The Spotlight : Patron Edge Online

Rotating show images in Patron Edge Online

Sean Long — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 13:30:00 GMT

My colleague, Matt Cook, recently showed off a cool Image cube he put together for Patron Edge Online. Take a look at the information below, it would be cool to see this put to work. The really cool thing about this is that each side of the cube can link to different things, so this could help drive interest in things like special events, classes, or whatever the creative minds in your marketing department can think up! As the cube is set up right now, it uses the loader.asp file to allow it to link directly to specific shows. Pretty cool!

Disclaimer: This will require you to do a small amount of coding. The example is pretty easy to follow if you are familiar with HTML, Javascript or other coding languages, but you won’t be able to contact support for assistance setting this up.

1. Create a new screen part on the page where you want the image to display (In this example, I’ll use Template 1)

· Type = Include

· File Name = imagecube.html

· Top, Left, Width, Height – position the element as desired, but you want it to be the size of your images for best resolution. I used 450,20,120,80

2. Grab the latest copy of the image cube library Note: There are literally thousands of cool jquery libraries out there, many of them dealing with images, this is just one that looked slick to me. Most are easy to use and would be interchangeable. Unzip the library into your PEOSite folder (by default, C:\Program Files\Blackbaud\The Patron Edge Online\PEOSite)

3. Open up your favorite text editor, create imagecube.html and drop it in your PEOSite folder

Here’s the code for my file:

<head><script type="text/javascript" src="http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.3.2/jquery.min.js"></script>
<script type="text/javascript" src="jquery.imagecube.js"></script>
</head>
<div id="defaultCube" style="width: 120px; height: 80px; overflow: none;">
<a href="loader.asp?target=show.asp?shCode=64"><img src="images/shows/show64.jpg" alt="Show 64 Title" title="Show 64 Title" style="width: 100%; height=100%;"/></a>
<a href="loader.asp?target=show.asp?shCode=38"><img src="images/shows/show38.jpg" alt="Show 38 Title" title="Show 38 Title" style="width: 100%; height=100%;"/></a>
<a href="loader.asp?target=show.asp?shCode=19"><img src="images/shows/show19.jpg" alt="Show 19 Title" title="Show 19 Title" style="width: 100%; height=100%;"/></a>
</div>
<script type="text/javascript">
$(document).ready(function() {
$.imagecube.setDefaults({speed: 1000, pause: 6000});
$('#defaultCube').imagecube();
});
</script>
You’ll need to make a few changes. Namely, I referenced show codes in my sample database. You can generate your loader link as needed. Your images will also likely not be named show64, so update the img src reference as well as the alt and Title as needed. There are a lot of benefits to using Google’s jQuery library, but you can download your own if needed.

Try it out and leave a comment if this worked for you!

3.401 and 3.41 update released!

Sean Long — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 17:39:00 GMT

We are happy to announce that we have released new versions of The Patron Edge and The Patron Edge Online.

Here are a few things to get excited for:

Patron Edge 3.401:

Coupon codes: You can now use Alphanumeric codes for Coupons! They no longer need to be things like 1234, they could be BOGO (Buy One Get One) or something similar
Change Due prompt in General Admission Sales: Now your touchscreen users can have a prompt to remind them how much change to give the client, after making a cash sale.

Patron Edge Online 3.4.1:

Same Day Internet Sales: You can now allow users to purchase tickets the same day as the event online, allowing those procrastinators to still get to see the shows.

And of course, there is great information on these enhancements and our PCI compliance enhancements located in our Update guides:

http://www.blackbaud.com/files/support/guides/pe/ug3401us.pdf
(Patron Edge Update Guide)

http://www.blackbaud.com/files/support/guides/pe/peo341ug.pdf
(Patron Edge Online Update Guide)

Please contact your Account Manager if you are interested in updating to these versions.

