May Day User Interface Changes – thedatabank Support Center

Beginning May 1st, look for some Spring freshening of your Databank's User Interface.

Pop-up Edit Windows

When you add or edit a contact, contribution, pledge, pledge schedule, or soft credit, the form is presented in a pop-up window. This puts the form front and center, instead of down and to the left, making it easier to focus on your data entry task.

Contacts

A new Contact Summary page has been added. This page includes contact summary reports along the left side of the page, and a contact list to the right.

The reports by themselves give you useful insights into the member's relationship with your organization, but additionally, each line includes a check box. Checking these boxes filters the list of contacts displayed at the right, giving you great flexibility in showing the contacts that are of interest to you. By default this page displays the last 50 contacts that meet your filters, but a drop down lets you change how many to show.

The overall experience is similar to many shopping sites, where you check options on the left to filter the display of products on the right.

Your filters are automatically saved in your browser's local data storage, so they'll remain in effect throughout your current session, and even for future log ins.

Is there still a way to see all of a member's contacts?

Yes. In the Contact Summary page, click the check box in the Contact Source Summary column headers, to show all contact sources. Then choose ALL from the drop down of how many contacts to show.

The Contact History list used to have a funnel icon above it which, when clicked, opened a form where you could select what to show in your Contact History. This was the old way to filter your Contact History list. The funnel is gone now, and in its place is a "More History" button that takes you to the Contact Summary page.

Old:

New:

Although our database and site analytics showed there were a few clients using the funnel, the vast majority did not. We felt this indicated the need to offer better filtering functionality in a more available and understandable format. Our apologies to the clients who liked using the funnel, but we do think the Contact Summary page will do an even better job of showing you the contacts you want to see.

Search Results

The default Search Results page includes a column for Contributions and a column for Contacts. In the past, clicking the icons in these columns allowed you to add a new contribution or contact, assuming you had add/edit permission.

These columns now have two icons. The dollar sign icon in the Contributions column now takes you to the Contribution Summary page. The plus icon next to it is the new way to add a contribution. The contribution form displays in a pop-up window, so you can add the contribution and remain on the Search Results page when you're done.

Similarly, the conversation icon in the Contacts column now takes you to the Contact Summary page. The plus icon next to it is the new way to add a contact. The contact form displays in a pop-up window, so you can add the contact and remain on the Search Results page when you're done.

Member History

Clicking on the Contacts tab used to open the form to add a contact. Now it opens the Contact Summary page.

The Contact History list now displays only the most recent 25 contacts. For some of thedatabank's long-time clients, the Contact History list was becoming unwieldy, with hundreds or even thousands of contacts per member. This was affecting performance at both the browser and server level.

Limiting the number of displayed contacts helps with that, but there will still be times that seeing the last 25 contacts is insufficient, so we added a "More History" button where the funnel icon used to be. This button takes you to the Contact Summary page.

The Pledge Schedule is no longer displayed below the pledge form. Instead, the Pledge History list includes a new icon that lets you directly edit the schedule without having to scroll down to the bottom of the Edit Pledge page and click the edit icon down there. This new presentation gives you much more direct access to the schedule.

We hope you like these changes!

We hope editing with the pop-up windows will make your Databank a little bit easier to work with. The contact changes should improve performance, particularly for long-time clients who have many contacts per member. The Contact Summary page makes it easier to get a look at just the contacts that are of interest to you. And if you need to edit a pledge schedule, you can get right to it.