to help me was very nice, but he was stumped as well. After he sent me a canned reply about the evils of trying to use AOL to send spam (I had made it very clear in my previous chat entry that this was a single message, typed personally by me, send to just one person), I realized that while he was polite, he was clueless.

select * from AOLTechSupport where clue > 0
returns 0 rows

What's on tap ...

I've been working, as I've had opportunity, on a couple of nice additions to the Donor Manager.

First of all, the personalized e-mail sending routines are almost done, or at least ready for testing. Basically, it will generate individual personalized email messages in either plain text, or using an html template. It works pretty well.

In addition, the user can optionally edit each message, personalizing as much as they want, before sending.

It will be a nice addition.

You can also pull a list from those who gave in a particular month, and the program makes the gift amount available to merge into the email as well. For example, it can say "thanks for your gift of $ (gift amount goes here) which you sent in last month."

The other major addition is a significant enhancement to the gift processing routine.

When I get it done, the program will be able to track individual gifts (down to the cents) and what specific fund / sub account they were given for, and in response to what appeal. So, if you are doing an appeal for a particular purpose, the program will be able to track that for you.

Putting the detail tracking in there isn't too difficult, but there are a lot of new reports that I'll need to write. They'll have to wait a bit, but this routine is about 75% done and should be ready for testing in a week or so.

In e-mail withdrawal

I had an interesting experience last week. My wife and I helped my sister in law do some painting in her recently purchased house. We stayed at her house for 5 nights and painted, painted, painted! But, she didn't have a phone so I was offline for 5 days.

Actually, it wasn't too bad. Now, I had 200 emails waiting for me when I got back, but fortunately there were almost no Donor Manager tech support requests pending, which was nice.

But, it did take me a few days to get caught up.

It reminds me of a time in Kenya when our phone went out for 3 weeks. I think we got more done, ministry wise, in those 3 weeks with no phone than any other time. No email, no fax, no cell phone, just blissful quiet.