PE and PEO Updates Demystified

Nicholai Burton — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 13:10:00 GMT

Being the type who always wants to use technology to take things to the next level, I've done some more experimenting with screencasting. This video will take you through an update for Patron Edge 3.401 and Patron Edge Online 3.4.1. The video is about 17 minutes and should answer any questions you have. If you missed the update webinar a few weeks ago, this is even better, as I take you through every screen and explain every step of the process.

Thoughts, concerns? Leave a message in the comments.

[Update] I've been told that the best practice is to run the update on the workstations first, before doing the detach/reattach and logging in to update the data.

Patron Edge Update Webinar FAQs

Nicholai Burton — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 20:38:00 GMT

Thanks to everyone who was on the update webinar today. Amie did a great job of explaining the process and showing the new features, and we heard some really good questions. With that in mind, I wanted to go ahead and post the information so those of you who missed the webinar can still catch the highlights.

When will Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 be compatible?
There is not currently a timeline for compatibility with Windows Server 2008 or Windows 7.

What are the implications for PE/RE/FE integrated clients?
There are no special requirements for The Financial Edge. If you integrate with The Raiser's Edge, ensure that you are running 7.85 or higher and that you disable the integration while updating Patron Edge.

Is The Raiser's Edge 7.85 still compatible with Patron Edge 3.400?
Yes, 7.85 and 7.91 are compatible.

How soon do we need to run the update?
This will depend on your merchant services provider. However, it is important to note that on July 1, 2010, Visa will stop working with acquirers whose clients do not use PA-DSS certified applications. See this link from Visa for more information.

Will custom PEO design elements still work as expected (i.e. free text, images, menus)?
I always recommend setting things up in a test system to ensure everything works as expected. There are no known changes to Patron Edge Online that would affect design elements like screens, screen parts or menu items.

Is the upgrade process different if we're on 3.340 than if we're on 3.310?
The main difference is that there will be fewer steps, since PCCharge, Windows Server, SQL Server and The Raiser's Edge are already on the required versions.

Can we update PCCharge to 5.8 now if we're on Patron Edge 3.310?
Absolutely. As part of the call with your account manager, we can arrange to put the required PCCharge version in your FTP folder.

Is Moneris Canada now supported?
Yes, PCCharge for the US and Moneris for Canada are the two standard credit card interfaces.

Is PCCharge 5.8 Client still incompatible with Patron Edge?
Yes, this is a known issue. At this time, PCCharge 5.8 Client and Patron Edge cannot be installed on the same machine. PCCharge Payment Server does not have any conflicts with Patron Edge and continues to work normally.

Whose IP addresses will have to change for hosted clients?
These are done on a one-off basis. Generally, an organization currently running Patron Edge Online 3.2.5 or below will receive a new IP address. As part of starting the update process, Blackbaud will let you know several weeks in advance if the IP address for your website will change. This will allow plenty of time to coordinate with your domain name provider to schedule the change on that end.

Does each product have to be on its own server to be PCI compliant?
I don't have any information about this. Please refer to the PCI Security Standards Council website to see the full set of PCI rules.

Have Packages changed since 3.340?
Coupons can now use both alpha characters and digits. The remaining Package features are the same as in version 3.340.

Are we planning digital signature capture?
I have not seen this on any product roadmap for the next year.

How long should we plan to be down?
This can vary greatly. To be safe I would plan for at least half a day. If the only thing you have to update on the big day is Patron Edge and Patron Edge Online, and you have carefully read the PE and PEO update guides, you'll be able to keep downtime to a minimum. There may be additional steps to perform for Patron Edge Online after the update, but those steps are based around new features and won't prevent you from having a working website.

If you are hosted and your IP address requires a change, the length of time it takes for that change to be recognized can vary. This Wikipedia article explains the technical bits about what happens when an IP address changes and why it can potentially take a while to propagate. In my experience (please take with a grain of salt), most of these changes take effect within a few hours.

