Filters? Let AI Do That For You!
If you’ve been paying attention to any conversations about technology lately, you’ve probably heard all about AI. (Frankly, even if you haven’t been paying attention, it’s kind of hard to miss.)
AI is everywhere.
Here at Virtuous, we’ve been taking our time and thinking hard about where and how AI can help fundraisers do what they do best. We’ve also been thinking about ways to make it easier for anyone to quickly find what they need in Virtuous.
And then we thought, maybe this is where AI can help! (Lotta thinking going on here.)
And after all that thinking, we are thrilled to be rolling out our new Generative Filters!
Now, you can use natural language to type out what you are looking to find and get started building a filter. For example, if you type in “Show me everyone named John in Arizona,” on the Contacts page, the system will build you a filter that looks like this:
So, no more clicking and scrolling and guesswork to figure out exactly which criteria you need to get the data you want. You can refine the filter with additional criteria, if needed, or use it as-is.
Keep in mind that Generative Filters are only a helpful tool to get you started with building your filter. That means that no LLM or AI tool is accessing your donor data in any way in order to make this feature work. (No reason to fear Skynet here!)
This feature is currently being rolled out to customers; you may already see it in your account, or you may still be waiting. If you already have access, be sure to let us know what you think! You’ll see the option to provide direct feedback whenever you build a new filter.
Here’s to spending less time finding the right donor so you can more time actually taking to them!
The Search for…a Better Search
Speaking of finding things, while generative AI is great, what about the search bar? We’ve heard from many of you that searching can be frustrating (and while treasure hunts can be fun, they do have a time and place).
And while the Generative Filter approach is great, we know that it’s also important to have a better search experience. Specifically, one that:
- Is more forgiving of misspelled names
- Includes support for searching by additional fields and data, like addresses, nicknames, and partial email addresses
- Displays all possible matching records, not just the top results
So, we’ve been hard at work building just that! And after a successful limited beta, we’re excited to start rolling out our new search experience for everyone!
As this new search feature rolls out, you’ll notice a few changes to the look and feel, including the ability to specifically search for just Contacts or search for Individuals—which can be handy for finding anyone whose name might not be included in the Contact Name. Hover over any result in the drop-down to see more details on why a particular record was identified as a match.
Hitting ENTER to see all results will bring up a new-look results screen:
Here you’ll see more information on all possible matches—yes, even fuzzy matches—with options to narrow down results by category.
Keep an eye out for this update, and happy searching!
And the Rest…
As with every release, this latest update also includes a number of other fixes, tweaks, minor modifications, and assorted nudges. Among the various fixes released over the last month or so:
- To help boost your year-end appeals (it’s that time again!) we’ve increased the total amount of message segments that can be included in a bulk SMS send, going from 32,000 all the way up to 108,000 (that’s a LOT of emojis). Sending larger messages can mean longer send times too, up to 10 hours in some cases, so plan accordingly!
- We found a bug that was causing some workflows to fail. Now we’ve greased the wheels and oiled the hinges to make sure workflows keep rolling along smoothly.
- Some users were not able to connect their Virtuous CRM account to Virtuous Raise. While sibling rivalry might be expected, we’ve given both systems a time-out and made sure they understand how to get along nicely going forward.
- New Sage Intacct sync functionality! To make mapping more flexible, we’ve added the ability to map custom accounts based on Project fields. Nothing says “flexible” like your chart of accounts!
- We dispatched a team of bug hunters to track down a bug that prevented users from deleting records. Which is far better than a bug that forces users to delete records, but still not great. Now, deleting is as easy as before.
- API Updates! If you use our API, you may have noticed that we added support for querying archived Contacts. This is an optional parameters and defaults to FALSE, so that we don’t interrupt any existing processes. We also added the Transaction ID and Transaction Source fields to the Forms webhook payload. (If you are not sure what any of this means, that’s OK! It’s all part of making sure we can play nicely with all sorts of other systems.)
- Some closed pledges that were overpaid we displaying the wrong status. We are not against the idea of donors overpaying on pledges at all, so we’ve made sure these will be treated fairly from now on.
- We gave the Query Tool a little tune-up to make sure queries are able to run even faster than before. Kachow!
- We deployed a crack team of math experts to correct some Contact Giving statistics that were being calculated incorrectly for organizations tracking pledges as receivable. No graphing calculators were harmed, and now the math checks out.
- We made a few adjustments to the logic for adding Custom Collections as tabs on a Contact record, just to make sure everyone has easy access to the data they need most.
And that's the list! Phew! As always, if you have any questions about these or other features, feel free to contact our support team.