DonorWise 3.0 introduces a new feature to help 3rd party developers add features to DonorWise. They allow you to customize many things about DonorWise and to add many features. From a high level, let me show you all the places a plug-in can ... "plug in" ... to DonorWise:
Main Screens
Plugins can add main screens to DonorWise. An entry for this main screen will appear in the Screens list on the left. You can control the “pending action count” (the number in blue to the right of the screen name). This pending action count suggests pending work to the user of DonorWise. This helps facilitate smooth workflow. The main screen will be hosted in DonorWise with a “Refresh”, “Save Changes” and “Cancel Changes” button in the tool bar:
Tool Screens
Plugins can add tool screens to DonorWise. These are floating windows that typically require the user to dismiss (by clicking an “OK” button, for example) before the rest of the program can be interacted with again.
System Setup Tabs
Plugins can add System Setup tabs to allow configuration by system administrators:
Contact Screen – Info Bands
Contact Screen – Tabs
Contact Screen – Colorized Contact List
Plugins can add Info Bands (A), Tabs (B) and they can colorize the Contact List (C):
Contact Filters/Lookups
Plugins can provide their own filters for contact lookups:
Integrated Screen Security
Screens, tabs and any other functionality provided by plugins can have security roles associated with them, and a security administrator can customize the availability of these screens to users beyond their membership in those roles.
Other Features
DonorWise provides an API that lets the plugin tell DonorWise to import a batch, search for a contact, set a custom property on a record (most tables in DonorWise allow for custom properties), and to run a SQL query against the DonorWise database. Also, plugins can choose to be notified when a contact is deleted to take action, or to stop the delete from occuring.
How to Get Started
If you're a .NET software developer, and you'd like to get started. Go to this FAQ article.