If you feel the update is more complex than you can handle or you want to minimize downtime by having Blackbaud to perform the update for you, just let me know and we can set up a call with your account manager and I to work something out.

Other update questions? Leave a message in the comments!

Add A Facebook Fan Box To Your Site

Nicholai Burton — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 13:27:00 GMT

My colleague Chad recently wrote about 6 Dogooding Webby Things Your Nonprofit Should Check Out, and I wanted to show how quick and easy it is to implement one of those webby things, the Facebook Fan Box. It's not a fit for every organization, but if you have a strong Facebook presence and want to promote it on your website, don't let the idea of building this custom piece intimidate you. And the steps work for everyone, whether your site uses PEO or a different application.

Step One: Visit your Facebook page. Go to your organization's Facebook page and click the link on the left that says Add Fan Box to your site.

Step Two: Get the code. You will be taken to a second page where you can check whether you want to include both your stream and fans, or just one of the two. You will get the auto-generated code along with a preview, like this:

Step Three: Add the code to your site. Edit the "connections" entry in the code if you want to display more than 10 fans at a time, and the "width" bit if you want it to be wider than 300 pixels. If you use Patron Edge Online as your content management system, save this code to Notepad as a .htm file and add it to PEO as a screen part. If you use a different CMS, the process should be pretty similar. Of course there are advanced options and extra styling you can get into, but these three painless steps get you from zero to Fan Box in five minutes.

Is your site using the Fan Box feature or custom Facebook applications? How do they fit into your marketing strategy or promote your mission? Leave a message for other readers in the comments.

The 20-Minute Test Environment, Part II

Nicholai Burton — Mon, 11 May 2009 18:54:00 GMT

Last week you set up a Patron Edge test environment, and now you're ready to get going with the web side of things. Here is how to get your Patron Edge Online test environment up and running in 20 minutes.

Restore some data
We're switching this up a bit from last time, since PEO doesn't use the Blackbaud Management Console. Through SQL Management Studio, create a backup of your live PEO database and restore it on your test machine. For the sake of speed, run the DB Cleaner function before backing up.

Install Patron Edge Online
Run the PEO installer, choosing all three components when asked what to install (website files, PE communication components, and PEO communication components). There are a couple of places where it will ask you to make a connection to your PEO and PE databases. For simplicity, choose SQL Authentication on these screens and use the 'sa' account. You'll be able to pick your PE and PEO databases from a list. On any screen that asks for an IP address, use 127.0.0.1, and leave all of the ports at their defaults. Don't check any boxes on screens where it talks about internal/external IP stuff, just click Next to fly right through those.

Copy custom files and images
There are many ways to get your stuff across, but for the sake of getting this thing running in 20 minutes, here's what to do:

Grab a copy of your live PEOSite folder and move it to the desktop of the test machine.
Open the folder and delete the file called global.asa.
Drag the folder into C:\Program Files\Blackbaud\The Patron Edge Online and click Yes to All when prompted.

If you have any customizations that use DLLs, you'll need to copy those over as well and register them. This differs from site to site, so you'll just have to know what any custom DLLs are named and where they are located.

And that's PEO in 20 minutes! Are you experiencing any problems while setting up your test system, or did I cover it pretty well? Leave a note in the comments.

Customizing the behavior of links in Patron Edge Online

Nicholai Burton — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 17:00:00 GMT

I was working through some advanced Patron Edge Online questions this week and was asked if there are any special parameters that you can add when loading a page to make it behave a certain way. To make life easy I've put together a comprehensive list that shows what parameters can be added, what they mean, and what pages can make use of them. Happy hacking!

