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BBNC 6.15 is almost ready for release

Posted: Feb 09, 2010 by Robert McAllen | with 2 comment(s) |
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Blackbaud Netcommunity version 6.15 has just gone into a controlled release phase and is almost ready to hit the streets.  This is a major step on for us at Blackbaud as it is the first version that is running on our new Infinity platform.

I thought today I'd share a couple of the cool (or in some cases just incredibly useful)  new UK features that you can expect to in this release.Gift Aid changes

Gift Aid -

You now have the ability to switch off Gift Aid capture on donation forms.  This is a small tweak but an incredibly useful change if you do any overseas fundraising.  As BBNC can take donations from a large number of foreign countries it's important that we don't confuse people when collecting that money.  You can also switch this on and off in our fundraiser functionality also.  This particular feature was requested directly through our Ideasbank service and implemented for the UK market.  If you haven't used Ideasbank I'd recommend you go there and check out how we're trying to empower people

QAS ImageAddress Look up

In this version we've teamed up with the guys over at Experian QAS to add a new address look up feature to the software.  Using this feature your're able to add in the ability for donors and new registrants to sign up and have the system validate their addresses for them.  This helps greatly with data accuracy, data processing and cuts down on invalid addresses in direct mailing etc.  It's also a lot quicker and easier for a donor/registrant to enter their details.  We've added this feature as standard but you do have to register with QAS for their onDemand service.  For more details of this please contact your account executive at Blackbaud.

So that's two new features to increase efficiency and make the product more flexible and easier to use.

I'd be interested in your thoughts on these UK only changes.  For more details on the highlights of the release overall click on Steve MacLaughlin's blog post.
 


Comments

Paul Morriss said:

Well, 85FF3229-09FC-45B0-909B-D273A1F38FF4, (as Google reader calls you), I'm glad you're using Ideas bank. It's also good to see how most of the top ideas are under review, or due to appear in future releases. There are a couple that aren't though. One particularly I have an interest in - the ability to send NetCommunity emails to organisations. I can't see why this isn't built in, after all you just have to pull out the org email address and sent to it? However it may be that it's more complicated - as you may want to also allow contacts to be emailed, in which case you have to find a way to select which one, in a similar way to Address Processing on RE. It may be that Orgs would then need a NetCommunity tab, and they don't currently have it as they can't give gifts, so it's not just a question of pulling out an email address from the database.

If it's really complicated, why not tell us? I realise that it's not you personally who considers these things, but if you could pass the word on then I would appreciate it.

# February 10, 2010 9:30 AM

Robert McAllen said:

Thanks Paul.  Emailing to organisations is something we've looked at and we would like to at some point do but as you point out it's not as simple as it first seems.  

In order to be compliant with ISP regulations etc we need to give an ability to opt out of an email.

If the entity does not have a user record then they have no email preferences - unless they use the anonymous newsletter email part (which is just storing an email address so could hold an org address).

So until we add orgs as constituents to the database we'd struggle with this functionality.  The last thing we want to do is to do something which is no compliant with ISP best practice.

In the meantime if you are wanting to send an org an email you really have two options -

1. Send it to a contact at that org (more chance of it receiving a response this way anyway)

2. Have the org sign up for an anonymous newsletter.

If I'm missing something let me know but I hope this helps.

Cheers

Robert (or - 85FF3229-09FC-45B0-909B-D273A1F38FF4 - which I think might be catchier ;-)).

# February 10, 2010 10:47 AM