Who are the people in the neighborhood?

I got an email last week from one of my client pals saying, “Hey Mama G – wouldn’t it be cool if ROI could make something whereby we could enter in a zip code and find all the donors within a certain radius?” The thinking was if they were doing an event or planning a trip, they could locate all the people nearby and invite them.

In nerd-language, this is called “Geo-Coding” and it deals with longitude and latitude coordinates (which we happen to store in your database for every record) and a thing called “higher-mathematics” …and something called the Haversine Formula. You know the one that goes like this:

That helps you to answer this question:

Finally a use for algebra! …and well anyway, it’s so much better than having to know all the zip codes or that CBSA-data stuff, isn’t it?
So we got our shiny cool glasses and a couple of chalk boards and got to work right away.

Now, in the MG Console you will find this handy little ditty:

This feature was brought to you by The Haversine Formula & Letter R.

In the meantime, if you are looking for a distraction watch this video

QTool queries….Set ‘em & forget ‘em

I know, try as you might, it’s hard to forget queries. But now, when you have a query that you like to run on a regular basis, you can use the new schedule function. This allows you to run a query on whatever interval you chose.
Just click the schedule icon:

Pick your desired schedule:

And sit back and relax. We’ll take care of the rest for you.

You will soon notice, that if your query uses any date selections, if you use the schedule option, we will prompt you to see if you want “relative” or “absolute” dates. This gives you the option of advancing your date criteria into the future with relative dates — or using the same fixed date each time you run the query.

Promotions

The promotion screens have some pretty nifty features that are worth highlighting. First of all, if you don’t know, the Promotional Screens are nothing more than groupings for your source codes which can be grouped by campaign, source type, contact type, and contact year — to help keep them organized. And what’s unique to Revolution Online is that rather than having a hard-coded display that you can’t change, we allow you the ability to customize this so you can change the view:

Like perhaps, let’s say you want to see it organized by Promotion:

…Or by Year (Calendar or Fiscal):

And within that, you can even select which years and columns you want to see:

The reason why this is nice is because then at whatever level you want to see, you can click on the branch in the tree-view navigation, select the summary or donation buttons to get a real-time view of your results.

Did You Know? >>MG Actions

Revolution Online gives you an easy way to manage your Major Gifts Projects & Actions. In addition to setting up Projects for groups of records through the Major Gifts Project Wizard (see Major Gifts Project Wizard) you can also mark Actions as completed through the MG Console. To do this, simply go into the Console, view your actions and use the handy little drop down wizard as shown below:

Did ROI say “Customize?”

Did those crazy ROI Folks say “Customize?” I think we did. And when we said it, we were referring to those donor lists that appear throughout the Revolution Online database that previously displayed the kind of information we thought you might want to see. Well it turns out that while we know a lot, we don’t know everything — take for example what you might want to see in a donor list at any given time. So now, we give you the power to customize your own displays. Look for the word “customize” on any record listing within Revolution. It looks like this:

When you click it, we will give you a display of all of the fields you can select. Once saved, it will be retained for future use. And once you view your new Customized Display – you can even use the EXPORT feature and your newly customized fields will be exported as well. See, you can have it your way!

Schedule Those Reports

As much as I love logging into my ROI database….sometimes I just want a report to magically appear in my email on a particular day (because I’ll be honest, sometimes I forget to run it and you know what they say “out of sight”…). Long before you were born into the ROI Revolution, we set up this nifty Reports Scheduler — and we want you to use it; ’cause it’s kind of neat.

Go on. Go to the Reports Tab and pick a report. Any report. Select your desired output format, enter in your criteria and select the “schedule” button.

From there, you can set up your schedule (and even change the name of the report).

More on Those Open Batches…

Such great responses from last month’s update; you know where we brought to your attention those open and unlocked batches….

Go to the Tools Tab and filter on “Only Open Batches” and then click the “Subscribe to this List” icon and we will deliver that little unsightly list to you on your schedule.

Did You Know?

You can do a look up on zip codes to get the city and state AND you can do a look up to find the zip code if you don’t have it. Yep, you can and it’s pretty easy. Let’s say you are entering in a record with incomplete information….like a record that has NO city and state…or NO zip code…you know one of those records.

If you just know the city and state, click the FIND button and we’ll tell you which zip code it is. And similarly, if you just know the zip, click the FIND button and we’ll populate the city and state for you. Kind of takes the guess work out of whether or not Oshkosh is a real place…by gosh!

Hey Multi-Taskers!

Did you know that your browser has something kinda cool built in? It’s a feature called “Tabbed Browsing” and it works really nicely with Revolution On-Line.

You know those cute and oh so functional ROI Tabs at the top of your screen…the ones that look like this….

If you right mouse click (if you are using IE7) or simply drag them (if you are using Firefox), you can use the tabbed browser features. This allows you the ability to toggle between screens without loosing your place. Imagine all the work you can get done.

Business Rulz RULE!

Ever wonder what drives your system logic….those “things” that make “things” happen magically behind the scenes? Well, they are your own business rules. You sent them to ROI as programming requests, we implemented them and now they just happen. But what happens if you ever want to refer to them again? We decided to give you a placeholder to store these rules directly online within the Revolution application.

In your Client-specific reference tab, you will find such a placeholder. These have been set up by your system administrator (and ROI Technical Account Manager) and display your organization’s specific business rules.

These allow you to keep specific notations about business rules as well as attach original documents and specifications for any business rules. Also of note: these business rules don’t have to be specific to ROI-related programming. I am seeing many clients use this feature to store all “data related” business rules within the ROI Revolution database. Nice Job!

It’s the Open Batches…

There are two new thoughtful widgets available in a dashboard near you….just in time for the holidays! The intent is to give you a guick glance on the status of your batches (open and unlocked, that is…).

You get to them in the Tools Tab under “Welcome.” Select “Options” and look under the “Counts” section.

Keep in mind, you can also get a listing of any open, unlocked batches through the Tools Tab by filtering on “Only Open Batches” and clicking the “Subscribe to this List” icon. We want you to be in the “know.”

Did You Know?

Ever question the little question mark in the upper right hand corner next to the logout? The one that looks like this….

Well, question no more….because when a Question Comes Along, You Must Click it. Click it Good. (Sorry, I couldn’t resist the Devo here).

This little sassy icon will get you to a full fledged online User Help Menu – and it’s around 300+ pages so we give it to you online (save a tree, please). The User’s Manual is updated long before we roll out new features so rest assured, it’s up to date and good reading!