Archive for January, 2010

Beta Test version 3.23, with email mail merge receipts

Wednesday, January 27th, 2010

A beta test version of DONATION version 3.23 is now available for testing. If you have a bit of time, I would very much appreciate it if you could install it, try out the new features as appropriate, and give me any comments you have, preferably by Replying to this post. Even if you don’t try it out, comments on the changes listed below will still be appreciated.

Before I go on to that, I only received one reply to my last post, asking for thoughts about emailing mail merge letters. If you do have any thoughts, even if they are “I would never want to do that”, I’d really appreciate hearing from you, because I am still very unsure on what to do for that feature.

As usual, you can download and install the beta test version 3.23 from the page www.software4nonprofits.com/pretest.htm.

The biggest change in version 3.23 is that when viewing receipts created with mail merge, the editor now has a File à Email/Print menu option and corresponding toolbar button, allowing you to email those receipts to those donors who have email addresses, and optionally print the rest. (The was previously only available for the built-in receipts, not the mail merge ones.)

If you want to test this feature, you first have to switch to mail merge receipts  (or, recreate receipts with the Letters menu options). To be sure not to send real emails to real donors during your testing, go to Maintenance à Receipt Options, and check the “Email receipts only to yourself, for testing” checkbox. I would also recommend reading the Help topic on Emailing Receipts.

The other changes and new features in this version, since 3.22f, are as follows: 

  • Moved all backup and restore menu options from the Database menu to a new Backup/Restore menu, because the Database menu was getting too crowded!
  • Added a new Database à Split Donor menu option, for making a duplicate of a donor record, in order to spit it (e.g. into separate records for spouses).
  • Reorganized the Maintenance à Receipt Options window into more logical groupings, and made it disable fields that are not relevant if you have selected to use mail merge receipts. Also, added buttons for editing the template file for mail merge receipts, and mail merge gift in kind receipts, if you are using mail merge receipts. (This saves having to go to Letters à One Letter to do that.)
  • Changed Database à Delete Old Data so that it prompts for the last year of data to be deleted, rather than always deleting up to the 3rd-last year of data in the database.
  • In the editor for mail-merge letters and receipts, added a menu option and toolbar button for inserting an HTML non-breaking space.
  • In that same editor, show the Actions menu option for Edit in Microsoft Word only if Word is installed. Added further Actions menu options and toolbar buttons for Edit in Dreamweaver, Edit in Microsoft Expression Web, and Edit in Microsoft FrontPage (all of which are HTML editors), which appear only if their respective programs are installed.
  • In that same editor, if you edit the document with an external editor using any of the Actions menu options and make changes in that external editor, then when you return to the internal editor in DONATION, you will be prompted to reload the document to see the changes.
  • Added a Help button in the window prompting for a range of receipt numbers for the Receipt à Reprint Range menu option. Also added a Help button  in the window prompting for a range of receipt numbers when you are in Letters à Mass Mailing, you select the Receipt Information option, and click the Merge button.
  • Improved some of the messages that come up if you try to create receipts but there are no unreceipted donations, to clarify that you can reprint those receipts with the Receipt à Reprint Range menu option.
  • In the Evaluation version of the paid versions of DONATION (i.e. before you get your license key), it used to be that the Receipt menu options other than Current Donor Sample were disabled (greyed out) so you could not use them, because that is the limitation of the Evaluation version. Now, the options are enabled, but if you try to use them, they give a message explaining that they are not available until you pay and are licensed. Current Donor Sample still works, as before. This does not apply to the Lite version, which does not require licenses, but has other limitations on which Receipt menu options are available.
  • Added some details to the help topic on Validating your Database on how to fix things, in the extremely unlikely event of a validation error. Also, in that event, the program will prompt you to read that help topic.

Thank you in advance for any testing you can do and comments you have to offer, good or bad of course!

Posted in Beta Testing, General | 2 Comments »

Email Mail-Merge Letter Options

Thursday, January 21st, 2010

There are a number of options around how to do email mail-merge letters in DONATION that I’d like your opinions on.

Currently the only thing you can mass email is the built-in receipts. When you do that, they are saved as PDF files (which is necessary for receipts, at least in Canada, so they aren’t modifiable by the donor who receives them). The program’s user also specifies a text message to go in that email, though no merge fields (like the donor’s name) can be merged into it.

When I add emailing of mail-merge receipts, they will be done basically the same way, as attached PDF files, with (probably) a fixed, non-merged, text portion of the email. (Though that could change if option (1) below is implemented.) This may be the only email mail-merge feature to be added in the next release – I’m not sure yet. Part of that will depend on which of the options below is chosen, and how complex it is to do.