Global options that can be used with any link
Interface - the interface code
SalePoint - the sales point code; only needed when using the sales point filter
language - the language code of all text on the site
Charset - the character set to use for all text
CSS_FILE - only used when overriding the CSS file of the desired interface
DIR - text direction of the site, to handle right-to-left languages

LTR - left to right (default)
RTL - right to left

Example: http://mysite.org/default.asp?Interface=3&SalePoint=102

show.asp/show_1.asp
shCode - the show code to load, from the PEO Administration Site

show_events_list.asp
shCode - the show code to load, from the PEO Administration Site

default.asp/shows_list_1.asp
cgName - category name
cgCode - category code
use_more - whether to only show recommended shows in the category, or all shows of that category

all_events_1.asp
startDate - the start date for the view
direction - number of days/weeks/months before or after the start date parameter. Date unit is determined based on the viewCode
viewCode - how shows are displayed

0 = Day (default)
1 = Week
2 = Month
3 = Calendar

Example: To display a calendar view of all events in June, use http://mysite.org/all_events.asp?viewcode=3&startdate=2009-6-1

hall.asp
event - code of the event to load, from the PEO Administration Site

donation.asp/donation_1.asp
code - the fund code of the donation to load, from the PEO Administration Site

membership.asp/membership_1.asp
membership_code - the code of the membership category to load, from the PEO Administration Site

prepaid_subscription.asp/prepaid_subscription_1.asp
prepaid_code - the series code to load, from the PEO Administration Site

merchandise.asp/merchandise_1.asp
code - the fund code of the merchandise item to load, from the PEO Administration Site
count - number of items to load by default

Example: You want an easy process to put two programs (merchandise item 24) in the basket when buying a certain show, so you use http://mysite.org/merchandise.asp?code=24&count=2

Top 8 of 2008

Nicholai Burton — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 22:14:00 GMT

A new year has arrived and The Spotlight is now back in full swing. I wanted to start off right, with a round-up of the most popular posts of 2008. Go ahead and make a 2009 resolution to implement one of these ideas or features.

PEO Donation Round-Up, v2
This was a feature I built that allows you to have a 1-click donation button on your basket screen. It will round up to the next dollar, five dollars, whatever dollar amount you need without having to leave the basket screen.

Six tweaks to improve performance
So you've loaded the latest SQL patches and Windows service packs, updated Patron Edge and PEO to the latest version and trimmed down transaction times, but your database just can't keep up with you. Before going out and buying a brand new, top-of-the-line server for your database, try some of these tweaks to get a bump in performance.

Create maps of your patrons using free online tools
This is a guest post I wrote for The User's Edge. I explain how to use the RE Export module and a free service called Map a List to create a Google Maps mashup. These tools are not RE-specific though; you can run Marketing Mailing queries and generate a spreadsheet of address info, enabling you to get a visual of where your season ticket holders or major sponsors live.

Choose Your Own Order Details
Patron Edge contains a pretty nice feature that allows you to enter additional order information based on the price type chosen. While you will need to write your own reports for the captured data, you have a lot of flexibility with what it can do.

Five ways to cut transaction time
On a busy day, every second counts when making a sale. Long lines make patrons impatient and a bad enough waiting experience can even be enough to prevent someone from coming back to visit you. Lines at theme parks are so bad nowadays, my wife and I don't even bother anymore. With that in mind, here are five tips that can help you cut mouse clicks and seconds from every transaction.

Using Google Analytics to get more out of PEO
Google has a powerful, free tool available, called Google Analytics, that will allow you to collect all kinds of aggregate data about your site's visitors.

Send an SMS blast to patrons using free online tools
Have you considered the possibility of using the system to send out an SMS blast to the mobile phones of your subscribers?

How Do You Welcome New Clients?
When patrons become associated with your organization, either by purchasing tickets or signing up to receive information, do they receive any kind of introductory materials? How do you go about getting lists of new people who have expressed this interest? One great, fully-automated way is to use the Welcome Letter feature within Patron Edge.

If you missed any of these posts the first time, check them out and leave your comments. If there are certain topics you want to hear about in 2009, just send me an email and I will do my best to crank out something useful.

