more development on the next DM

I've had a good chance over the past few days to continue working on the enhancements to the giving details part of the Donor Manager.

I now have changes made in the history grid cross-posting to the giving details list (these terms can be confusing!). Plus, I think I fixed a bug in the detail posting routine.

I'm hoping to get a good bit done this weekend on the personalized email engine (aka: spam routine). I'm about ready to release it so a few select beta testers, then see how that goes on their systems. It runs on my system, but that's not guarantee it will work elsewhere!

I continue to watch the development of the upcoming version of FoxFire. This is a real nice upgrade and people will really like it. The report designer is much easier to use.

I'm continuing to work on learning some .NET stuff. There are some things that are very easy to do in Fox that are hard, hard, hard in .NET. And, there are some things that are the other way, too. I took a few free online seminars offered by MS$, and they send me a free book ($40), some free CD based training, plus a fully licensed copy of VB.NET. Free. What a deal. They are sure encouraging people to move into .NET.

Meanwhile, Visual FoxPro 9 continues to move toward it's public release, some time in early 2005. The DM will definately make the jump to Fox 9, and I'm playing around with some interface enhancements as well that I think people will like.

5.32 beta 4 posted

Almost as soon as I posted beta 3, I got a call and some emails reporting some bugs whenever you leave the "touches" screen. Fixed in beta 4.

Also, I rewrote the routine that calculates the dates when generating the new giftdetail file. The old one made all dates some day in January ... oops. I was thinking "british" style dates when I wrote that routine, and the program (internally) wants american format dates.

Beta 4 fixes this, also.

To get the program to re-generate the giving detail with correct dates, do this:

1. download and install beta 4

2. quit the donor manager, and then go in (using Windows Explorer or My Computer) delete the files giftdetail.dbf, giftdetail.cdx, and giftdetail.fpt (in c:\donor5\data ... or wherever you are keeping your data files).

3. then, restart the DM, and it will re-generate the giving history files.

Note: please consider these giving detail file experimental at this point. Don't spent a lot of time customizing the information until we get this a bit more stable.

Thanks!

starting a new beta cycle: 5.32 beta 3

I've started a new Donor Manager beta cycle to put in some new features that folks have requested.

I'm also going to try using the blog as a way of documenting what's new in the various updates. We'll see how that goes.

I've just uploaded a beta (I'm calling it 5.32 beta 3 ... When released, it will probably be version 5.40).

This beta adds several new features:

The "personalize / customize" screen has been changed. This is mostly to give me more room for future customizations.

The user can now optionally specify a default country that will be added to all new records. In addition, they can fill in all records that don't have a country filled in with this information with one click. This is on /Personalize /Editing Options

I have added the ability for users to specify the font used on mailing labels. I've had some reports that some of the labels are "off" a bit in their layout on the labels, so feedback will be helpful on this. I don’t use labels much, so your feedback (via email to john@donormanager.com) would be most helpful.

I've fixed a few bugs that had been reported in some previous versions.

I'm beginning to add the ability to track individual gifts, not just monthly totals. Look at the "giving details" tab on the partner master record. There's more to be done here.

In addition, by tracking individual gifts, we can now track the "account" or "fund" that this gift is applied to, and the "motive" or "appeal" or "reason" that the gift came in. There are no reports or analysis on this yet... What would you like to see?

Support for UK style addresses. Basically, the "state" field has been made longer so that "province" or "county" names can be put in here. On /Personalize /Editing Options take a look at the new "address style" option. Set it for "UK" and then look at a partner detail screen. You'll see what I mean.

If there are reports that are messed up by these changes, be sure to let me know!

There are several other small things added that I can't think of just now!