It’s been busy @ the “ROI Labs”

You might think the summer months are quiet — vacations, sun, beaches, backyard cook-outs and all that “fun” stuff. But I’ve learned something in my many, many years of working with programmers. If I open the blinds on their windows, give ‘em a few iced lattes and a couple of tofu dogs, those guys think they’re on vacation and they don’t stop doing their development work.

As you can see from this month’s update, there’s been a LOT going on behind the scenes. I am very proud of these new features — all of which have been developed at no additional charge to our customers. In fact there’s so much to tell you — I might even re-send this update out a few times in case you are on vacation, although I would imagine these updates make great beach reading….

Enjoy!

Introducing FLEX Lists

This is gonna be big. Trust me.

Starting NOW, you will see a new little widget sprinkled throughout Revolution Online giving you the option to [SAVE AS FLEXLIST] and it looks like this:

And even inside the QueryTool, you have an option to do a query and save the output as a FLEXLIST.

When you select this option, you are prompted to name your list.

And then here’s where the magic happens. Once you’ve SAVED your FLEXLIST from anywhere in the database or via the QueryTool, you can now do some amazing things with these lists. Using the “Combine Lists” tool, we give you the ability to work with your own FLEXLISTS directly in Revolution Online. You can merge these lists together, find unique records that appear on both lists, as well as subtracting records that appear on one list from the other. You can then save the resulting records to another FLEXLIST.

But wait….there’s MORE!

We even provide you with a FLEXLIST TOOL that allows you to perform certain functions against these lists — such as: assigning flags, comments, contact history or assigning major gifts projects.

Ticklers to Outlook

In addition to setting up ticklers and getting reminders on-screen as well as via email, now you can set them up to go directly into your Outlook Calendars. Just click the Outlook Appointment button.

Now, you can get on-screen reminders, emails sent directly to the specified email address AND Outlook Calendar Appointments. (You know what that means, right? There’s no excuse for forgetting my birthday).

Job Management & Tracking – Full Transparency

The ROI world has been quite abuzz lately with our new Job Management & Tracking System. If you don’t know what this is, read on….

Because ROI Solutions operates as a full service provider in addition to application hosting, we offer our clients data extracts and programming upon request. In fact since our founding back in 1999, we’ve processed over 12,000 “job requests.” These requests have historically been sent to your technical account manager for implementation and logged into our internal Job Management & Tracking Database.

NOW the Job Management & Tracking System is ONLINE and located in the “Jobs” Tab including full history of every request every submitted:

Within this tab, you will be able to submit any requests directly through Revolution Online and track its progress to completion. There you can attach documents (such as mail plans and comments) and see Real-Time progress on your requests and as well pick up any files directly online.

In addition to being a nifty management tool, we offer full history of all request ever submitted to ROI Solutions – including your prior mail plans, counts, and extracts — all online! Full transparency and history in all of the requests submitted on behalf of your organization.

Secure Upload – PCI/DSS

You already know that you can process credit card and EFT gifts through Revolution Online. Those gifts can be keyed in or they can come in from your website using the ROI Open API. But what about those “other” places you get donations from…like from other Vendors? You know, those files they put on an FTP site and then you have to retrieve them and so something with them ???? Well, now you can use the ROI Secure Upload Feature to get them into your database — safely and securely — meeting all PCI-DSS rules and requirements.

Using the New Secure Upload Feature, we allow you the ability to upload sensitive credit card data directly into Revolution Online for immediate processing of payments.

Located in the Tools–>Commands Section of Revolution Online, select the Secure Upload option:

From there, the on-screen widgets will step you through the process of uploading your file allowing you to enter in the password protection and encryption information.

…And then depending on your organization’s business rules, once inside Revolution Online, these transactions can be handled in any way you desire — including automated processing of the donations and credit card/EFT processing.

Did You Know?

ROI has a Facebook Page and it’s a great way to keep up on the inside scoop on many development features. Click the below link to find us and become a fan.

