Donor Manager

Visual FoxPro is in the news again

2006-04-20T13:13:00.000-07:00

Many of you know that the Donor Manager is written in Visual FoxPro, a wonderful database programming language by Microsoft.

These days, VFP seems a bit out of favor with Microsoft, who is pushing their also very nice Visual Studio.NET as their premier programming environment.

But, it is interesting to note that VFP is now rated higher that VB.NET in terms of programmer interest. Here is an interesting article on that. Be sure to read the comment at the end trying to explain why VFP made a huge jump in popularity in the past few months:

http://farm.tucows.com/blog/_archives/2006/4/17/1892314.html

VFP is truly a workhorse programming language.

What's coming ...

2006-04-10T15:51:00.000-07:00

Once I get the Visual FoxPro 9 update done, then I hope to work on the personalize bulk email routine, and the "Donor Manager for Organizations" additions.

The organizations routines will add support for more fund ids, more reporting options, receipts and statements.

Oh, and more categorization options. The 10 user definable lists just are not enough for many people, so I'm thinking of how to expand that.

Oh, and multi-currency support is coming as well, but I'm not sure just how soon.

Version 5.36 posted

2006-04-10T15:44:00.000-07:00

I posted version 5.36 the other day. I can't believe it's been in beta so long, but I work a little on it here, and a little there.

Finally, I figured, enough is enough. Let's get it out there for everyone besides the beta testers.

So far, it's gone pretty well. I've had the usual few bugs to get out that were not caught in the beta testing period, but not too many.

A bunch of new organizations have been added, and just today, I got request for 2 more.

These are generally pretty easy to add, although the WBT ones that come in an RTF file are really, really a challenge.

The next big leap, after getting this version launched is to make the switch to Visual FoxPro 9.

This will add nice screen resizing, plus a number of goodies to the programmer right away. It will require a big download for everyone, but it shouldn't be too bad.

I've already done a "trial run" of the upgrade process and it looks like I should be able to do it in just a day or two. Then, once that Fox 9 version is stable, I'll start adding goodies again.

Visual FoxPro 9 CDs ... at last!

2005-05-31T14:11:00.000-07:00

I'm excited. I finally got my CD with the latest version of Visual FoxPro.

I know, not many people get excited about a new compliler, but I'm one of those who does!

There are a lot of new features in version 9, especially in significantly enhanced reporting features. I'll have to figure out what to use, and then begin the migration from Visual FoxPro 6 (which I used for the Donor Manager) to version 9.

I skipped version 7 completely, and used 8 for several projects, and now will move everything to version 9.

Rumours of Visual FoxPro's death continue, but the program still is a wonderful language for putting together nice database applications. I do remember when the Garner Group (one of the largest computer consulting firms in the world) announced to their clients that VFP was dead and that no new releases would be coming, and that people should be making the move.

Oh, and that announcement was made in 1992 when Visual FoxPro 3.0 was released.

Version 5.33 released

2005-05-31T14:07:00.000-07:00

After a long period in beta, I released version 5.33 this past weekend.

And, of course, no sooner did I release it and send out the announcements that I found a few bugs and added a few new goodies.

I put in support for those using Firebird as their email client (at least I hope that it will work now for them ... feedback is invited), as well as a few small things.

I have several more import routines to finish writing ... each one is stuck at some stage and what they need is just a good evening of coke and pizza fueled programming effort.

We've relocated back to Kenya now and are living in Nairobi. My ministry assignment has me travelling a LOT throughout central and western Kenya, doing mostly significant things for the Kingdom, and I have a lot less time for programming. But, hopefully I'll be able to keep adding new features.

more development on the next DM

2004-11-12T13:17:00.000-08:00

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

2004-11-06T17:33:00.000-08:00

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

2004-11-06T06:44:00.000-08:00

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!

FoxFire 8 ... not out yet, but looking better and better!

2004-10-21T19:58:00.000-07:00

The next version of FoxFire appears pretty close to release.

Take the tour at the link above. It looks pretty impressive and will be a very nice enhancement to the Donor Manager.

As I was looking through the latest update to the tour, I was impressed with the ability of the program to run a report, and e-mail sections of the report (as the report is running) to different people.

Imaging your mission printing account activity reports .... one report .... and as each account changes, the report writer emails (as a pdf) that section of the report to the person in charge of that account.

One account .... a thousand accounts. All handled in one batch action.

If it works, I'll be impressed, and I can already think of at least a dozen uses for this. Maybe not in the donor manager, but in other apps I have helped with.

We'll see!

Neck deep in Pro-Matrix work

2004-10-21T19:52:00.000-07:00

The past month has seen just a little development on the Donor Manager. In between a lot of travel and speaking as we try to finish up our support raising, most of my programming efforts have been concentrating on the Academic Records software that I'm re-writing for Wesley Seminary (www.wbs.edu).

