Hi Lisa,

Based on our conversation today, it sounds like the addition of the LOI Complete stage and the Process/Stage-specific notifications with details will go a long way toward addressing your current challenges.

We look forward to more feedack as we work to improve Foundant GLM

Thanks,

-chris

posted June 18, 2013 by Chris Dahl, Foundant Technologies

Hi Lisa,

Sure ... I'm not sure what your schedule's like, but I'm relatively free tomorrow (Friday) from 1pm MST to 3 pm MST. And so far, next week I'm pretty open most of Monday-Wednesday.

Let me know what will work for you.

-chris

posted June 13, 2013 by Chris Dahl, Foundant Technologies

Hey Chris,

I think I may need to actually dialogue with you on this one, if you could. Perhaps some meaning could be lost in translation via email.

Could we set up a time to visit?

-lisa

posted June 13, 2013 by Lisa Diehl, Oldham Little Church Foundation

Hi Lisa,

I'm definitely happy to talk through things and try to identify workable solutions - sometimes things are easier than others is all.

At this point, unfortunately, I don't have a great solution for you. Your example is about your boss going in and making a comment ... but is that the only thing they might do that the sytem would have to track? And is the comment always a particular type (i.e. a Request Comment)? Or is it sometimes a Decision Comment or an Organization Comment, or what's even tougher, maybe a response to a question labeled Comment (like on some evaluation forms I've seen)?

I checked with our Client Services folks as they've definitely got more experience wih a wider variety of client situations than I do, and no one had a suggestion on how other foundations were doing things, other than a process adjustment that would involve your boss just noting the project names of the files he commented on so you could focus your search.

If it's always a comment of the same type, we might be able to do something more automated, but to be realistic, given other priorities at this time, it's not likely to change very soon.

I'd be curious as well to have other folks weigh in because I'm sure you're not alone in different ways of managing workflow. While I believe we provide significant value in automating a lot of what people do, there are always exceptions that involve some more manual process.

I'll keep your need here in mind as we move forward. In the meantime, let me know just a bit more about your situation and if you do hear from others about a nice way of managing it, I'd be interested in hearing about that as well.

Thanks,

-chris

posted June 13, 2013 by Chris Dahl, Foundant Technologies

Hey Chris,

Thanks for the dialogue here.

I guess what I am trying to get a grip on is how to keep track of the many files in our GLM. For example, if my boss goes in and makes a comment, clearing the way for further action needed on my part, how can I know the need to look at that specific file unless I check every single file every single day?

I would welcome suggestions on ways to "keep up", as well as possible dialogue with other foundations on how they maintain their files on a daily basis.

Does this make sense?

-lisa

posted June 13, 2013 by Lisa Diehl, Oldham Little Church Foundation

Hi Lisa,

Thanks for the suggestion. I'm assuming when you say "file" you mean within the context of a particular request, correct? And when you say "an action taken" ... what would you qualify as an action of which you'd want to be made aware (i.e. a change in status, an edit of contact information, an update to a response on a form in a DRAFT status)? And do you want to be aware of every comment a Board member makes, or are there different classes of comments?

This isn't one I've really heard before, so the more detail you can provide, the better able I will be to help envision how this kind of enhancement would fit into our product roadmap. At this point, given other priorities, I'm pretty sure it's not something we will be looking at in the near-term.

One of the challenges with something like this is that with the diversity of our clients, quite a few of them might find a feature like this to be a bit "noisy" - i.e. they might be less concerned with being aware of every change to a particular request. If we were to work on something like this, we'd obviously make it as configurable as we could so that clients could "opt-in" ... the trade-off there is that everything that is configurable adds some degree of complexity to deployments, training, and the solution.

Thanks again for taking time to add an Idea, and I look forward to your feedback,

-chris

posted June 13, 2013 by Chris Dahl, Foundant Technologies