Settings and activity
45 results found
-
2 votes
An error occurred while saving the comment An error occurred while saving the comment 
Chris Dahl
commented
Hi Kristen,
Thanks for adding this as a suggestion.
At this point, this is not a high priority feature for us - mostly because there is no "batch undo" for deleted requests.
I will bring this suggestion to our Product Team, but given the challenges around managing expectations for "deleting", I don't think we'll be addressing this anytime soon.
-chris
-
2 votes
An error occurred while saving the comment Chris Dahl
commented
Hi Dee Ann,
In the 4.1.0 release in early February, we changed the forms so that they auto-save as the applicant answers each question. This essentially removes the need for "Save as Draft".
This should provide a much better experience for most of our users. Thanks again for the suggestion,
-chrisAn error occurred while saving the comment Chris Dahl
commented
Hi Dee Ann,
Thanks for the suggestion. I'll bring this up to our Product Team.
As we've been working on other things the past few months, we've been thinking about ways to improve the applicant experience, including possibly saving things on more of a question-by-question basis. This is not to say we will be making that change any time soon as it is a bit involved, but we are aware that there is a need to improve this experience.
Thanks
posted June 12, 2013 by Chris Dahl, Foundant Technologies
-
8 votes
An error occurred while saving the comment Chris Dahl
commented
Hi Jessica,
Just an update - our Product Team discussed this, and for now, we're going to table it. I expect we'll revisit it as we look more at some user interface updates later in the year. I'll leave it marked as "under consideration" so we don't lose sight of it. I think there's value to making information more readily accessible, and this request definitely falls into that category. There's been other requests for additional information on this screen, so I'm guessing we'll be trying to incorporate a number of those requests when we do decide to update this screen..
thanks again for the suggestion,
-chrisAn error occurred while saving the comment Chris Dahl
commented
Hi Jessica,
Thanks for the suggestion.
I can understand how having this information on the Organization Summary page would be helpful for you. While it's not a big effort, I'd really like to hear from other users before we look at doing this, if at all possible. I'm assuming a label of "Denied (LOI)" or "Denied (Application)" would be sufficient?
In the meantime, I'll run this by our Product Team to see if anyone can think of a reason to not do this.
Thanks,
-chris -
16 votes
An error occurred while saving the comment Chris Dahl
commented
Katherine,
Couple follow-up questions.
First, if we were to add the organization comments to the Organization print packet (and the request comments to the Request print packet), you would get all of the relevant comments in the print packet - you would not be able to select which ones you would include. Would this be acceptable?
Second, if we were to include the comments in the data exports, how do you envision them being included - one column for each comment? Or something else?
Finally, if we just added an "export comments" button on the Request and Organization Summary pages, would that be of any use? Or would it be too disconnected from the rest of the data to be of value?
Thanks,
-chrisAn error occurred while saving the comment Chris Dahl
commented
Hi Katherine,
Thanks for the suggestion. We've made quite a few strides in terms of improving ways to get information out of the system more easily, but as you note, we still have some work to do.
This isn't a high priority item at this point, but I will take it to our Product Team to see if it makes sense to work on as time allows.
Thanks,
-chrisAn error occurred while saving the comment Chris Dahl
commented
Hi Katie,
Thanks for the suggestion, and I'm glad you're finding the new request comments to be somewhat helpful.
One of the challenges with exporting anything that is a "multiple" instance is that there's not easy way to do this without requiring a lot of duplication, which folks also don't like. For instance, there could be N (let's say N=5) request comments .. in that case, we'd have to create 5 rows in the export for the same request ... the only difference being the comment field.
That said, I'd be very open to hearing if you had a suggestion for how to get around this. If you have any questions or comments, or if my comment here is not clear, please let me know. Thanks,
-chris
posted July 28, 2013 by Chris Dahl, Foundant Technologies
-
25 votes
An error occurred while saving the comment Chris Dahl
commented
Hi Katherine,
Thanks for taking time to post this suggestion.