The program is in use daily and it has been going quite well. There have been the usual minor glitches, plus a few errors in data design that have shown up quickly and were easily fixed. We were even able to make a link to put the data (FoxPro) up on their website so that students and faculty can access their academic records via the net.

The app also has to talk to GoldMine (contact manager) and AccPac (accounting) software, and that part isn't done yet.

Most of the stuff yet to be done is minor bells and whistles and additional special needs reports.

ProMatrix with it's robust and active data dictionary has been a real boost to this project, and I continue to be impressed with it.

I'm more and more impressed with Visual Pro Matrix

2004-09-18T08:55:00.000-07:00

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

2004-09-18T08:50:00.000-07:00

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

2004-09-12T15:10:00.000-07:00

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

Agressive SPAM filters

2004-09-12T13:54:00.000-07:00

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 ...

2004-09-12T13:48:00.000-07:00

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

2004-09-12T13:43:00.000-07:00

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.

Bizzare behavior from "E-Mail Counts"

2004-08-26T21:34:00.000-07:00

For the past month, I've been testing out the "E-Mail Counts" program offered by www.godaddy.com.

This is a web hosted application that handles bulk emailing of newsletters.

It's actually a pretty slick app. It has a great interface, a reasonable price ($ 30 per year), and puts out some very nice looking e-mails.

But, it isn't without its bugs. There are some really annoying bugs in the editor, but they can be worked around

The biggest problem I've had is that some of the e-mails that it generates do not render well in Outlook 2003. But only on some computers!

I talked to their tech support (nice people), but they couldn't figure it out either. They were not running Outlook 2003, so they could not see what I was seeing.

I was gettings sentences like this: thisisthekindofsentencethatIwasgetting.

No spaces. Even when checking the html source code, there were no spaces. But in the same email sent to Outlook XP, it was fine. Send it to hotmail? No problem!

Weird.

Anyway, we'll see if it really works out though. I surely hope so.

Another interesting problem is that the spam killer at WGM headquarters kills SOME of my emails. Just some. Some get through. Others are killed.

And they are identical!

Go figure. AOL is doing the same thing to me.

A visit with a new old friend

2004-08-23T21:43:00.000-07:00

For the past few weeks, we've been on the east coast in the Washington, DC, area.

While Beth and Faith (our daughter) hit the malls with Beth's sister and niece, I took a short drive up to south Jersey to meet Doug Thomson.

Doug is a FoxPro programmer who wrote a nice compression utility that I downloaded some time ago that drives the "pack and go" utility and the "live update" utility. He's been a big help in a lot of the programming for some of the recent program updates.

He's also the genius behind the advanced filtering routines that were recently added to the program. He programmed them far better than I would have ever been able to.

So, anyway, I drove up and took this guy out to lunch, and we had a good time getting personally acquainted, having only conversed via e-mail.

Doug's also working on an e-mail utility which I'm hoping will be the engine that talkes to e-mail servers in the new personalize bulk emailing routine that I've been working on.

Here's a pic of Doug, his wife, and their pup Sheba (who had grown a good bit when I was there.

It's off to college for Faith

2004-08-23T21:31:00.000-07:00

This past weekend found us travelling to Kentucky to take Faith back to Asbury for her sophmore year: www.asbury.edu.

She's excited and is pumped and ready to go. When we go to Asbury we often stay at WGM's student center (www.asburywgm.org). It's a great place.

Other times we stay with Ron and Bonnie Koteskey. Ron was one of my psych profs at Asbury. He and Bonnie are doing a lot of work in missionary care for WGM, OMS International, the Mission Society for United Methodists, and a number of other organizations.

I helped Ron a bit with his website: www.missionarycare.com, and if you haven't taken some time to browse there, you need to! There is some tremendous stuff there!

Mostly quiet development lately

2004-08-23T21:24:00.000-07:00

I've taken a bit of a break from adding a lot of new features into the DM, but have been adding some nice small enhancements and "slipping" them into the current version 5.31.

The new goodies are available to those who do the "live update." This live update feature is making it really easy for me to put new things in the program and get them released as quickly and easily as possible.

And, according to the website stats, folks are indeed checking the the live updates regularly.

The biggest things I've been adding is support for contribution processing for several new organizations. Most of these have been really easy to add!

Plus, I've added a few enhancements to the error handling routine.

On the programming front, I've been busy at work on the new personalized bulk e-mailing routines. I'll probably have beta of this ready for testing in the next week or so.

This has real possibilities to be a nice feature. There are a lot of challenges to overcome, of course, but I think they are doable. The biggest challenge is to make it flexible enough to meet a lot of people's needs and wants while keeping it simple enough that it will actually be usable!

