Community Enterprise Supports Responsive Design

Sometimes it's important to state the obvious.  Community Enterprise (our software platform) supports responsive design.

Responsive design is a term thrown around by tech consultants, but mainly it just means that a web site will scale down smoothly and display well in mobile browsers (e.g. in smart phones and tablets).  That's it.

Responsive design is easy to do and any good content management system will support it, including ours.  There is no magic to it.  In fact, there are many good design frameworks to make it easy.  We have many client sites that use the Bootstrap and Skeleton responsive design frameworks.

So, if you are using this platform and someone asks you if it can support responsive design themes, the answer is yes.

I hope that helps!

The CE platform includes configurable features for both a basic and advanced member search.  In the last couple of years, we've spent the most time on improvements to the advanced member search.  For instance, it includes a nice "proximity" search feature via an integration with Google Maps so that users can search by zip code and get a list of nearby results.

More recently, we've enhanced this feature by creating one search box which is smart enough to accept a zip code, city or state values and produce results.

Then, users can directly email members who are displayed in the search results.  If members don't want to be in search results or don't want to be emailed, they can easily opt out.

A great new feature of the Community Enterprise platform is the ability to create separate calendars for each different category setting.

For organizations with many different events and many different types of events, this feature can make it easier for administrators to display events and easier for users to access the event information.

As a simple example, this feature would allow a client to set up a "Community Events" calendar on one page and a separate "Training Events" calendar on another.  In these calendars the events could be entirely different or include some overlap depending on how the events were tagged.

There is no limit on the number of differnt calendars that can be displayed.

CitySoft has added new Certificates functionality to the platform.  Initially, the feature works in conjunction with events and applications.  With this feature, administrators can set up pdf or word documents that are certificates to be awarded to users for participating in events (e.g. trainings) or for submitting applications.

Once set up, the certificate documents will include merge fields (e.g. "Dear {First Name},") and will be downloadable both on the web site and in the administration section.

Thus, when users attend training seminars, the process of creating and distributing the related certificates can be almost entirely automated.

In recent months we have added many performance improvements to the platform.  Many of these improvements come via caching techniques.  While the details are somewhat technical, CE now include multiple levels of caching from the server level to the application level.  The caching takes place both on the web site (ie "front end") and within the administration section (ie "back end") of the system.

While these improvements will continue, we have already seen a dramatic improvement in page load speed as a result.

Now that we've got a nice library of great themes in place (at www.citysoft.com/themes), I just wanted to take a moment to thank and endorse our great theme making colleagues.  The themes to date were created by the great Erica Dreisbach and Kel Mendes.

Thanks yall!

In the latest build (7.2.0.25) we have finally released a major enhancement of our "Manage Your Profile" functionality. This is where a user on a web site that uses our system can login and see their basic information in the database, update their data (e.g. changing an email address) and so forth.

This enhancement introduces a stylish set of tabbed screens where a user can not only see and update their basic contact information but can also access information on their event registrations, form submissions, donations, membership information, email subscriptions, interests, committee memberships, and a lot more.  This gives users a much fuller view of their data in the database and their interactions with organizations using the software.  So, for instance, they can see all their past event registrations, their donation history, and so forth.

We'll be adding a lot more to this area in future releases, but this is a good start in terms of giving users much more visibility into their data in the system.

For those interested in the technical details, this feature uses jquery heavily.

I just wanted to take a moment to highlight a nice client redesign at http://www.mcca.com.  This client has been using our platform for a long time but was in need of a major visual re-design.  Their internal team led the process and was able to launch a major re-design on our system with minimal extra cost.

We're inching closer to our FOSS (free and open source) release of CE.  We're just in the process of tightening up some code.  That can take a while since we have a lot of client needs to focus on as well.  But, we will definitely get this out the door soon (in a couple of months I hope).

We've been busy bees here but haven't been posting enough.  There is a lot going on and I'll try to keep the news a bit fresher.

One exciting thing that happened recently was the release of a couple of new free design themes.  We've titled them "Professional" and "Ease" (why do theme names always sound goofy?  I don't know).  You can find them in our theme library here - http://www.citysoft.com/themes. 

