Release Notes - 22nd October 2009

These are the release notes for another round of updates to the Insight platform. As always if you have any questions please don't hesitate to contact us.

SMS (Text) Messages in the Mailing Wizard

You can now send SMS (text) messages from the Insight platform to any of your users who have a mobile phone number on their record.

This feature is available in the Mailing Wizard, alongside the other normal communication options (email, post, phone) and you can include all the usual mail-merge fields that you use in your emails.

The cost for each text credit to existing customers will be around 8p+VAT, though the actual charges vary depending on the destination and network of the message, as well as its length. The charges for the credits you use will be applied to your normal monthly statement in the Web Office.

Who has permission to send SMS messages?
The ability to send SMS messages from your site is currently restricted to site full administrators only. You can assign the SMS permission to users using the same method as the other Site Manager permissions by checking the box for the relevant user. The "SMS" permission is located next to the Mailing permission, under the Church/Organisation Administration permissions.

Sending an SMS message
To send an SMS message, create a new mailing in the Mailing Wizard as normal. When selecting the recipients you will now see an "SMS" correspondence method option in addition to the usual correspondence methods of email, post etc. (Users who don't have the "SMS" permission won't see this option). If the SMS option is selected, as you step through the Mailing Wizard, you will be prompted to write your SMS message.

Enabling SMS as a preferred correspondence method
If you wish to allow your site users to select SMS text messaging as their preferred correspondence method then you will need to first select this option on the required 'Mailing Channel'. A Mailing Channel's available correspondence methods can be edited under Settings->E-mails->Mailing Channels.

Note Driven Layouts

In the last release we told you that we'd done some crucial ground work for this big new feature and that the full power of it would be unleashed this time around. Well, true to our word, here we go!

We have felt the pain of the graphic designers who have been telling us for some time how they struggle to create complex sites because they have to create a separate layout for every single group - because even something as simple as placing a different banner image in each group required a new layout. Note Driven Layouts are our answer to this problem and we believe that we have created something far more powerful and flexible even than those visionary graphic designers imagined!

This new feature allows you to set layout components (for example, an image) based on the properties of the current article, group, shop item, shop category etc.

A "note" is an extra piece of information that you can store about an entity (such as a user) in the Insight system. Up until now, "notes" could be added to users, organisations and - if you have a shop - then also shop orders and shop items. For example, if you wanted to store a person's job title then you would create a note of type user, to store this extra information on a person's profile.

As of this release, you can now add "notes" to groups and articles and (if you have a shop) to shop categories. You can create these new "note" types in the "Settings" area under "General".

So, that banner image that we described above that required a new layout for every group, can now be set differently in every group from a single layout by configuring an image component to use the value of an 'image link' note type, which you can then set in each group to the image you require.

There are many other applications of this feature, for example you could display a specific message for a user on the homepage of your site. Or in a shop item, you could configure a "Top 10 Seller" or "Price Match" image to display only on certain items, or you could link to an article containing more information about a book's author (for example, photo, biography etc)

While we were at it, we've added a new "notes" component, which you can use to display the new and exisiting notes. This enables any extra information that you have added in notes to users, organisations, articles, groups, shop items, shop categories and shop orders to be published within the layout.

We'll add a video soon showing you how to use this feature.

New resources for UK churches

Endis is committed to making the best Christian resources available to UK churches and we have a number of developments planned over the coming months. As part of this we have, in this release, added 2 new RSS ticker feeds, one from

Premier Christian Media displaying links to recording of their radio shows, and one from

Damaris Culture Watch providing links to comment on popular culture. These feeds can be easily added to your site by adding the relevant component to a layout on your site (for example on your homepage). The components are displayed under the "Lists and Feeds" category.

Other enhancements and bug fixes

User Forum and chatter post display configuration
Users can now choose the name displayed for their "forum" and "chatter" posts, from various display options. The default remains as the user's firstname and lastname. The "nickname" display option replaces the previous "chatter nickname" setting.

Performance enhancements to the members and delegates displays.
Fixes to the Profile editor component.
Added workaround to cope with a bug in the latest Quicktime player which meant that for Quicktime video only the audio was being played.