Blackbaud NetCommunity v5.6 Release News
The end of the year is a very busy time for most nonprofits, and the Blackbaud NetCommunity development team has been very busy on one last product release for the year. BBNC v5.6 went into controlled release today and will have general availability in January 2009. I mentioned in a previous blog entry that this is the first release of BBNC that leverages an agile software development approach.
Blackbaud NetCommunity v5.6 continues to expand its feature set and deepens unmatched integration with The Raiser's Edge, our education administration solutions, and Blackbaud Enterprise CRM.
Here are just some of the changes you'll see in the release:
Ability to enter metadata descriptions and keywords at both the Template and Page level
Ability to copy Layouts and Stylesheets to quickly reuse or modify site designs
Ability to style menus using unordered lists and custom classes
Ability to put the Donation, Event Registration, and Payment parts into a "test" mode
Ability to print and export Survey part results
Ability to compare content performance for testing purposes
And there are some good tweaks and adjustments including:
Adding tooltips for every merge field in the product
Adding default text for several of the email types and helplets
Adding group photos and other user contributed photo improvements
BBNC v5.6 will be compatible with both Microsoft SQL Server 2008 and Microsoft SQL Server 2005. Please note that the third quarter 2009 release of BBNC will require Microsoft SQL Server 2008, and Microsoft SQL Server 2005 will no longer be supported. Blackbaud OnDemand customers will have this upgrade handled as part of their normal system maintenance.
There are also some new features in this release including a brand new Membership part for our Blackbaud Enterprise CRM customers. This functionality was developed from the ground up for our Infinity Platform, and there will be plenty more of that coming in 2009.
One of the other new features is something we're calling Content Comparison. It's unlike any feature being offered by anyone else serving the nonprofit market today. Content Comparison extends the concept of testing emails to being able to test the content on your website. This new feature allows you to setup, monitor, and manage how different pieces of randomly presented content perform on an area of your website. This includes the ability to track both click-throughs and conversions all within BBNC.
Let's say you're running a membership promotion and you would like to know which of four different content variations gets the most clicks or purchases. Content Comparison allows you to perform these tests on both anonymous and registered users. Now imagine testing ask amounts on a set of known annual fund donors to see which ones perform better. These are the kinds of innovative things that Blackbaud is bringing to its customers now and in future releases.
In 2009, we'll continue to bring improvements and innovations to our Internet solutions. Blackbaud continues to increase its focus on the Internet while some vendors are cutting or shifting their budgets to other priorities. Look for more exciting news next year!