I'm working on the interface and workflow and logic, and Doug Thomson has some mailing routines he has been working on that will be a huge help.

I'll write more about that in a day or so.

Some user interface ideas

2004-07-31T13:27:00.000-07:00

I'm always tinkering with ideas for user interfaces.

And I'm not satisfied with the current look of the donor manager. As I've started working with FoxPro 9, and plan to take the DM into that some time early in 2005, I've started playing with what the interface will look like.

I ran across an interesting blog entry about the evolution of the Windows interface.

http://www.bloglines.com/preview?siteid=53396&itemid=330

If you have ANY interest in software interface design, you have to read this entry. Be sure to click on the screen shots! And, be sure to read the comments as well. They are as insightful as the main entry.

I've always been a fan of the interface of Microsoft Money, and, in fact, that was the model I was trying to emulate (to a certain degree) with the Donor Manager. It will be interesting to see where it all goes.

I played around with some interface ideas for the DM last night. One thing is for sure, the next version will take advantage of the greatly improved screen anchoring and resizing capabilities that have been introduced in Visual Studio.NET and Visual FoxPro 9.0 to use more smartly the screen real-estate available.

2004-07-27T18:03:00.000-07:00

The Donor Manager got a nice mention the other day on Brigada Today. It resulted in a real surge in the website traffic, and a lot of new downloads, which is always nice.

Here is a picture of the website stats that shows the jump caused by Brigada. You can tell the day that the mention came out:

I was impressed! And grateful for the positive press.

I noticed that on the Yahoo Group for ICCM (International Conference on Computing in Missions) the editor of the Oscar UK site was asking for reviews on the current missionary partner tracking programs. It will be interesting to see the reviews when the come out.

Oops. I forgot to comment about the release of 5.30

2004-07-27T17:54:00.000-07:00

After reviewing my post about the gift thanking routine, I realized that I hadn't even made a post about the release of 5.30.

This has to be the most trouble free release I've ever done, no doubt due to the great help of the beta testers.

One small bug (easily fixed) had crept in at the last minute relating to KMAi and WBT gift processing, but that was fixed in about 30 seconds.

The feedback on this release has been very positive, which is always nice. Since I've been living with this release for the past few months, I forgot all the new stuff that had really been added! Now the challenge is updating the documentation to give some help on all of the new goodies.

A new feature to track thank yous

2004-07-27T17:38:00.000-07:00

I've built into version 5.31 a new feature that I really like: the program now tracks whether or not you have said "thank you" for a gift.

I've had this in the back of my mind for some time and some emails from some users asking for something like this (and telling how they thought it might work) gave me a few new ideas to try.

This past week we've been on the road quite a bit, and since my wife Beth doesn't mind driving, she was the pilot while I did some programming.

After a few prototypes, I had the thank you module written. It ties in very nicely to the "gift review" routine... simply adding a checkbox to each line where you indicate whether or not a gift has been thanked.

You can easily filter on the "un-thanked" gifts, and you can send an email or address an envelop right from there. In addition, you can optionally make a "touch" entry when you send the thank you. Pretty easy.

When reviewing a gift history on the partner detail screen, you can see which gifts are thanked, and which ones are not. You can also mark all gifts as "thanked", either donor by donor, month by month, or for the all time.

I like it, and the few folks that I have showed it to like it as well. I haven't announced it publicly yet, although it is available by live update. I have another routine I've added in this release that still needs a little testing, then we'll be ready to go!

The next version is all but ready to go

2004-07-14T15:30:00.000-07:00

I've wrapped up version 5.25, although I've decided to call if version 5.30 since it has some many new features in it. It'a already available for the beta testers to download, and will go out to the public tomorrow.

I still need to regenerate the installation package for those doing a new, initial installation.

Then, I need to revise the user's guide with information on all of the new features that have been added.

All in all, I'm very pleased with this update.

But, I've got some great ideas for the next round, too!

We're just about ready for the public release of 5.25, 'er, 5.26

2004-07-10T20:50:00.000-07:00

I've just about decided to number the next release as 5.26 instead of 5.25. I've been using the 5.25 beta xx notation, and it just make sense to skip a number for the public release (lest someone think that 5.25 beta 10 is better than 5.25).

It also helps with the "live update" routine. So, maybe I'll adopt that pattern. Use one number for the beta series. Another number for the public release.

The new update of FoxFire looks great

2004-07-10T20:45:00.000-07:00

For several years, I've included FoxFire with each copy of the Donor Manager.

FoxFire is an ad-hoc reporting tool that allows end users to design their own custom reports, and for many users, it's been a great thing. There is a bit of a learning curve, but the program's wizards have helped minimize that a bit.