You can also follow us on Twitter:

Another Ticklish Situation

Suppose you wanted to tell someone to do something (in the nicest possible way, of course)… and at the same time have someone keep track of your request until it was finished… and when it was finished, they told you about it, and everything was wonderful… sigh… wouldn’t that be wonderful? Just suppose…

You can stop supposing! Here’s how. Start on the same old tickler screen you know and love…

There’s a new choice, “every day until marked complete”. And, like its name suggests, the assignees will be tickled about the task “every day until [the task] is marked complete.”

First they’ll get an email telling them about the task, and the item will show up in their section at the top of Search. And just because we know you want to keep track of it yourself, it will also show up in your own section until it’s complete.

Meanwhile, the person you assigned it to will keep on getting a tickler email reminding them about it every day…

What Up?

Who ever said “No News is Good News” probably works for another database company ’cause we think there should always be “news” — some new and exciting things happening in the database. Admittedly this is not really a features update (cause it’s old NEWS)…but for ever and ever we’ve had this nifty little news tab hanging out in the database and we thought we’d remind you about it. It’s a great way to keep up to date with the technical happenings within the ROI database. Love it, Live it. Read it. (And while you’re there poking around, check out the “secret stuff” option for some other tidbits).

Did You Know?

Nifty as the search criteria is, I gotta be honest….some times I am tired and I just want to look up the same ole accounts that I looked at yesterday. So I use the “recent accounts” feature to pull up a list of…..”recent accounts.” Saves me 1 minute and 12 seconds every day!

Hee ha ha haa hee! Ticklers!

OK, ticklers aren’t the only neat feature of the new system, but they are pretty cool (not to mention useful). We thought you’d like some tips on how best to utilize them.

The primary input form is accessed from the Donor View page when you are looking at a donor account:

As illustrated above, if you select “the day after data changes” from the “when” drop down box then you will be prompted to select as many specific criteria as you want. You will be notified in the method you select (more on that below) the day after the selected data changes (you probably could have guessed that…).

If you need a reminder on a specific day that you have to do something, you can write yourself a note in the “Task Description” box, then choose “once on a specific date,” “every day during a date range,” “on a specific day every month,” or “on a specific day every year,” and you will be reminded on the date you enter.

Now, how do you want to be reminded? You’ve got a couple options… You can choose to have the record highlighted on the search screen on the dates you selected or when the selected criteria change. In addition you can choose to have the system send an email to you and/or a distribution list. The email will tell you the account ID, the condition that occurred, the “Identification” and “Task description” you entered, and the name of the person who created the tickler. It will also contain a hyperlink that lets you click right through to the donor view page for the given donor account (provided that you are logged in).

Ticklers are account specific and you can create as many as you want. How cool is that!?

Next month, we’ll have even more tips about ticklers, so stay tuned!

Searching by Batch ID

From the, “great ideas our clients give us” file: an additional way to filter the batch lists from the Batch Payments and Batch Reversals commands on your Tools tab, seen here:

Now you have the option of selecting “Batch Search” from the drop down menu, like so:

Select “Batch Search” and the “from” and “to” date input fields disappear, and instead you can search for specific batches by batch ID or header. It looks like this:

The new field can work for you in a number of ways:

1. If you enter a number Revolution On-Line will search for that exact number in both the BATCH_ID and BATCH_HEADER. As you know, multiple batches can have the same BATCH_HEADER, so this search might result in multiple rows, depending on how you name your batches.
2. If you enter a non-numeric value that contains a wildcard character, as in, %, *, ?, or _, it will return the results of a case-insensitive LIKE search for the given string in the Batch Header Field.
3. If you enter a non-numeric value without a wildcard you will get the results from a case-insensitive exact search for the given string in the Batch Header Field.

Try it out!

Speaking of finding what you need…

4,000 plus entries in a validation table, how are you supposed to find what you are looking for!? Wouldn’t you like to be able to filter validation table lists in Revolution On-Line?

Now you can on all standard code tables. The new feature looks like this:

You can enter any letters plus any of the wildcard characters referenced above. Hit enter or click the arrow next to the filter and watch the magic happen. Presto, there’s Ren 3 to low-dollar donors from 1997! Phew…