PEO Donation Round-Up, v2

Nicholai Burton — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 13:24:00 GMT

The PEO Labs series brings you information or advice on items that are geared towards users who can take high-level concepts or sample code and run with them. Please note that many of the things discussed are not supported. That doesn't mean that an item is a warranty-voider; it just means that the Support Analysts can't walk you through it or troubleshoot it if it breaks.

A client recently contacted me about the free donation round-up customization I had written for PEO earlier this year. She had a couple of suggestions to improve it, and I had some time available last week to work on it. Here's the info on version 2 of the customization:

Updated for compatibility with PEO 3.3.3
Fixed a memory leak
Added a new parameter that allows the administrator to enter the amount to round; it is no longer hard-coded to go up to the next dollar

You can download the updated copy of the feature here. Please feel free to download and install it, and let me know what you think. You will need your system administrator to run a couple of SQL scripts and put a file in place, and then it's ready to go. Full instructions are included in the ZIP file. If you install it, leave a comment to let everyone know what kind of effect it is having on your online donations.

Selling out is a beautiful thing

Nicholai Burton — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 22:22:00 GMT

In Patron Edge Online 3.3.3, we started work on a feature that will allow you to continue to display sold out events on your website rather than having them get removed. This is a great feature in a couple of ways. First, the marketing folks will love it because patrons who visit your site can see how popular your events are and won't wait until last minute to make a purchase. A press release that says your last ballet performance sold out on the first day of sale is a great boost to your reputation. From a customer service perspective, it's also a win because people who visit your website can see that the event they want is already sold out instead of calling the box office to see if it has gone on sale or if there are still tickets available.

The reason this is a PEO Labs post is because the feature requires the help of a DBA to implement so it isn't something that a support analyst will take you through. But with a tech person and 15 minutes of free time and you can get this up and running. Here's how:

Set up Patron Edge

Go to Administration, User Setup, User Groups
Edit the Internet user group and set Update Events Active Data Table to Yes. If you don't see this option, just use the Design toolbar to turn on the field.

Create the SQL job

In Enterprise Manager or SQL Management Studio, create a SQL job to run against the PE database with the following command: exec CalcEventsActiveDataView. This is the part where you want the tech person involved. Set it to run on a schedule as frequent as your PE/PEO sync runs. By default a partial sync runs every hour, but you may want to set this more or less frequently; your mileage may vary on how long a sync takes.

Add the sales point to Patron Edge Online

Go to Administration, System Setup, Sales Points
Create a new entry that uses the number of the Internet sales point. The description can be anything you want; I would set it to the same description as you have in PE for clarity's sake.

Configure Site Settings

Here is where all of the business logic comes in. Your tech person can do the configuration, but the box office manager and marketing manager need to make some business decisions.

Set Display sold out events to 1 (leave at 0 to remove the event from the site altogether when it is sold out).
Set Display sold out shows to 1 (leave at 0 to remove the show altogether when all of its events are sold out).
Set an expression for Sold-out behavior, using one of these examples:

Option	Value	Explanation
<empty string>		Events will never be defined as "Sold Out"
Numeric value	5	Event is Sold Out once number of empty seats = 5
Percentage	10%	Event is Sold Out once percentage of empty seats = 10%
Min(Value, Percentage)	Min(5,10%)	Event is Sold Out once percentage of empty seats = 10% number of empty seats = 5, whichever is lower
Max(Value, Percentage)	Max(5,10%)	Event is Sold Out once percentage of empty seats = 10% number of empty seats = 5, whichever is higher

And with that, I bid you good weekend. Now take this stuff, run with it, and come back to leave comments about how it's working for you.

Save time on the Administration site with Favorites

Nicholai Burton — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 15:10:00 GMT

Sorry for not posting anything last week; I'll give you two great posts this week to make up for it!

