[Harriet]

I am starting to put together the agenda for the Blackbus User Group's meeting at the Charleston Conference. I have gone through the items on the Ideas page that have the highest amount of votes over the past year. Please review the list below and note that some of these have already been addressed by version 7.82 and see my other comments. As we have only 2 hours to get through the agenda, I want to keep this list focused on those items that concern the most users, so here's your chance to speak up if you have not remembered to vote for an Idea that concerns your organization.

1: Folder or file management for Query and Create Folders on Query Screen
- There are two separate ideas that are addressing the same problem, and together they add up to 63
votes, making this the top contender for the agenda.

2: All fields available in all modules
- I beleive this is addressed in ver.7.82

3: Email address should go on Constituent Record not with Address
- I'm not sure I understand this one. The Email address is already one of the phone types on Bio 1
of the Constituent record.

4: Maximize the Import Window
- Most, if not all, windows have ability to be maximized in 7.82, including Import.

5: Deactive attributes without deleting historical data

6: All terminology to be uniform
- I beleive this has been addressed in 7.82, but I think we should stress this as something for them
to keep in mind for future programming.

7: Ability to Mark a Business Relationship as Retired
- We do this by adding Retired as on of the Relationship Choices on the Relationship Table

8: Add Soft Credit Recipient as a field in batch entry, instead of having to remember to use the drop down
menu

9: Increase the number of Addressee Salutation hierarchy choices for merges and exports

10: Add Comments to Solicit Codes

11: Exporting Specific Attribute Descriptions

12: And because I am the moderator, I am taking the privilege of suggesting we also talk about the problems with producing Receipts with the RE Mail-Receipts program-- specifically, the fact that we cannot update the content of the receipts without using up a receipt number. We change the content of receipt letters frequently and I absolutely hate that I have to use a false record in order to make the changes.

Please respond to the above via this forum. I'd like to have a final agenda prepared by the end of September so that I can pass it along to BB to help them prepare for our questions.

Thanks,

[asnoah]

Harriet, thanks for doing this. I think I understand what #3 means. Since the email address is a phone type and linked to the preferred address, whenever you want to output the preferred phone number (without asking for a specific type), it will also give you email addresses. I know this causes some extra work when we export phone numbers to import into our calling software. There may be other reasons people don't want the email address linked to the preferred address but these are my thoughts.

If we don't discuss the items that are already fixed in 7.82 (except for the one you suggested), would we be able to go further down into the ideas list? As this is my first conference I'll leave knowing the amount of topics we can realistically cover to those of you who have done this before.

[Anne Marie]

Thanks Harriet for taking this on.

It does appear as if many of these are addressed in 7.82 - hmmmmmmm someone must have paid attention!

Hopefully that will continue as you present our other ideas.

How many IDEAS do you think you will be able to bring to the table in 2 hours?

[Peter Gulka]

I submitted #3 I think. Email addresses are attached to a person, not a physical address. I may move but my email address goes with me. If I change apartments 10 times in a year, that means my single email address is listed on 10 address records, rather than once with me. It should have its own field on Bio1 or Bio2.

As for adding other items to the agenda I'd really like to stick to the Ideas page. If your concern about receipts gets a large number of votes relative to other Ideas, then we can bring it up. Otherwise any concern like that becomes an isolated discussion between the person bringing it up and the BB staff. This happened quite a bit last year. People brought up their one-off concerns and at times it decscended into a conversation where most attendees were left out. I want it to be as inclusive as possible.

I'm gonna throw out the idea that the bulk of 7.82 is a direct result of our meeting with the BB developers at the 2006 conference. We made a difference.

[laura_wsc]

I just added my votes to the ideas page. I especially want to see folders for Queries, Exports and Reports and e-mail addresses attached to the person record instead of the address record. Thanks for taking this up with Blackbaud.

laura

[Melissa Siobhan]

I would like to suggest that anything confirmed to be addressed in 7.82 be removed from the agenda and other items be moved up the list to the agenda.