Given other higher-priority work, we're not looking to expand the Shared Documents access to Applicants at this point, especially given the availability of document-sharing sites. At some point, we want to update the Applicant experience within GLM, and at that point, if enough folks thought that applicant access to Shared Documents is important, we could make it part of that effort.
It could be something we do sooner, depending on feedback, but it might be something we limit more in terms of storage. How many documents / resources do you think you'd want to make available to Applicants?
Thanks,
-chrisAn error occurred while saving the comment Chris Dahl
commented
Hi Amy,
One thing we currently have under development is the implementation of another Idea Lab item - namely to make "Uploaded documents viewable by applicant" (http://community.foundant.com/foundant/topics/uploaded_documents_viewable_by_applicant).
I know you've comment on it ... will this address your need?
Thanks,
-chrisAn error occurred while saving the comment Chris Dahl
commented
Hi Amy,
Thanks for the suggestion. At this point, it's not something on our short-term roadmap, but it would be useful to hear from other users regarding how useful they would find this feature.
Also, we have had some discussions around updating the applicants' dashboard. For applicants with quite a few requests, their dashboard view can be a bit busy. Sharing documents with applicants is something that potentially could be a part of that work as well.
It's something that I'll add to my discussion list of our upcoming Summit. I'm slated to have quite a few sessions with users, so there will probably be some opportunity to get feedback there.
Thanks,
-chris
posted September 14, 2013 by Chris Dahl, Foundant Technologies
-
0 votes
An error occurred while saving the comment Chris Dahl
commented
Hi Andy,
At this point, budgeting for future years is not available. Internally, we've had some discussions around improving budgeting functionality, but it's not a high priority, given other features clients are requesting.
I'm sure we'll be improving it at some point, but it won't be in the near term.
Thanks,
-chris -
26 votes
An error occurred while saving the comment Chris Dahl
commented
Hi Julia and Mary,
In regard to the export / report of Charity Check information ... I created a new Idea Lab item "Export Charity Check Information" for further discussion on that topic. Since it's really separate functionality from a Batch Charity Check, I want to try to manage the 2 conversations in their own threads.
Thanks again for the feedback, and I look forward to hearing more details about a report / export.
-chrisAn error occurred while saving the comment Chris Dahl
commented
Hi Mary,
At this time, we're not planning on adding Batch Charity Check, but as we continue to look at improving the UI (user interface), I think there will be some opportunities to make it easier to verify if a charity check has been run and when.
That said, I think your idea around retrieving the charity check info in a report or in export data is more feasible and probably would be useful for a lot of other folks as well.
Thanks for the input and options,
-chris -
4 votes
An error occurred while saving the comment Chris Dahl
commented
Hi Rachel,
Thanks for the feedback. I'll have to do some thinking about where it makes the most sense to try to display access to this feature. It's certainly not a trivial effort, but I see the value in what you are suggesting.
Thanks,
-chrisAn error occurred while saving the comment Chris Dahl
commented
Hi Rachel,
Thanks for submitting this suggestion. I've heard some similar ideas every now and then, including http://community.foundant.com/foundant/topics/print_packet_for_a_whole_process. That idea is more about batch print packets, but it's related.
When I saw the title for your idea, I assumed it was an idea for saving (downloading) all the documents associated with a given applicant request, but after reading it, I don't think that's correct.
So to clarify ... when you say you want "a way to export all documents, applications, evaluations, etc. for an org (for each particular process)" ... there's a lot going on there. Examples always are helpful. I read this as saying that you would like the ability to create a print packet for an entire applicant request. This packet would include each form (LOI, LOI Eval, App, App Eval, Follow-ups [if any]) and the documents associated with each form (essentially the file upload questions). Is that correct? And where would you like to access this functionality - the request summary page?
Thanks,
-chris -
4 votes
An error occurred while saving the comment Chris Dahl
commented
Hi Lynn,
Thanks for the additional feedback. In terms of changing the color when an internal comment is made ... we can probably look at some better way of indicating an internal comment has been made, sooner than allowing evaluators to make comments on the application questions.I'm not sure yet if this would be a color or another type of indication. In general, we're trying to limit the amount of colors ... in part because more colors can be distracting, in part because some people don't see colors that well, and in part because they can clash with the colors that a foundation uses in their color scheme. That said, there are definite times for using them.