But, I haven't really kept the data dictionary of FoxFire updated with the changes in the DM program (I just gotta do that real soon now.) Plus, I put just a few sample reports in that were not really very good, so the casual user might be justified in thinking that "there is nothing in here for me."

I took a look today at the new update to FoxFire (currently in public beta) and it looks great. I'm really impressed, and it will be a great addition to the program when it is finally released.

Here's a link to the beta page with lots of news about this new update.

The create and customization of new reports is simply beautiful and very, very easy. Yet, all of the power that FoxFire has always had will still be available.

One problem: I don't think it will run in Fox 6 (which the current Donor Manager is running in). So, it may need to wait until I release the Fox 8 or Fox 9 version of the Donor Manager some time in the Fall. Either way, folks are really going to like it! I already do.

I just got a GMail invitation

2004-07-09T20:12:00.000-07:00

Perhaps you've been following the discussion about GMail, the new web based email service being offered by Google.

It has caused quite a stir, not because it is offering 1 - 2 gigabytes (yes, gigabytes) of online storage space, but because Google will have its computers read your message to that the ads that they present on the service will relate to the topics in your email message.

Privacy advocates are concerned, and I guess they should be. For me, all that online storage space plus the smart sorting and finding (not yet totally worked out in this beta) is a real enticement.

I think I blogged earlier about the advantage of using these new, large online email accounts for backups (eg: hotmail, yahoo, gmail). Google upped the ante with their offer of large accounts. Hotmail and Yahoo have responded well!

And all are a great deal.

We'll see how the GMail goes. I have high expectations.

Tweaking the backup routines

2004-07-09T05:48:00.000-07:00

I did a total rewrite of the backup routine last night. You gotta do something while watching Law and Order, right?

Anyway, this new routine is much more robust, and far more flexible internally. In the past, when I made added a new data table, I had to go in and update the backup routine code manually. With this new routine, it updates itself.

There is no change in the interface experience for the user at this point, so I will eventually put a few more options in (like backup with compression, etc.).

The next version is all but complete. Just a few small things to fix, and then it will be posted for public download.

First Impressions of the Mozilla Browser

2004-07-08T07:06:00.000-07:00

I decided to download the Mozilla browser to see what the buzz was all about.

If you were not aware, the Mozilla browser is a new / old / opensource challenge to Internet Explorer. The name "Mozilla" traces itself back to Netscape Navigator, and the Mozilla browser has a lot of very nice features in it. I particularly like the "tabs" feature, and if IE doesn't get that soon, well, shame on them.

Here's how it works. Let's say you are reading a page and you see a link you want to eventually read. Click on it while holding the control key, and that page loads in the background on a separate tab. Then, when you are ready to read it, just click on the tab and the page has already loaded in the background.

Very nice, especially for people on slow connections.

I think I recall reading that there are some tab "add-ins" for Internet Explorer. If I stay with IE, I may have to investigate those.

So far, I'm impressed. I'm not sure I'll dump IE, though. I do keep my security patches up to day, religously, with a little paranoia built thrown in for good measure.

I notice that it doesn't render some pages correctly, though. For example, the javascript code on the donormanager screen shots page do not render properly. Hey, it's a beta!

All in all, worth investigating: http://www.mozilla.org

5.25 is very close to release

2004-07-07T20:15:00.000-07:00

I gotta quit doing this stuff.

Just when I say, "OK. No new features in this next release", I get an idea or some really great suggestion comes in from a user, and, BAM, I'm under the hood coding again.

I just need to write it down on my "things for the NEXT release" list so I can finish this one up.

There are a lot of very nice new features in 5.25 that I think folks will really like.

The new filtering routines are really great. There is some incredible coding under the hood there ... and I didn't do any of it! Thanks goes to Doug Thomson.

The Pack and Go has been really handy as well. It makes it super easy to transfer data from one computer to another via disk, email, USB flash drive, whatever.

Another favorite is the new "smart" search - add a * in front of your search string and it REALLY searches everywhere.

Plus, the new "more info" tab opens up a lot of possibilities for users to customize their version of the program. Basically, you can generate unlimited custom fields now, and that is really great.

I just added a new screen the other day to quickly show the contributions for a given month. I've already used it a zillion times and have tons of ideas of things to put on there, but I guess I should exercise some discipline and restrain myself!

Now the challenge is to write a decent "what's new" document to help introduce these new features.

Some great new options for online backup ...

2004-07-01T15:50:00.000-07:00

For a long time, I've been paranoid about protecting my data. I'm one of those guys who really does backup pretty faithfully.

I guess it goes back to some significant and painful data losses. We learn the hard way.

Computers used to be expensive and unreliable. That's all changed. Now they are inexpensive and unreliable.