I am surprised that the issue of spousal soft credits vs third party soft credits did not make the list. How many more votes until that gets to the list? Vote for it if you have ever had trouble with these soft credits!

[Harriet]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Melissa Siobhan

I would like to suggest that anything confirmed to be addressed in 7.82 be removed from the agenda and other items be moved up the list to the agenda.

I am surprised that the issue of spousal soft credits vs third party soft credits did not make the list. How many more votes until that gets to the list? Vote for it if you have ever had trouble with these soft credits!

Hi Melissa,

I've been scanning through the Ideas, looking for your "spousal soft credits vs third party soft credits", and got down to things with only 8 votes and still did not find it. What title did you use?

[asnoah]

I scanned through the ideas too and don't see it. I know it was there because I've voted for it at some point.

[Harriet]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Peter Gulka

I submitted #3 I think. Email addresses are attached to a person, not a physical address. I may move but my email address goes with me. If I change apartments 10 times in a year, that means my single email address is listed on 10 address records, rather than once with me. It should have its own field on Bio1 or Bio2.

As for adding other items to the agenda I'd really like to stick to the Ideas page. If your concern about receipts gets a large number of votes relative to other Ideas, then we can bring it up. Otherwise any concern like that becomes an isolated discussion between the person bringing it up and the Blackbaud staff. This happened quite a bit last year. People brought up their one-off concerns and at times it decscended into a conversation where most attendees were left out. I want it to be as inclusive as possible.

I'm gonna throw out the idea that the bulk of 7.82 is a direct result of our meeting with the BB developers at the 2006 conference. We made a difference.

Hi Peter,

OK, I get the "email address" scenario -- thanks for the explanation.

And, I'm fine with sticking with the high vote items on the Ideas page for topics. ( I plan to do a 1:1 with the developers on this topic, assuming they have the 1:1 sessions again this year. I did propose this change during the 7.82 beta trial, but instead of fixing the problem, they broke another part of Receipts!)

If we want to have time for a good discussion of each topic, I can't see us covering more than 4-5 items, which allows less than a 1/2 hour for each topic. I have not yet received a reply from Elaine Tucker, who you said has last year's agenda.

And yes, I certainly agree that much of 7.82 is a result of our group's input from last year.
.

[Melissa Siobhan]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Harriet

Hi Melissa,

I've been scanning through the Ideas, looking for your "spousal soft credits vs third party soft credits", and got down to things with only 8 votes and still did not find it. What title did you use?

It was posted by Drew called Allow Joint Credit for a Gift and has 15 votes - if you haven't voted yet please vote if it is important to you. Use the tag cloud for "spouse" to find it easily.

[DrewAllen]

This should be the direct link to the Idea
http://www.blackbus.org/ideas/story....t-Credit--Gift

Drew

[Elaine Tucker]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Harriet

Hi Peter,

OK, I get the "email address" scenario -- thanks for the explanation.

And, I'm fine with sticking with the high vote items on the Ideas page for topics. ( I plan to do a 1:1 with the developers on this topic, assuming they have the 1:1 sessions again this year. I did propose this change during the 7.82 beta trial, but instead of fixing the problem, they broke another part of Receipts!)

If we want to have time for a good discussion of each topic, I can't see us covering more than 4-5 items, which allows less than a 1/2 hour for each topic. I have not yet received a reply from Elaine Tucker, who you said has last year's agenda.

And yes, I certainly agree that much of 7.82 is a result of our group's input from last year.
.

Harriet,

I sent it this morning...


Last year some of the topics went quickly - meaning the BB staff "got it".. some of them took more time to explain and then some of the BB staff still needed more feedback - so it add up.

Please use the ideas page to vote -

I'm trying to keep up with publishing the ideas as they are added - I just "published" two more just now - also please remember when voting that comments from users HELP the BB staff understand our point of view/needs etc.


Thanks Harriett!

Elaine

[Peter Gulka]

Here's the latest draft of the agenda