I'll keep this in mind as we start planning out some of the first half 2014 releases. Thanks,
-chrisAn error occurred while saving the comment Chris Dahl
commented
Hi Kristen and Derek,
First, thanks for taking the time to provide more feedback and for posting the screenshot - that goes a long way to making things clear.
My biggest concern / question at this point is that the way I see the screenshot, it looks like everyone (administrators, staff evaluators, and Board Members) would all be making comments in the same field. This would limit the ability to post the comment back to applicants (I think) and it would also make it the job of the commenter to identify themselves - which really isn't ideal.
I'd actually see this more like the "request comment" functionality (see attached) where everyone could add comments, but only the comments the administrator added could be marked as "Show Applicant this Comment" ... however, this further complicates things in that with this type of implementation, multiple comments could be marked as viewable by the applicant.
Any feedback on what I'm saying? Also, if a staff evaluator made a comment, would it be viewable by the board, or not?
I'd appreciate hearing from others who have an opinion on the priority and/or implementation ideas for this idea. Thanks in advance for any additional feedback
posted September 3, 2013 by Chris Dahl, Foundant Technologies
An error occurred while saving the comment Chris Dahl
commented
Hi Kristen & Derek,
Thanks for the suggestion. I do need a bit of clarification just so I'm certain we're talking about the same thing.
Kristen - by "the comment field enhancement within the application", do you mean the ability of administrators to mark question comments as "viewable by the applicant"? And Derek - is that how you interpreted it as well? Or do you mean something like allowing the reviewers / board members to simply comment on each application question themselves but NOT make it viewable to the applicant?
In either case, one thing we do need to consider is how to make this an optional feature, since I'm pretty sure there are a number of folks who would not want their reviewers and/or board members to be able to do this. It'd be great if other folks could add their perspectives to help give us a sense of what people are looking for in terms of this type of functionality.
Looking forward to hearing more details about this
posted August 29, 2013 by Chris Dahl, Foundant Technologies
-
0 votes
An error occurred while saving the comment Chris Dahl
commented
Hi Kathryn,
With the improvements we've made to handling comments and archiving emails from within this system, I'm going to mark this Idea as "Implemented".
If you have suggestions for additional improvements, please let us know - and thanks much for the feedback and suggestions! They've definitely played a role in shaping the direction of the product and our efforts.
-chrisAn error occurred while saving the comment Chris Dahl
commented
Hi Jen and Kathryn,
Thanks for the suggestions. First, there are a number of posts with Email archiving and Better Comment Handling references. It's a bit tough trying to track the different threads, but here is a link to an email-specific one: tracking email correspondence sent to organizations and to a comment-specific one: Add comment field and list on overview page.
That said, in regard to saving email responses from users ... I understand the request. At this point, though, it's really not on the product roadmap. Adding functionality to archive emails that originate from the system is on the roadmap though.
In regard to the comments on each grant, I think you'll see under the Add comment field thread I linked to that we have considered ways to improve this and have a specification ready. I'm not sure when it will be implemented, but I think the implementation will address a lot of the concerns people have around managing application-specific comments.
Thanks,
-chris
posted September 27, 2012 by Chris Dahl, Foundant Technologies
-
89 votes
An error occurred while saving the comment Chris Dahl
commented
Hi Dana,
I think some aspect of what you're suggesting probably makes sense. I certainly agree that in a number of cases, people are having to do too many extra clicks to find information, and having some kind of "flagging" would help.
Couple immediate challenges that come to mind are how many "types" of flags should there be, where should they be displayed, how long should they be displayed, which roles should see them, etc.
It'd be good if other folks could add their perspectives. I'm guessing that something like this would be part of some general user interfaces we hope to make later in 2014. The more input we have around things like this that would improve efficiency and the overall user experience, the better that release will be.