But, I love the idea of online backups.

Anyway, for some time I've been using my hotmail account as an online storage vault. I even paid the extra $$ for extra storage space. I send emails to myself with all kinds of info... a copy of my passport, my eyeglass prescription, etc. If I ever loose any of that stuff, all I need is access to a computer and I'm back in business.

I've also used the Yahoo Briefcase for lots of backups.

I noticed now that Hotmail and Yahoo are significantly increasing the free storage capacity of their services in response to the new GMail system, and this is a great deal. I think I now have a new favorite way to backup my data. Just do a "Pack and Go" in the Donor Manager, and email the file to my Hotmail account or my Yahoo account.

Boom. Backup done, and safe and secure.

So, if you don't have a Hotmail or Yahoo account, surf right over and get one. It's a great solution to a real problem.

And, did I mention that it's free?

A great tool for getting screenshots ... and it's free

2004-06-15T15:50:00.000-07:00

A couple of years ago I was needing something to help me get screenshots to use in the Donor Manager user's guide and I found and downloaded the free screen capture tool from GadWin systems.

I just went to their site and downloaded the latest and greatest and all I can say is "Wow." This little tool is fantastic. It was good before ... it's great now!

Most folks never need something like this, but I find it very, very handy. Highly recommended.

And, it's still free. They have several commercial apps there for sale, and they look interesting as well.

Search engines / some interesting things

2004-06-15T10:29:00.000-07:00

Since I put up the donor manager website, I haven't given too much thought to search engine placement. I figured, sure, it would be nice if people could find the site through a search, but I really expected most people to come through word of mouth referrals or through a link on some other website.

And, I still think that is true.

But, I ran across an interesting artice on a www.webmasterworld.com. I don't recall how I ended up there but found some fascinating discussions.

One headline that caught my eye was about MSN's new search engine. The title of the article is "MSN Bot on the Prowl with a Healthy Appetite."

Microsoft has decided to compete with Google and Yahoo and get into the search engine business in a big way. Their search engine "bot" or "spider" has been "crawling" the internet for some time building an index of pages in anticipation of the launch of their service sometime in the fall of 2004.

Now, the interesting thing is that the MSN search engine is indexing the entire DM web site every day, to the tune of about 3 megs of data... every day! That is 10 times more than Google or Yahoo are indexing.

Every day, at least for the past few weeks.

I'm impressed. If they are doing that elsewhere, when they launch this puppy, it's going to be something to see. No one every accused Bill Gates of doing anything half-way, except perhaps getting the bugs out of Windows and Office without calling a bug fix an upgrade and charging for it.

But, that's a topic for another post some day.

At any rate, the agressiveness of Microsoft in searching the internet is very impressive. Hey, they found my little site, and I didn't pay anyone $ 49.95 to submit it for me.

If I were Google, I'd be a bit concerned. There's a new kid in town.

A change of pace for the week

2004-06-13T19:36:00.000-07:00

Most of last week I was out in the country at a campground, helping teach the "Sharpening Your Interpersonal Skills" course to a group of new missionaries with the Free Methodist Church (http://www.fmcna.org).

What a delightful group of folks. One couple was in their late 20s, another in their late 30s, another in their late 40s, another in their late 50s and another in their early 60s. I think they represent a cross-section of the new missionary candidates with a lot of organizations.

In the evenings I had a chance to work on some background code in the Donor Manager, continuing to move some of the behind the scenes code to a more object oriented programming style. Plus, for a diversion, I continued my reading and learning of ADO.NET (another Microsoft database programming system), and watched some episodes of the first season of The West Wing. For Christmas, I got a set of DVDs of the West Wing (I had probably only seen 2 or 3 episodes of this in the past several years). I was very impressed with this show. I didn't agree with the political perspective of many of the characters, but am looking forward to finishing the set.

This weekend I completed beta 10 which I posted Sunday evening. Not many new features, but a lot of behind the scenes changes. Plus, there is a major enhancement of the filtering routine in the works thanks to Doug Thomson. Doug wrote the compression library that makes the "Pack and Go" and the "Live Update" routines possible. He's also got some database synchonization code and screen resizing code that will probably make it into the program at some time in the near future.

I had a birthday last week. I was out teaching at the SYIS workshop, and my wife and daughter had bought me a very nice digital camera for my birthday. It is the Canon Rebel EOS Digital, and they spent way too much money for it. But, it is a really, really nice camera. I'm looking forward to using it!

This week I need to help write some new software to link the Christian Union's new accounting system to the Donor Manager. I had written the original code several years ago to create DM posting files for their missionaries, and a major upgrade in their accounting system has just been completed, so the DM synch needs some tweaking.