These themes are entirely free although there is often some need for a developer to stylize them for the particular needs of a client.  That part may or may not be free depending on your skill level.

Hope that helps!

I just wanted to take a moment to mention another new feature that we are excited about that is part of the new release.  It is a new quota feature for event registration.  We have long had a quota feature for overall event registration, of course.  But, this enhancement allows you to create a quota for each price / option within a single event.

So, for example, if you have an even registration for a conference, and then you have a number of separately priced options within the event (e.g. a special dinner, a site visit, and so on), you can now apply quotas to each of those items.  So, if you only have space for 50 people at a dinner or golf outing within a larger event, this feature will allow you to set quota limits for each of these separately priced items.

This feature will be included in our upcoming version 7.2 release.

We have a new version of our system that is almost fully baked.  We'll have full release notes for it, but I just wanted to preview a few cool features here.

1. Admin global search
In the new version, administrators will be able to search for contacts and organizations from any admin page.  For clients using our CRM features, this will cut down on the clicks needed to get to your data.

2. Lots of ajax
Like the rest of the world, we are incorporating lots of "ajax" UI features to make the system cooler to look at and easier to use.

3. Job boards
We have added a number of improvements to our new job boards module making it really ready for prime time.  If you wan to provide your community with job board features (posting and searching for resumes and job listings), this feature is worth checking out.

4. Email individuals
While our system has long had an Email module for sending email newsletters and the like, we now have a feature that allows you to send an email to an individual from within our system and log that email for future reference.  So, you no longer need to switch between your email program and our system when emailing contacts.

5. Admin only tabs in Applications
We have added a cool feature to our Applications module that allows administrators to create private tabs and fields as part of an application that appears on the web.  This allows administrators to create sections of applications that can be used for internal review and evaluation while still offering a public application that users (ie job seekers, grant seekers, other applicants) can fill out online and submit to you. 

There's lots more but I'll leave it here for now.

Following up on the post below, I want to take a moment to highlight some more beautiful design running on our system.  They are:

http://www.sa-intl.org
http://www.washingtonnonprofits.org

As with the previous post, these  designs were mostly done by third party designers and then moved into our system.  There is no forking and no customizing of the base code necessary to get these and almost any kind of design into our system.  Our templating system and APIs are very flexible and can accomodate almost any kind of design.

I just want to say thanks and kudos to some of the third party designers who made these (and other) wonderful designs for our clients (in no particular order):

http://www.goweetu.com
http://www.terpsys.com
http://www.kobusmans.com
http://www.taraframer.com
http://www.createmethod.com

Also, let me take a moment to mention that we also have free design themes (ie templates) that have been developed for CE.  You can see them here:

http://www.citysoft.com/themes

These free themes can be quickly added into our system for no cost and then styled to look the way you want.  For cost conscious clients, it's a good way to avoid designing from scratch.

Several of our clients have recently redesigned their websites which are hosted on our platform and I just wanted to take a moment to highlight them.

They are:
http://www.acelero.net
http://www.nhnla.org
http://www.mictatech.org

In addition to being great looking sites, these designs showcase the ways in which CE can support practically any design without restriction.  And, all of these designs were done by third party designers showing how any designer can design for our system.

In the spirit of more frequent blogging, I thought I would just mention a cool little addition that has gone in since the last release notes (and is available for clients in the most recent build). That is a "quantity" feature in admin event registrations. This won't mean much to non-clients, but for those currently doing event registrations from the admin side, it may be a big help. In our initial implementation of the admin event registration process, we didn't include the ability to change the number of tickets per registration. Now you can do that with no problem (just like on the front end).

We're excited to formally announce CE Version 7.1. You can see the release notes at http://www.citysoft.com/release_notes. You can see the 7.1 release notes specifically here.

This release has been rolling out over time in a series of builds, so many clients already have many of the features documented here. However, these notes provide a comprehensive overview of all the features that have come out since the last release. There is a lot in there so feel free to follow up with questions or comments. You can contact us at the "Contact" link above.

While we haven't used this blog extensively in the past, we're hoping to post more regular updates on new features as well as highlighting a few of the features in version 7.1 and other cool stuff.