Thanks,
-chris -
3 votes
An error occurred while saving the comment Chris Dahl
commented
Hi Mary,
I think I understand what you're asking for, but it would help if I understood the motivation as well. Is there a problem that this would help solve?
One challenge I can see - and one that most web applications face - is how to deal with an undetermined amount of data. For instance, if I understand correctly, the proposed view would probably look fairly good if there weren't that many applications in a single view (i.e. less than 15 or 20). However, if there were 30 or 40 or 50 applications, the width that would be required exceeds that which is available for most people. While we could look at implementing a horizontal scrolling solution, that makes it hard for a review to see all the summaries at once.
In cases such as this, where it's challenging to represent the data nicely on the screen, we have worked to provide more export functionality. I'm not sure if this would be something that Trudy would find useful, but it would be one option.
Thanks for the suggestion, and I look forward to hearing more feedback,
-chris -
39 votes
An error occurred while saving the comment Chris Dahl
commented
Hi Kelly,
Thanks for the suggestion. I can see where this would be useful, and as we review how we are handling dates, we will consider this.
-chris
-
7 votes
An error occurred while saving the comment Chris Dahl
commented
Hi Barb,
Thanks for the suggestion. We're trying to balance functionality with usability on the page, which is why we have a separate area for the Charity Check (a bit higher up on the payment screen).
One challenge with just adding a GuideStar Charity Check button next to the payment amount is trying to display the results in a meaningful way.
Rather than adding more buttons and cluttering up that payment area, would a more visible indicator of the Charity Check status help? For example, we could put an icon / text indicating that a Charity Check has not been run, a different icon indicating it's been run and is valid, and another icon if it has been run and is not valid.
Thanks again for the idea. Look forward to hearing more from you in regard to this,
-chris -
2 votes
An error occurred while saving the comment Chris Dahl
commented
Hi Mark,
Welcome to the club :-)
I appreciate you chiming in - collecting social media IDs within GLM is not something I've heard mentioned before, but I certainly recognize that social media plays a big role for some clients.
Do you see more value in capturing IDs for individuals or IDs for the non-profit organization? And what is your vision for interacting (i.e. outside of Foundant GLM or within the system)?
To be honest, given other priorities, I don't see working on this any time soon, but I definitely would appreciate hearing more about your thoughts on it. Simply collecting the IDs wouldn't be that technically difficult, but I'd also like to hear from other clients to help get a feel for the potential pro's and con's.
Thanks again for taking time to post here,
-chris
posted August 18, 2013 by Chris Dahl, Foundant Technologies
-
6 votes
An error occurred while saving the comment Chris Dahl
commented
Hi Monica,
Thanks for the suggestion. We realize that there isn't an evaluation-centric report and it is something that we've talked a bit about internally. One of the challenges is the variety of needs users have (for example, the "tally function" you mention is something specific to you).
While a basic report for evaluations is not on our near-term product roadmap, it is something that could move up depending on user interest. If other users have a desire to see a report of evalation data, I'd appreciate hearing from them :-) In the meantime, I'll make sure to mention this to our product team and see if anyone else has heard some requests.
Thanks again,
-chris
posted March 27, 2013 by Chris Dahl, Foundant Technologies
-
4 votes
An error occurred while saving the comment Chris Dahl
commented
Hi Amy,
At this point, there’s not an option to do this. We have some work to do on improving Organization and Contact management as well as improving our email functionality. Your request makes sense and it’s something we’ll be in a better position to address once we make some other high priority improvements.
Thanks,
-chris
posted June 22, 2012 by Chris Dahl, Foundant Technologies
-
69 votes
An error occurred while saving the comment Chris Dahl
commented
Hi Rob,
You're right that copy/paste functionality is pretty standard. We've got the "Copy" functionality at the form and process level due to the amount of work it does take to recreate those. However, in general, we've just not seen a big need for the copying of questions. It's not technically that hard to do, but it's not trivial either, so we'll keep it in mind going forward as we continue evaluating and prioritizing enhancements. We're constantly trying to balance our development capacity with client need and at this point, there's just some bigger pain points out there. Hopefully you've been noticing some improvements since you begin using the system!