Visual FoxPro 9.0 was released a few days ago for beta

2004-06-05T07:06:00.000-07:00

The public beta release of Visual FoxPro 9.0 (aka Europa) was released for download just a few days ago. I doubt that this is of much excitement to most folks, but for me it's quite exciting.

I've been programming in Microsoft's Visual FoxPro for about 15 years, and it is a delightful (most of the time!) database programming languge. Lately it has been loosing support in Microsoft who is now favoring Visual Studio .NET (or as some folks say, .NYET). VS.NET has some great things in it and is, I believe, a superior platform in many ways. It has some real drawbacks, but I'm trying to learn it. I feel like I'm in language school again.

Anyway, back to Visual FoxPro. This new release will go into a formal public version in September, but in the meanwhile, it's being released for anyone who wants to do the download to help get the last bugs out of it. If you're curious, go to www.microsoft.com/vfoxpro.

The new version has some very, very nice items in it and I have no doubt that the Donor Manager will be upgraded to Fox9 this fall. Just a word to the wise! And it will be worth the shift.

I'll post a bit from time to time as I get a chance to play with this new release.

Start talking to yourself ... don't listen to yourself talking

2004-06-05T07:01:00.000-07:00

This has nothing to do with the Donor Manager, but I thought it was interesting.

I've been helping a bit with a website with resources for Mission Care / Member Care: www.missionarycare.com.

There is a very nice database on the site (by Dr. Ron Koteskey) with short summaries and outlines of over 700 resources related to mental health and missions.

Here's a gem of a quote that I ran across in the database this morning.

Martyn Lloyd-Jones drew my attention to the need to start talking to myself instead of listening to myself talking. So instead of listening to my own catalog of woes, I started cutting myself off rudely in midsentence and telling myself that what I needed was a good dose of perspective restoration.

It struck me and I thought others might benefit as well.

Proxy servers, PDAs, and Synchronization

2004-06-03T21:31:00.000-07:00

In between helping Holly (our daughter) get out a prayer letter, I had a chance to tinker a bit with several things yesterday.

I've got about 75% of the coding done on the routines to allow unlimited e-mail addresses (and perhaps alternate phone numbers). It requires a number of changes in several places in the program, but it's going pretty well. It seems that many people have many e-mail addresses (hey - I've got 6 of my own), so hopefully it will prove handy.

I'm continuing to look for a way to build bulk email sending into the program. Doing straight text messages is no problem at all, and I may go ahead and implement that pretty soon. Even the personalization is not difficult. Now, HTML email is the challenge! We'll see how that goes.

I've been using the Infacta Group Mail program for sending mass e-mails and find it quite nice. It takes a little learning, but it's pretty easy to use.

I ran into an interesting problem yesterday getting the DM "live update" routine (new in 5.25) working behind a proxy server. When an app starts talking to the internet, firewalls and proxy servers kick in and do their thing (as they should). So, I'm getting a quick education on that kind of stuff thanks to some extremely helpful people both at WGM headquarters and at JAARS. I still don't have all of the kinks out of that system yet.

I got some sample code sent to me the other day that holds great promise for putting in true 2 way synchonization. I'll probably put it into the "Pack and Go" routine first, then tackle the whole "2 way Synch with Outlook" issue next. If I can get the Synch with Outlook issue solved, then I have a natural pipeline for synching with PDAs.

I continue to be amazed at the tremendous willingness to help that I find in the computer commmunity as well as within the misisonary community. It's truly a joy to be able to contribute and to receive the contributions of others.

PDAs, Synchronization, Multiple email addresses, and Proxy servers

2004-06-03T09:01:00.000-07:00

In between helping Holly (our daughter) get out a prayer letter, I had a chance to tinker a bit with several things yesterday.

I've got about 75% of the coding done on the routines to allow unlimited e-mail addresses (and perhaps alternate phone numbers). It requires a number of changes in several places in the program, but it's going pretty well. It seems that many people have many e-mail addresses (hey - I've got 6 of my own), so hopefully it will prove handy.

I'm continuing to look for a way to build bulk email sending into the program. Doing straight text messages is no problem at all, and I may go ahead and implement that pretty soon. Even the personalization is not difficult. Now, HTML email is the challenge! We'll see how that goes.

I've been using the Infacta Group Mail program for sending mass e-mails and find it quite nice. It takes a little learning, but it's pretty easy to use.

I ran into an interesting problem yesterday getting the DM "live update" routine (new in 5.25) working behind a proxy server. When an app starts talking to the internet, firewalls and proxy servers kick in and do their thing (as they should). So, I'm getting a quick education on that kind of stuff thanks to some extremely helpful people both at WGM headquarters and at JAARS. I still don't have all of the kinks out of that system yet.

