Notes from the Programmers

New Email Gateway Makes Contacting Donors Easier and More Flexible
As you may know, Allegiance Fundraising gives Microsoft Outlook users the ability to quickly and easily begin drafting individual emails to donors and prospects. This task can be done simply by clicking on the envelope icon located next to email fields found on the Contacts tab in Account and People Records.

How it Will Work
Through a Gateway Record, you will indicate the mail server/provider, from address, username and password for the email account you would like to use. Once the Gateway Record is created, you will be able to use the feature immediately. Clicking on on an email icon anywhere it's available in your Allegiance Fundraising system, will prompt you to select a Gateway Record that represents the email account you would like to use. A simple email editing screen will open. The "From" field will auto-populate with the email address associated with the gateway record, and the "To" field will auto-populate with the email address of the person you are trying to contact. At the bottom of the email editing screen is a blank text box for the body of the email. Additionally, you will have the ability to add up to three attachments. When you click "Send", a message will appear indicating the email was sent successfully.

You may create as many email gateway records as you choose. For example, you might create separate Gateway Records for a customer service queue, a development department queue or an administrative queue as well as records for individuals in your organization.

Watch for this change in an update soon.

Future Applications of this Enhancement
We are making this tool available for Fundraising V9.0 users. However, we have plans to add more features to it in future versions. In Fundraising V9.1, any email you generate through this tool in your Fundraising system will create a new activity record on the account which will include the text of the email. Additionally, we have plans to integrate more fully with the peer to peer fundraising tool in the Web Module.

Questions or Comments
Reference the user guide in the Fundraising Tip below for more information about how to setup and use this feature. For additional assistance, please contact an Allegiance support specialist.

This month we take a look at the Expiring Contract Report, which is used to identify contracts that are due to expire within a specific date range.

This user guide will walk you through the process of creating and using an email gateway record.

Creating an Email Gateway Record