Ride the Pipeline, Dude!
This release includes the first wave (yes, pun intended, thank you very much) of new features aimed at helping major donor reps manage their portfolio. Introducing the Gift Ask Pipeline!
This new view will be available from the Gifts page in Virtuous. It is a Kanban-style board that includes columns for each of the Gift Ask Statuses you have created for your organization. Think Trello, but for managing major gifts. 👍
Now, you can easily update the status of any Gift Ask just by dragging and dropping from one column to another.
Want to edit a Gift Ask? View a Contact record? Hike Mount Everest? Well, we've made the first two a lot easier. You're on your own for mountaineering.
Lest you think we stopped at just making a fancy Kanban board, we've also beefed up the functionality tied to each Status value.
In particular, you'll see that each status can be assigned a Probability to Close. This will be used to calculate the weighted value for each Gift Ask in the pipeline. Each column on the pipeline will display the weighted and actual totals for all asks assigned to each status group.
But...come on, say it with me...
BUT WAIT, THERE'S MORE!
You'll also be able to keep track of weighted and actual Gift Ask totals by using either of the two new Gift Ask widgets available on the dashboard.
Wanna learn more? Sure you do! Check out this support article to learn more about the Gift Ask Pipeline, and head on over to this article to learn more about managing Gift Ask Statuses.
Take a Scroll Through the Gallery
Not sure how to get started building your first automated workflow? Well, now we are making that just a little bit easier with new workflow templates to choose from.
Just click on the Best Practice Templates tab at the top of the Automation screen to peruse the available templates and select one to get started. Creating a workflow from any of the available templates will also create any of the included tags, queries, emails, letters, postcards, custom fields...you get the idea, do we need to list them all?
Once you've selected a template, you can modify it to your heart's content to make it your own. In fact, most of the templates include some emails, letters, and/or postcards that you'll want to customize for your organization before you turn them loose.
New to automation? Well, we've got just the thing to help: a whole series of support articles on the subject.
Go Ahead, Bring a Guest
This one is definitely in the "you asked, we listened" category. If you've ever had to import a list of new Contacts that included households with more than one Individual, you know that it's been a...less-than-straightforward process.
Not anymore.
Now, we've added the ability to include a Secondary Individual when importing Contact files via the Gift & Contact Import Tool.
This will make it much quicker and easier to create new households and include both spouses in a single record. Virtuous will still look to make sure the Secondary Individual doesn't already exist before prompting you to create a new Individual. We've got your back.
Give it a try on your next Contact import!
Developers' Corner
Last week, we sent out information on API changes for this release to everyone signed up for our Developer Digest emails.
This release includes just one updated endpoint (we know, we're surprised too).
If you are a developer, or if you just like to stay in the know on all the high-tech goings-on around here, just reply to this email and let us know, or use the support messenger to contact us.
...And the Rest
As with every release, this month's update also includes a number of other fixes, tweaks, minor modifications, and assorted nudges. Among this month's assorted fixes:
- You can now specify an Individual's gender when importing Gifts or Contacts via the Gift & Contact Import tool. Which, frankly, should be a lot safer than some of the "gender reveal parties" we've heard so much about recently.
- Ever wanted to query for all Contacts who have received a particular mailer or other communication? Well, then this one's for you: we've added Segmentation parameters to Contact queries to identify Contacts included in Campaign Communication Segmentation activity. Wow, that is a mouthful. Look for these new parameters wherever you get your queries!
- Wait - we've got more query goodness for you! We've added new Contact statistics for past fiscal years. You can now query on and/or export giving totals and gift counts for Last Fiscal Year, Second Last Fiscal Year, and Third Last Fiscal Year. Ain't no party like a fiscal year party, we always say.
- We just couldn't stay away from queries! We've made a few smaller changes in this release, including some updates to our Best Practice queries and new options for filtering on the All Queries tab. Whew! OK, that should be all the new query improvements. For now...
- When creating Tasks on a Contact record, you'll now see an option to specify an Individual. Tasks created as part of Individual workflows will also specify that Individual. No more guessing on which member of a household to call! I mean, unless you WANT to, that is...
- When creating Contact Notes as part of workflows, you'll see the option to mark Notes as important. Because some notes are just special that way, what can we say?
- We found and summarily destroyed a bug that caused Contact Notes to be created as private notes when creating a note while sending a Personalized Email Template. And for good measure, we also fixed a related issue that prevented some users from selecting an Individual when sending Personalized Email Templates. Two for one!
- Until now, it's been a little difficult to see if an Individual is globally unsubscribed from emails when viewing a Contact record. Now, you'll see global unsubscribe status (if there is anyone globally unsubscribed) as the first item in the Email Lists pane on the left side of each Contact record. Studies have shown that these Individuals are much less likely to respond to your email appeals for some reason.
- We've added event and volunteer activity to the Contact activity feed. So now it's even easier to know what your supporters are up to, at least in Virtuous. While we were at it, we also fine-tuned the activity feed a bit to make sure that actions like updating Marital Status would display correctly. Because here at Virtuous, we go that extra mile. 😉
- Tasks will no longer show as Past Due on their due date, but on the day after they are due instead. No need to have the Red Text of Shame on your dashboard when you're on top of things, right?
- Contact IDs. Who needs 'em? Well, you might if you are creating a letter that will include a reply device. Now, you can include a merge tag for Contact ID when creating a letter or postcard.
- Virtuous Giving users! We've added Projects to the Recurring Transactions list in Virtuous Giving, which should make it easier to identify recurring transactions and manage their designations. If you're not a Virtuous Giving user, we'll forgive you for not knowing just how exciting this is.
- We've updated our Gift Import template and added the Track Payments and Automated Payments fields for recurring gifts. These fields are always assumed TRUE when importing, so you'll only need to specify a value if you would like them to be FALSE. Make sure you download the newest version of our template, or else these new fields will be really hard to find.
- When sending test emails in Virtuous Marketing, subject lines will now include a clear indicator that the email is a test. And only a test.
- Some users experienced an issue with editing pledges, which is no fun for anyone. We've fixed this issue, so editing pledges is now...well, as fun as editing pledges can be.
- Custom fields with the type decimal now offer multiple options for displaying values either as numbers (including commas), currency, or even with no punctuation at all for you rebels out there.
And that's the list! As always, if you have any questions about these or other features, feel free to contact our team using the support widget in Virtuous, or drop us a line at support@virtuoussoftware.com.