I've posted about the recent SalesForce.com outage in my notebook. It is something for non-profits to consider when deciding on software to manage their donors and fundraising. Where is your data? I am not trying to scare anyone, but it is something you will eventually have to deal with if you use an online service for your fundraising database. Assuming they have the features you need, these services can do the job, but your data (your organization's lifeblood) is being managed by someone else. Your ability to access it depends on their ability to keep it available. Make the necessary preparations -- make regular, local copies of your data and make sure you can get to those records in the case you can't get online.

The fact that GiftWorks is not a web service doesn't mean you are in the clear from the problems. In this case, you manage your data. You still need to do regular backups to another computer or media. Hopefully we make this an easy enough task that it shouldn't be a problem for you.

One thing that GiftWorks does have over web services is that you can access your data anytime you want to -- you do not need to be online. You can also copy the datase to a laptop and take it with you for the weekend.

We've had some questions recently about what technologies are used to build GiftWorks. Good question, let me explain. This might get a little technical but it's worth a shot. If you want more specifics or a better explanation, please leave me a comment and I will try to clear it up.

graphite

As mentioned in previous articles, GiftWorks is built on a proprietary application framework nick-named GRAPHITE. GRAPHITE allows us to rapidly build software to target specific uses. GRAPHITE knows nothing about non-profits or fundraising. It does know how to behave like a modern Windows program though. The entire user interface (UI) is drawn using HTML (like the webpage you are looking at now). It provides windows, dialogs, internet updates, context-sensitive help, scripting and a lot more of the features expected in todays software. It also provides a lot of the UI elements used like listboxes, button and menus.

The core of GRAPHITE is written in C++. GRAPHITE hosts Internet Explorer to render the UI. Some of the UI elements are written using a combination of ATL (Active Template Library) and MFC (Microsoft Foundation Classes). The entire framework is built around Microsoft's COM (Component Object Model) which allows programs like GiftWorks to be built using various programming languages and technologies. It also enables developers to easily add functionality to GiftWorks that is specific to their uses. This blog will talk more specifically about addins in the future.

giftworks

The GiftWorks "code" is what makes GRAPHITE useful for non-profits. It provides the SmartLists, the donor and donation management and the reporting. That stuff is written Visual Basic and the user interface is written using DHTML (Dynamic HTML). Some of you may have already dug into the GiftWorks directories and saw a bunch of *.htm files in there. Each of those .htm files is a different screen in GiftWorks (play at your own risk).

There are some other third-party technologies used within GiftWorks to do reporting, name parsing, word-processing and displaying lists.

data

Currently GiftWorks uses a file-based database technology called JET. It is the same database technology used by some Microsoft products including Microsoft Access. In the near future, GiftWorks will also work with a client-server database (possibly Microsoft SQL Server) to allow better scalability for bigger organizations.

.net

We have refrained from using any Microsoft .NET technologies in GiftWorks. It is a great technology and we will be using it for some of the online services we will be providing for GiftWorks customers. We started GiftWorks prior to .NET being mainstream (is it mainstream yet?), and don't particularly like the thought of shipping the .NET Framework with our downloads.

questions

Like I said, this post is probably a little technical for our current customers, but maybe I touched on something that gets you engaged. Please send your questions and let me know what you would like me to write about in future posts.

Being a software developer I am very aware of the amount of effort involved in providing good help for software products. In small software companies, I would bet help is usually a second thought when releasing the product. In the first release of GiftWorks, we had one help topic that always gets us laughing. It went something like this "... this screen is used to configure your donor groups, click on the various buttons to see what they do...". Seriously, more funny than helpful.

So I should be the last person to be pointing out issues with other company's help, but this particular one caught my attention.

I won't mention the product's name. I would like to hear some feedback on the current help offered in GiftWorks? Anyone want to share their thoughts?

Some of you may notice a new look for this blog. Little by little I have been working on some web site hosting software for our GiftWorks customers. Initially we will be offering hosted web pages for online donations only. A customer will be able to publish one or more web pages that will accept online donations (thanks to a partnership with United Way of America) and have those donations automatically recorded back into the GiftWorks database. In order to provide that service we need to allow some simple customizations so the customer can integrate the online donation web pages into their website -- or at least give the web pages a look and feel that matches their organization. This is where my blog and the web site hosting software comes in. This blog is running on a prototype of the hosting software. We are almost there.

Eventually we will enable our customers to build full blown web sites with many different features as well as direct integration with GiftWorks. Customers that are reading this, please give us feedback on what you would like to see from Mission Research in regards to web site hosting. Anyone interested on getting into some pre-release use, please let us know as well. Thanks.

One of the things we do here at Mission Research to amuse ourselves is code-name our GiftWorks releases using names of rides at Hershey Park (we live forty minutes away from the park and most of us have been there too many times). For those not familiar with code-naming software projects, we do it here so that we can easily keep track of our projects. Sometimes we start projects without knowing what the actual released software will be called when it goes to market, but it's good to have something to call them instead of "that thing you're working on".

The naming convention for GiftWorks only started after our first release and typically we try to pick rides that capture the theme of the current release. Our followup release to the GiftWorks launch was code-named LADYBUG. It was a small release cycle and we thought the name was funny -- Scrambler is a kiddie ride. How old are we?

We followed up with project SCRAMBLER. That project was done in a hurry in preperation for our Demo.com show (check out the video at this link). Our next release was huge. We stuffed in as many customer requests as we could, as well as a mass mailing section and a bunch of other cool features. That release took us 9 months (which is a long time for a startup like us). We code-named it WILDCAT. For those who have never ridden that wooden screamer, imagine roping yourself to the back of an AMTRAK train for a mile or so. We all agreed, after the project was shipped, the name fit well.

At the end of WILDCAT, our co-workers thought it would be fun to take our dev team to Hershey Park so we could ride the rides. They secretly gathered all our families together and surprised us with a night at the park. Great idea! We had fun and got pics of us on the rides we used for code-names. See below...

 Mike and Chris on LadyBug

 Me and Steve on LadyBug

 Mike on Scrambler

 Steve, Chris, Carol and Megan on WildCat

We haven't decided on the next project name. We'll see...

Finally getting with the program, friend and co-worker Steve Fafel has started blogging. It took him a bit to get started, but now he can't be stopped. He's on the Web 2.0 freight train and won't get off. Now we just got to get him to put up his picture on the blog. Jokes aside, he's an interesting read so check him out.

http://stevefafel.com/blog