With so much going on it has been hard to find the time to blog about cool new features.

But, I want to take a moment to talk about one that is particularly important.

In a recent post (http://blog.citysoft.com/blogp...readid=3565&catid=97), I discussed how to create custom reports on event registration in CE. As I mentioned then, the problem is that filtering for various event registration categories (ie "show me all completed registrations for this event" or "show me only pending registrations for this event", etc.) was too hard and not very intuitive.

There are some historical reasons that CE's reports evolved this way, but the main point here is that we have fixed this problem (yeah!).

Here's how it works. When you create a custom event report in CE using the "Events and Registrants" report template, there is a new field called "Event Registration Status". Include this field in your report and then filter against it using the "Contains" filter. The possible values for this field are as follows:
C = Complete
P = Pending
I = Incomplete
D = Deleted

So, to create a report that shows only the completed registrations for an event, you would use the following filter:
"Event Registration Status Contains C"

That's it.

There is lots going on and lots to post about, but it's been busy. So, for the moment, I just want to post something quick about how to navigate a not very friendly feature in CE.

First, however, I want to mention that we are about to implement a much friendly solution, which I will blog about soon.

The problem is how to get clean event registration reports out of the Reports module.

You can already get these, or course, out of the Events module. Just go to an event as an admin and there are a list of pre-built reports like:
Completed Registrations
Pending Registrations
etc.

But, if you wanted to generate the same or similar reports in the Reports module, you have to know which filters to use to exclude unwanted data like incomplete registrations, deleted registrations and so forth. It's pretty easy if you know which filters to apply but it's not as obvious as it should be. So, here are some key examples.

Completed Registrations for an event:
- filter on the eventid to make sure that you are just focusing on the event that you want data for (e.g. "Eventid equals 18).
- filter on the Order "Process Date" field for not null values (e.g. "Process Date not Null")

Incomplete Registrations for an event:
- filter on the eventid to make sure that you are just focusing on the event that you want data for (e.g. "Eventid equals 18).
- filter on the Order "Process Date" field for null values (e.g. "Process Date is Null")
- filter on the "Order ID" field for not null values (e.g. "Order ID not Null")

That's it.

Soon we will add a simple registration status field that will be easier to use. More on that soon!

A client is starting to use CE's built in full text search tool on their web site, and I thought it would be a good time to highlight a great feature in CE that may not be widely known - the Search Request report.

The Search Request report is found in the Reports module in CE and shows what words and phrases users are searching for on your web site. This data is a great way to understand what your users are looking for and can allow a client to make adjustments so that sought after content is easier to find. Like most reports in CE, this report data can be exported to .csv / Excel files to be shared with others who may not log into the web site to review the data there.

This feature points to an important advantage CE has over comparable solutions, especially those where the web site, data management, and even search are separate products. With those kinds of solutions, you may have to find a 3rd party search tool to work with your website / content management system. Then, once you get those systems put together, the search may not easily be able to include password protected content in its search results. And then, if there is search reporting data available, it is usually in the search tool or the website management tool which is separate from your contact database. That means it won't be located with a lot of your other reporting by default. And then, of course, you will have to hire technical consultants to try and tie all these systems together, make sure that they don't break during upgrades, and so on. So, although some of these basic tools can be "free" (like with open source tools), putting them all together and maintaining them can be a real pain.

With CE, a great enterprise search tool is included out of the box, it can be dropped into your site with ease and styled with minimal effort, and the reporting is right there in the Reports module with all your other reports. And it just works.

While I'm talking about new features, I just want to quickly preview one that is essentially done and will be included in the final release of CE version 7.0 (which is currently in Beta). That is a new Job Board module. The core functionality is fairly simple. Users can:
1) Search Jobs
2) Post Jobs
3) Search Resumes
4) Post Resumes

This will be very useful to community oriented clients who want to provide their community members with a way to get the word out about jobs and resumes.

And, this is yet another example of how broadly featured CE is. Most AMS / CRM / CMS systems do not include this kind of functionality out of the box and as a native part of the application. And, those that do are typically more expensive.

We'll have more information on this feature soon. In the mean time, anyone who is interested in this should feel free to post a message in the forum or in our Contact Us page.