I got some sample code sent to me the other day that holds great promise for putting in true 2 way synchonization. I'll probably put it into the "Pack and Go" routine first, then tackle the whole "2 way Synch with Outlook" issue next. If I can get the Synch with Outlook issue solved, then I have a natural pipeline for synching with PDAs.

I continue to be amazed at the tremendous willingness to help that I find in the computer commmunity as well as within the misisonary community. It's truly a joy to be able to contribute and to receive the contributions of others.

Giving the web site a new look

2004-05-31T16:54:00.000-07:00

Well, it was Memorial Day weekend, so we've been relaxing a bit with the family. What fun.

I decided to do a bit of sprucing up a bit on the web site since I had moved it to a new server and decided to change the look a bit. I had been using an old Front Page theme that I bought about 5 years ago (and have used on a bunch of simple web sites), so I decided to fool around and see what I came up with.

So, the web site has a somewhat new look. I also decided to fire up PaintShopPro (aka poor man's Photoshop) and put together a few graphics to use as section dividers.

I found a neat little script that would allow me to put "recent topics" from the discussion board on any page I wanted. That took about 3 minutes to install, and 3 more minutes to make pretty. www.phpbb.com has a lot of pretty easy tools that go with their discussion forum system.

It is surprisingly easy, if you will just follow the directions. Hopefully having some of the discussion topics on the main page will encourage people to explore a bit in the forums (not that there is much there yet!).

Website migration is done

2004-05-30T07:41:00.000-07:00

Vitaly (WGM's webmeister) and I finished the setup of Donor Manager website on the new server. With a few small glitches that we were able to work out, everything went quite smoothly. There are still a few small issues to be addressed, but nothing major.

I checked the site stats and noticed that the Googlebot visited, right in the middle of the rebuilding of the site. Bummer.

I was also able to post 5.25 beta 5 which includes a more robust (and hopefully more crash resistant) updating routine. I've tested it on 3 computers and so far, so good. Version 5 must be a manual udpate, but I also posted a beta 6 so folks could test the one-click updating. If this works out, it will be a real help to the less technically oriented users.

The ability to do this was triggered by the same routine that powers the "Pack and Go" routine. It's amazing how getting one thing working will open the mind to the possibilities in other areas. And, of course, that's true in a lot of areas of life, I guess.

The new message board is up and running at the Donor Manager web site. I need to find a way to have the board email me when new postings occur, though. I know that option is there ... I just haven't found it yet.

Well, I'd better get ready to head to church: www.hanfield.org

One click program updating is here

2004-05-26T19:42:00.000-07:00

For several versions, now, I've wanted to put in a "one click" solution to downloading program updates. Kind of like my Norton Anti-Virus.

Well, I figured out at least one way to do it, and I really like it. In the latest beta of 5.25 there is a new "check on line for updates" routine that goes (in the background) to the Donor Manager website, checks to see what the latest version is and compares is with the version running on the person's computer.

If they are up-to-date, they just get a "you are up to date" message. But, if there is an update available, it offers to download it (it takes about 10 seconds on my cable-modem hookup), then installs it and restarts the Donor Manager.

I've had some feedback from beta testers saying that it worked great, while a report of problems when doing it from behind a firewall. Hmmm. Gotta figure that one out. All in all, I'm very pleased with this feature. I think folks are really going to like it!

Back from a few days in Nashville / good progress on 5.25

2004-05-22T18:31:00.000-07:00

I have been encouraging Beth to attend some type of conference for women in ministry, so she decided to attend the National Women in Ministry Association conference in Nashville this past week. So, we headed down to Nashville for the conference on Wednesday.

The conference was at the Gaylord Palms Opryland Resort (how's that for a short name!) and it was a beautiful place. While she was getting filled with great ideas and motivation for ministry, I was enjoying the very nice facilities, and getting a little programming in as well.

We both had a great time and headed back home Friday evening, getting back around 11:30.

I've had several great conversations via e-mail with Donor Manager users who have had some really great suggestions for future version. So far, the Pack and Go has received very positive feedback.

I must say some kind words about the people who help me with the program. I have been greatly encouraged by the many folks who contribute little bits of code, expertise in areas where I am clueless, and those who just drop short notes of encouragement.

I put a statistical tracker on the web site about 10 days ago (the same day I released the 5.24 update) and have been amazed at the traffic the site is getting. Far more than I had anticipated. I'm actively working on putting in a robust discussion board (the wonderful php based phpBB) to replace the rinky-dink one that is currently there. We'll probably move the whole web site to another hosting service soon (not that our current host hasn't done a great job, though) just to take advantage of some of the better deals out there in hosting. I'll wait to install the new board until then.