Patron Edge Online version 3.3.3 introduced a completely new, redesigned Administration site to organize things better and make running the site easier. One of the best new features is Favorites. You can save all of the site pieces you frequently hit to your Favorites and access them from the Home tab with one click. The best part is that it's very intuitive. Here's how to create your first Favorite:

1. On the Administration site, browse to Content, Events, Shows
2. Now click the blue star icon in the upper left part of the screen
3. When prompted, enter a name for your favorite or just leave the caption as is, and click OK
4. Lather, rinse, and repeat, until you have all your most frequently used items favorited

When you log into the Administration site you start on the Home tab. Now you can just click Favorites and choose the place you want to go, eliminating the distraction of all entries that aren't relevant to your needs. A site administrator would choose items like Site Settings, Start Sync, Esro Logs and Check Connection as Favorites. For a designer or content creator, Favorites might be Shows, Designs for Tickets, and Interfaces.

What Administration features do you use most? Has the Favorites feature helped you save time?

Validate form fields in Patron Edge Online

Nicholai Burton — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 14:10:00 GMT

Patron Edge Online can be a double-edged sword when it comes to data entry. A user has the ability to enter his own address and phone information so that you don't have to try to track it down elsewhere later on, but when you don't enforce any kind of formatting standard, searching or reporting on it in the system can become a pain. Luckily PEO has a built-in feature that allows you to validate form fields using something called a regular expression. If that phrase means nothing to you, don't worry. We have a regular expression builder that will walk you through it. If you are familiar with JavaScript regular expressions, you can write them manually and bypass the builder tool.

Regular expressions are a great way to test for valid phone and email formatting, so be sure to take a few minutes this week and set up a few. To illustrate how to use the builder, here is an example that forces Email to have an @ symbol and at least one period.

Go to Administration, System Setup, User-Fields Rules
Edit the row for Email
Click the regular expression builder button beside Regular Exp 1
From the Begins with drop-down list, select 'any char' that occurs 'once or many'
In the Followed By section, select 'the char', enter the @ symbol, and select occurs 'once'. Then click Add
Change Followed By to 'any char' that occurs 'once or many' and click Add
Change Followed By again to 'the char', enter a period and select occurs 'once'. Click Add again
In the Ends With section, select 'any char' occurs 'once or many'
To test, enter various combinations of values in the Validate field and click Validate. An alert box will tell if the values pass the rule or not.
When finished, click OK.

If you are familiar with creating regular expressions, you can type directly into the Regular Exp 1 field and skip the builder. In the above example, you can type the expression ^.+@.+\..+$ directly into the field. Advanced users note: the regular expression field does not support the Replace or Split methods, only the Test method.

What other regular expressions are you using to keep your data in a nice, clean format? Leave a note in the comments.

Six tweaks to improve performance

Nicholai Burton — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 19:46:00 GMT

So you've loaded the latest SQL patches and Windows service packs, updated Patron Edge and PEO to the latest version and trimmed down transaction times, but your database just can't keep up with you. Before going out and buying a brand new, top-of-the-line server for your database, try some of these tweaks to get a bump in performance.

Update your compatibility level - If you updated at some point from SQL Server 2000 to version 2005, chances are your database is still running in SQL 2000 compatibility mode. Microsoft claims performance gains by updating to 2005 so make sure that your database is taking advantage of it.

Keep things tidy - Imagine you are making dinner and having a conversation at the same time, and end up putting a corkscrew in the wrong drawer. The next time you need the corkscrew it takes longer than usual to find it, right? So after a while you go and reorganize everything to find things quickly again. Just like you need to reorganize the kitchen cabinets every once in a while to find the things you need, you also need to reorganize your hard disk and your database to make data easier to find. See this article for defragmenting the physical filesystem, and Knowledgebase solution BB120081 for steps on rebuilding the database indexes.

Update statistics - SQL Server keeps statistics about all of your tables and idexes. This includes things like the number of rows in a table and helps SQL determine the best way to build a query and return data. Keeping statistics up-to-date allows queries to run their fastest. Check out Knowledgebase solution BB137060 for a how-to.

