TntMPD.DataServer has two major themes:
- Self-service on donor contact information fields.
- Developer extensibility.
The first (self-service donor fields) is a feature you can begin using immediately. It's a great way to let your staff and donors help you keep your donor information up to date. This information includes mobile phone and email.
The second (developer extensibility) is a power enhancement, but it doesn't give you anything you can use immediately as a user of the system. The power is that it removes many barriers when you (as a developer) would like to add a feature to TntMPD.DataServer via web services or to the Staff Portal or Give Site.
I'll take you through the release log highlighting what's significant:
FEATURE - Portals: Added ability for staff or donors to update donor name/address/phone/email info.
FEATURE - Added "Donor Updates" screen to help manage donor info changes made on portals.
On the Staff Portal, staff can edit the name/address/phone/email fields for any of their donors. On the Give Site, donors can edit their own information. This information is immediately available on the Staff Portal, Give Site or to TntMPD. It is not pushed into the core donation system.
Here's a screenshot of a donor on the Staff Portal. Notice the "Mobile Phone" information, the "Notes" box, and the "Edit Contact Information" button:
The “Donor Updates” screen in TntMPD.DataServer shows you any pending updates. To accept the change, right-click and “Copy Values” and paste into your donation system (and then do a data-pump for Donors). You can also right-click and reject the change. This screenshot points this out. Also notice that the last staff member (or donor) to update the information is mentioned (near the bottom):
FEATURE - Portals: Added "Search for staff/project" feature to Give Site (top right).
The Give Site now allows you to search for a staff or project:
FEATURE - System Setup conditions added for TntMPD, Staff Portal and Give Site.
When you start TntMPD.DataServer some setup tasks will help remind you to add logos and contact information for the Staff Portal and/or Give Site.
Also, the Organization and TntMPD tabs in System Setup have been reorganized:
FEATURE - Portals: Added ability to define separate logos by selecting an image file in System Setup.
FEATURE - Portals: Added ability to define custom title in System Setup.
FEATURE - Portals: Added ability to define header and footer css/java script for web plug-ins.
FEATURE - Portals: Added option to display "Memo" column on Give Site giving grids.
You can add a logo simply by clicking the "Change" button and selecting a picture file. Notice that now you can customize the Title of the Staff Portal or Give Site. You should also fill out the "Contact Us" information in case a user of the portal wants to get connected with your organization.
This is the Give Site setup tab. Notice the similarity of the top portion of this tab with the Staff Portal tab:
FEATURE - Designation.Secure added to protect anonymity of sensitive staff/projects on portals.
FEATURE - Designation.Closed added to indicate when no further giving accepted.
FEATURE - Designation.Administrative added to indicate special/internal designation accounts.
You can pump data into these Designation (staff/project) fields to give you control over how certain Designations are handled. “Secure” means that only the account number will appear on the Give Site, and only if the donor has given to that designation. “Closed” means that the “Give!” link will never appear for that designation. “Administrative” is a special type of “Closed”. It will be filtered from search results and home page of the Give Site.
FEATURE - Donor.MobilePhone added.
FEATURE - Donor.OrgContactPerson added for organizational contacts.
FEATURE - Donor.Deceased added.
FEATURE - Donor.RelatedDonorCode added to indicate related donor accounts.
Additional pieces of information to share about your donors with your staff.
FEATURE - Donor.StaffMemo and Donor.DonorMemo added to provide comments.
These fields allow you to display a note related to the donor. The StaffMemo field appears on the Staff Portal. The DonorMemo field appears on the Give Site. See the picture of the donor information on the Staff Portal above to see the "Notes" box.
FEATURE - Donor.Administrative added to indicate special/internal accounts (read-only on portal).
If you have a donor called “Anonymous”, set it to “Administrative”. This way staff can’t edit the name/address on the staff portal.
FEATURE - Gift.DonationCode added to indicate the donation that contains this gift.
If a donor gives a donation of $100 with $50 designationed to one staff and $50 designated to another staff. The $100 check would be a single “donation” which contains two “gifts” to designations. If your donation system tracks a code/id for the single donation, you can specify it as the “DonationCode”. This field will be available via web services.
FEATURE - Gift.DonorMemo added to indicate any special comments visible to the donor.
There was already a “Staff Memo” field which optionally appears next to gifts on the Staff Portal. The "Donor Memo" field will optionally appear on the Give Site (for donors to see).
FEATURE - Gift.Personal added to indicate any personal gifts not tax-deductible by organization.
If your donation system tracks donations received personally by staff, set Personal to TRUE for donations that the staff report as received. These gifts were not received by the organization, and are often not tax deductible.
FEATURE - DonorWise 3.0+ template added to support new fields and Windows NT Authentication.
FEATURE - Solomon IV 4.x template adds support for Windows NT Authentication.