I appreciate you taking the time to comment and respond to my question about the library. And don't hesitate to comment on other IdeaLab items ... it's hard to us to always gauge interest, but even more important in my mind is that we hear from people with different perspectives on particular items. My biggest concern is that we work on a given feature only to find out after we release it that it actually causes some issue for some of our clients. Obviously we try to anticipate that to the best of our ability, but with close to 400 clients, it's pretty hard to always be right.
Thanks again,
-chris
posted August 7, 2012 by Chris Dahl, Foundant Technologies
An error occurred while saving the comment Chris Dahl
commented
Hi Robert,
Is this still something you think would be helpful? I can see how this would be useful, but it's not something that's very high on the priority list at this point. One thing we've discussed is at some point potentially being able to create a question library that you can pull from to add to your forms. Do you think that would add value?
Is there a particular aspect of creating the question that is taking the most time? When I think about it, it seems like potentially the instructions or list items would be things that take some time to re-create.
Thanks,
-chris
posted August 6, 2012 by Chris Dahl, Foundant Technologies
-
2 votes
An error occurred while saving the comment Chris Dahl
commented
Hi Erin,
Thanks for the additional comment. At some point, it might be possible in the user interface for us to keep track of both the number of characters as well as number of words, and give users some visual feedback in terms of a count, but I'm not sure what we will be able to do beyond that.
If we come up with any interesting options, I'll be sure to let you know,
-chris
posted July 28, 2013 by Chris Dahl, Foundant Technologies
An error occurred while saving the comment Chris Dahl
commented
Hi Erin,
Thanks for you comment. I've seen a variety of sites that use one or the other, but regardless, the issue we are most concerned with - for obvious reasonss - is data integrity.
Since people's responses are stored in our system, and since we want to have the system e able to perform at a reasonable level (i.e. when people do look ups involving a lot of data), we have to be able to tell the database how much room to set aside for each potential piece of data (i.e. an answer to a question). And since computer systems measure memory in something that can be translated to a "character", we use characters as a counter. This was pretty standard when we initially built the system, and it prevents us from having to truncate responses that may be under a certain number of words but over a certain character length (and thus too long to store in the database field that is set aside for the response). For exampe, one 400-word response might be 2,500 characters, but another 400-word response might be 3,200 characters.
As we go forward, we could look at essentially over-allocating the database field ... say be 30% ... and moving to a word count. However, this is not a trivial change and may have implications on what we support for a maximum response. Given the amount of work, the risk that we could STILL be having to truncate responses, and the other things on our priority list, we'll probably be staying with a character count for quite awhile.
That said, we will keep this on the roadmap as a potential enhancement at some point.
Thanks,
-chris
posted June 20, 2013 by Chris Dahl, Foundant Technologies
-
2 votes
An error occurred while saving the comment Chris Dahl
commented
Hi Deb and Amy,
I can definitely see where you are coming from with this suggestion. The major challenge to this is that not everyone uses the "built-in" report field of "Amount Requested." And we don't have any way of knowing which field they are using (i.e. one client could be using the built-in report field and another could be using one they created called "Amt. of Request". The minute we made one available, everyone not using the built-in one would want whatever one they were using to be included ...
One thing that we have discussed is letting people add a single report field for display in the various grids of data (this wouldn't be a one-time thing - they could change it as they went). We don't have that slated for the next release or 2, but it's been a topic of conversation and seems like it would meet your goal here as well as others.
In the longer-term, we are discussing some significant architectural and functional changes to report fields in general, but that's quite a ways out.
I'll keep the discussion about the addition of a report field to various views going with our Product Team.
Thanks much for the suggestion - it's a really valid one.
posted February 26, 2013 by Chris Dahl, Foundant Technologies
We had a few more internal discussions on this ... and ff this is just for those requests in an "Abandoned" status, I think it's something we can consider. Given what's on the roadmap the next 6 months, it probably won't happen soon, though.
-chris