Split your database files - Reading and writing from the hard disk is one of the biggest performance bottlenecks of SQL Server. To reduce the time it takes to read and write from a disk, put the database file on one hard disk and the log file on a second disk (on the same machine). See solution BB113761 for steps to do this. If you have three hard disks, put the ‘Tempdb’ database on a third disk for the best performance. It’s not too difficult to do, but you’ll want to consult your system administrator first.

Check out your memory - Another great way to improve performance is to ensure that the server has enough memory. Right-click the taskbar and select Task Manager. On the Performance tab, check the Commit Charge total against the Physical Memory total. If the Commit Charge is regularly jumping higher than the Physical Memory, the machine is attempting to convert hard disk space into memory, which is slow. This is a good case to buy more memory for the server.

Give SQL an edge over other applications - By default, Windows is configured to give running programs priority over background services. We can switch this so that SQL Server and other services have priority over programs run in the foreground. To do this, go to Control Panel, System, Advanced. In the Performance section click Settings and click Advanced in the new window that comes up. Finally, set the Processor Scheduling section to Background Services and click OK.

Are there other tweaks you've found to get more out of your database server? Share your experience in the comments.

Firefox 3 has been released!

Nicholai Burton — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 20:35:00 GMT

Firefox, the greatest of the modern browsers, released version 3 of their product just about four hours ago and it has already been downloaded nearly 3 million (million!) times. It's more secure, prettier, faster and smarter than anything else out there (yes, even you Safari). I encourage all of you to download and use it exclusively for a better browsing experience. If you need to access your Patron Edge Online Administration Site, you can install the excellent IETab extension and do it all in one browser. With this extension I don't think I've purposely launched Internet Explorer in two or three years, and haven't had run-ins with malware of any kind. And now it even integrates with web apps. For example, I can click a mailto link and it will launch my Gmail composer.

For those who have done a fair amount of PEO design work and had to do any special browser-specific tweaks to make things look the way you want, make sure to test your site in this newest version to ensure that your patrons won't experience any display issues. The US and Canada together have almost hit the one million download mark, so you can be sure that your patrons are using it already.

What do your patrons think about your PEO site?

Nicholai Burton — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 20:50:00 GMT

While thinking about ways to get people more involved with an organization's online presence, I realized that most websites give an opportunity to leave feedback about the website itself. The best way to improve usability is to talk with users, right? I’ve done this with ING Direct, Netflix and a handful of other sites to let them know about bad links or usability issues. Often I leave positive feedback, just to let an organization know that I appreciate a new feature or change to their site that has made my life easier.

So following that line of thought, I whipped this up one evening while watching reruns of Scrubs. It is a new page for Patron Edge Online that allows a person to enter her name, email (if desired) and thoughts about your site. Now that version 3.3.3 has been released, I also threw in an accompanying custom report that can be generated to allow your web marketer or webmaster to review feedback on demand.

You can view a screenshot of what the page looks like here. As always, play with it on a test interface first! This feature is pretty basic (and potentially very valuable) but keep in mind that it is not supported. To install:
1. Download this ZIP file and extract the contents
2. Add Feedback_Form.asp and insert_feedback.asp to your public\bbcustomizations folder
3. If you do not have the Custom Site Settings table yet (from earlier PEO Labs articles), run Create Custom Site Settings Table.sql against your PEO database
4. Run LeaveFeedback.sql against your PEO database to create the custom table that will hold the actual comments
5. Create a new screen called Feedback
6. Create a new screen part on the Feedback screen (INCLUDE is the type) that points to bbcustomizations\Feedback_Form.asp
7. Edit the feedbackheader CSS class so that it matches your site’s overall design

You can also import the Site Feedback Report into the Custom Reports section of the Administration Site, or review the feedback via the Custom Tables folder.

Are you currently using any method of capturing user feedback about your website? How has it affected your design or business processes? Leave a message in the comments.