The new DonorWise 3.0 template supports all the new fields (except Gift.Personal). Both the Solomon and DonorWise 3.0 template support Windows NT Authentication. Just set the $NT_AUTH_SSPI$ placeholder to “SSPI”. When you do this, the $LOGIN$ and $PASSWORD$ placeholders are ignored.
FEATURE - Multi-Db Web App Updater, can now upgrade databases as needed.
FEATURE - Multi-Db Web App Updater, database version column added.
If you host one or many Staff Portals and/or Give Sites on your web server. This tool has been updated to upgrade the database structure to the new 2.0 format before it updates the Staff Portal and Give Site in IIS.
FEATURE - Web Services: Web Users are auto-linked to donors when Sso.Email matches Donor.Email.
FEATURE - Web Services: Auto-created web users now have email defined also.
If a donor logs in to the Give Site, if their Single Sign-On (The Key by default) email matches any donor email addresses, they are automatically given permission to view donation for these donors.
FEATURE - Web Services: Added method to map donor code to sso code.
If an external online giving site uses the same Single Sign-On system as the Give Site, it might want to map a donor code to the Single Sign-On code (guid) used to make the donation. It can call a new web service method to map (or pre-map) this relationship.
FEATURE - Web Services: Added methods to define custom properties on most entities.
FEATURE - Web Services: Added method to get country information.
FEATURE - Web Services: Added method to update donor info.
FEATURE - Web Services: Added method to search for designations.
FEATURE - Web Services: Added name of donation system and accounting system to SiteProperties.
CHANGE - Web Services: dataqueryservice2.asmx significantly enhanced.
NOTE - Web Services: dataqueryservice2.asmx adds some breaking changes since 1.0.82.
Here’s an example of the new “dataqueryservice2.asmx”:
https://dataserver.tntware.com/dataserver/test/dataquery/DataQueryService2.asmx
If you already began programming against it (it was introduced a few weeks ago in version 1.0.82), you’ll want to check your work and/or recompile. A lot has changed. The old web service endpoint “dataqueryservice.asmx” is still around and fully supported. It has not changed, so it’s 100% compatible with any programming you’ve done.
Here's the "Portal Plug-ins" tab in System Setup where you can define a standard css/javascript snippet to appear at the bottom or top of each page on the Staff Portal or Give Site. The idea is that by using jQuery, for example, you can add user interface elements to existing pages on the Staff Portal or Give Site:
The new web services allow developers to add their own fields to almost any item that you might see represented on the Staff Portal and Give Site.
FEATURE - Data Source settings are encrypted in database to obfuscate any passwords.
Helps to protect sensitive information in the database. If passwords are entered in a Data Source placeholder, for example, you don’t want them stored in the database as plain text.
CHANGE - Added internal tracking of donor/gift changes/adjustments.
This work was done to better track changes. In the future, this will help TntMPD automatically stay on top of donor updates and gift adjustments.
NOTE - Portals: now use DataQueryService2.asmx.
NOTE - Portals: now dynamically get SSO Provider from web services.
If you deal with the web.config files of the Staff Portal or Give Site, you should be aware of this. This might be the case if you provide your own authentication provider. Now, you should only need to specify your authentication service once in the DataQuery\web.config file.
CHANGE - Portals: Increased size of "More Info" for a designation from 250 to 1000 characters.
250 characters felt a little too cramped to me. Now the staff/project can have 1,000 characters in their online description.
CHANGE - Web Services: Removed "crossdomain.xxl" file.
I might put this back if I get any feedback. My hunch is that this file isn’t used, since the file extension is misspelled (should be “.xml”)
FIXED - Issue where "Verify Database Security" option would remove replication roles.
FIXED - Issue where a data source placeholder would scroll away after editing value.
CHANGE - Updated German translation of Staff Portal.
CHANGE - Updated the currency list in the Donation tab of System Setup.
CHANGE - Undeliverable donor address/phone/email info is blanked out.
CHANGE - Screen names are shorted and reorganized.
CHANGE - Improved initial keyboard focus on "System Info" dialog.
CHANGE - Escape key closes "Synchronization Settings" dialog.
CHANGE - Removed "Mini Portal URL" setting from TntMPD tab in System Setup.
CHANGE - Improved error details when updating the web application.
CHANGE - Replication of Donor and Desig table changed to column level.
CHANGE - Portal URL Log, cleaned up to remove part of url after "?".
CHANGE - Portal URL Log, cleaned up to remove part of url after "#".
CHANGE - Trusted Portal URL Prefixes, remove explicit references to sites in same virtual directory.
CHANGE - Portals: Many small improvements to web pages and general performance improvements.
CHANGE - Web Services: Provide organization logos on the web (internally).
The above list describes some more important bug fixes and changes of the internal “plumbing” that was necessary to support all the new features.