Whenever I do add email merged letters (as opposed to receipts), though, they require some different considerations, because they don’t necessarily have to be sent as PDFs. Here are some options:

  1. Plain text emails only, with merge fields as in the current mail-merge editor, though probably with some limitations (like no <<DetailsTable>> or <<SummaryTable>> fields). This is probably the easiest thing to do, it creates the smallest emails, and has the least issues with compatability between different donor’s email programs. But it also gives the least ability to make the emails look good.
  2. HTML emails, created with DONATION’s current internal mail-merge editor (which is Internet Explorer in edit mode behind the scenes, and is thus editing HTML). These would then be sent as an HTML email (not a PDF). This is fairly simple to do, but has one big problem – different email programs handle different parts of HTML differently, and some are very limited in what HTML they can handle. But the internal mail-merge editor tends to create very complex HTML, and thus when letters edited with it are used as an email, they may not come out well in all donors’ email programs.
  3. HTML emails, created with DONATION’s current internal mail-merge editor, but then saved as PDFs and emailed as attachments, with a standard (non-merged) text portion. This is safe in terms of working well with donors’ email programs, but obviously slower for large numbers, because of the delay for generating each PDF file individually.
  4. A combination of (1) and (3) – a merged plain-text portion, with an attached PDF from a merged HTML portion from the current internal editor. This has the same advantages and disadvantages as (3). However, in terms of the text portion of the email, it’s a bit more complicated, though more flexible in terms of the results, for the user.

While (2) above, a straight HTML email, is the most obvious choice in a way, the concerns about how the HTML emails will come out in different email programs really worry me. Also, there are apparently still people who have email programs that don’t handle HTML at all (or choose to turn off the option to handle HTML in their email programs). To account for that, if you send HTML emails, you must also include a plain-text version that non-HTML email programs will display. (It can be auto-generated by the sending program like DONATION, and HTML email programs will ignore it.) Also, I’m told by the email sending service that I use that mass mailed HTML-only emails, with no plain text version included, are more likely to be classed as SPAM by ISPs or by individuals’ anti-SPAM programs. So, the program would have to add in an automatically converted plain text version to any HTML emails anyways. (You do not want to be classed as a spammer by any of your recipients’ ISPs – that sticks to you, and you may never be able to send to them again!)

This problem about being classed as a spammer by ISPs is actually a bigger problem overall with the whole idea of mass emails. That’s why I switched to using an email-sending service, instead of sending the emails myself, because I started having problems with this when I was sending thousands of emails to DONATION users directly. (The services do all sorts of magic to avoid the problem.) I suspect that if you only have hundreds of donors you are mass emailing to, it’s not very likely to be a  problem, but I will have to warn the larger users of DONATION, with thousands of donors on their mailing list, about this concern!

When I currently send out my HTML emails to DONATION users, I hand edit them to use only extremely simple HTML, to avoid the problems with different email programs’ limitations. That’s obviously not an option that I can force on DONATION users who want to send mass mail-merged emails to their donors!

So, I’m really unclear on what the best solution is here. I could offer only one of the four options above, or more than one, though obviously that significantly increases the complexity for the user, if they have to choose between multiple ways of doing mass emailed letters to donors, and understand their pros and cons. Plus, again obviously, it increases my development time.

What are your thoughts? As usual, please comment by adding Replies to this blog post, if it’s convenient, so we can all join in the discussion and see each other’s thoughts. Thank you!

Posted in Development Advice Requests, General | 5 Comments »

What HTML editor do you use?

Monday, January 11th, 2010

Do you use an HTML editor of any sort, other than the one built into DONATION for editing the mail-merge letters and receipts?

The reason I’m asking is that some types of documents, especially the receipts, can be hard to do complex design on in the built-in mail-merge editor in DONATION. That’s why on its Actions menu (and the toolbar) there are options for View/Edit Source (which edits the HTML in Notepad) and Edit in Microsoft Word.

A user recently informed me that they use Dreamweaver, and since that is so popular, for the next version of DONATION, if it detects that Dreamweaver is installed on your system, it will add an Edit in Dreamweaver menu option to the Actions menu.

I’m wondering if I should add any other “Edit in …” menu options, if my users are using other well-known HTML editors, such as Microsoft FrontPage, the new Microsoft Expression Web, etc. So, if you are using something other than a plain text editor (like Notepad), or Word, or Dreamweaver, please drop me an email with details. I may then ask if you could help me a bit to figure out how that program is started, by letting me poke around with a remote control session on your computer for a few minutes.

Thanks!

Posted in Development Advice Requests, General | 2 Comments »