Wrapped up the first beta of 5.25

2004-05-20T13:07:00.000-07:00

Beth's been attending a "National Women in Ministry Association" conference in Nashville and I've been working on getting the first beta of version 5.25 finished up.

The "pack and go" feature works great. At least for me. For people with more than one computer with DM data on it, this will be a real help. Sometime, though, I need to write a true "synchonization" routine that allows updates on both computers and synchronizes them with each other. That will be an interesting challenge.

I also wrote a routine I've been wanting to do for some time - automatic address updates based on address information in the contributions files. That will be a real time saver for those who are using the automatic give posting routines. While testing it, I've already found some address changes that I missed.

I put another small routine in as well to help WGM staff with a bit of their paperwork. At the end of their Homeland Ministry Assignment, WGM staff are supposed to analyze how they got their support ... how much from personal face to face meetings, how much from small group "home" meetings, how much from public services, mail appeals, phone calls, etc. This little routine helps figure that all out. Others may find it useful as well.... We'll see.

By the time I release 5.25 I hope to have support for Wycliffe Canada giving statements, and some new "rolling average" analysis that several have asked about. I've never done that before, but I can see where it might be useful.

The first try at a "Pack and Go" data transfer routine is done

2004-05-18T20:22:00.000-07:00

I had a chance to finish up the first pass at a data transfer routine that makes it easy to transfer the Donor Manager data files from one computer to another. I've never found it difficult, but since my wife got her own computer, we've had a need for an easy way to transfer data from one computer to another to keep the two in synch. This little routine compresses all of the data files (and optionally your photo files) and puts them on a diskette (or diskettes if necessary), or on a USB Flash drive. We use the USB drive, and it's really great!

I ran into some snags getting the routine to work, though. I had downloaded a utility from the "Universal Thread" (a great on-line forum for Fox, .net, and other programmers), but it would corrupt the data files in certain circumstances (not good!). I sent off an email this morning to the developer of the compression routine (he had posted it over 2 years ago) and got a very nice note from him this afternoon with a new copy of the routine, with the bug fixed. Plus, he sent a very nice note and offered to help with some of the DM programming.

Since I've been working on this project, I've been impressed with the willingness of people to help. Just in the past few months, I've had incredible assistance from other programmers here at WGM, from New Tribes (Rodd Harris helped lick an elusive bug in the DM / Word envelope interface), plus a very patient team of beta testers who give feedback on new routines as they are still "works in progress."

I remember being involved in the Kenya Christian Computer User's Group for years in Nairobi. There was an incredible passion about helping one another, and just the sheer "joy of sharing." I've been a recipient of that lately, and it has been great!

So, now, what will I work on next? Probably a "rolling giving average" routine, an "e-mail people who gave this month" routine, and the "synch this stuff with Palm / Pocket PC" routines.

Got any suggestions? Let me know: john@donormanager.com.

Working on a "Pack and Go" feature for the next version

2004-05-13T12:32:00.000-07:00

For some time now, I've wanted to put a "pack and go" feature in the program so that Beth (my wife) and I could more easily synchonize the data we have on our 2 computers. Well, I guess we have 2 now since she got a new laptop.

I'd really like to put a genuine "synch" feature where each computer reconciles changes made on the other one, but I'm not quite ready to tackle that one yet. What I want to do is make it really easy to move the data from one computer to another.

It's actually fairly easy right now... just copy the contents of the "data" folder from one computer to another, but I want to make it a "one click" operation, including compression so people who are still using diskettes can do it.

We use a cheap little USB Flash drive (got it for $ 10 at OfficeMax). Works like a champ!

I've found a nice open source (read: free) compression tool, but it doesn't generate industry standard "zip" files (my first choice). It uses the same technology, but a proprietary (sp) format. It works great! Maybe I'll put that in, and then put a link in for those who own WinZip. I dunno.

Either way, the beta of this should be done in a day or so. I fly this weekend to Florida to speak at a supporting church, so no doubt I'll have some time in the airport and on the plane to work on this.

Version 5.24 was released today

2004-05-12T19:07:00.000-07:00

I was able to post the public version of 5.24 today. It has a number of nice enhancements to reports, an very nice quick find tool on the partner details screen, and (my favorite) a much quicker shutdown when you have not edited data.

The previous version would do a backup of your data whenever you quit the program. This version first of all checks to see if you changed anything. If you did make changes, then it goes ahead and does the backup. If you were just looking at data or running reports, then no data really changed, so the program just quits. Nice.

I've been really appreciative of the help of the beta testers. They have had some great ideas and have been very faithful to help test the program.

I've got a lot of ideas for the next version. And, real soon now, I want to take the program into Fox8. That will give me one feature I really want to have - easy screen resizing (which Fox 6 has, but is SLOW).