Release Notes - 17th & 31st July 2008

For the eagle-eyed amongst you you may have already noticed that these release notes are an amalgamation of two releases over the last couple of weeks - but that won't be through a shortage of things to announce :-)

As always if you've got questions, comments or suggestions do contact us, or head over to the forums to join in the discussion.

Search Engine Friendly URL's for Articles and Groups

In the last release we introduced "search engine friendly" URLs to the categories of the shop.  In this new release we've rolled it out to all the main content pages. 

What this basically means is that the URL you see in your browser address bar uses a more "human readable" address instead of /Group/Group.aspx?id=1234.  These new address' should contain many of the same "keywords" as the Page Title (the words at the top of your browser window) and hopefully the text within the article - something that search engines are known to look for.

We've already seen some evidence of ChurchInsight customers rising in the Google search results rankings - but maybe you have a story of your own you'd like to share?

One final thing - the old style links will continue to function as before - so if you've sent out an email with an old style address don't worry, it'll still work!

Media XML API

In the last release we also added a new API to ChurchInsight - the media XML.  This means that you can create any number of custom "feeds" for any type of media.

"So what?" you may be wondering... well, here's a few places where you might find this useful:

• If you wanted to start offering pdfs and video alongside your audio sermons in your podcast you can customise your podcast feed (you can also now control how many items you offer and which folders are included).
• You can now offer a specific vodcast feed - if you're into that video thing :-)
• If you've ever used something like slideshow pro to create image galleries (or just plain slideshows) there's lots more options for arranging your albums, including video etc.
• We now also support the media rss format - which is utilized by a whole host of web widgets.  For example the slideshow below takes a media folder in the web office, mashes it together with the Google Feed API to produce a nice little ajax slideshow:
  

The API is of course just the beginning - watch this space for more tools in ChurchInsight which make use of the new media feeds.

In this release we've updated the way feeds are stored - you can now give your feed a name for recall at a later date, plus we've made a number of improvements to the interface to simplify the configuration process.

Custom Page Meta Tags

Custom Meta Tags can now be added to pages to provide additional information about the page content, previously only "keywords" and "description" was supported. Using a specific meta tag you can verify yourself as a site owner enabling the use of google webmaster tools. See http://www.google.com/webmasters for more information.

E-commerce Enhancements/fixes

Phone number required option

Option added under 'Shop Settings' to enable the phone number field to be optional on the delivery information page.

Other E-commerce & Payment Group enhancements

• Delegate Group notes - The presentation of delegate group notes on a registration form has been greatly improved.
  
• Improved permission handling on Financial reporting - access to financial reports on a payment group are now available to administrators with payment group permissions on that group (previously the "payment processor administrator" permission was required).  Similarly shop managers can now access financial reports for shop receivables.
• Product Item thumbnail display - The algorithim which produces product thumbnails at different sizes throughout the shop has been enhanced for better display.
  
• Finance report enhancements - 'Registration status filter' and 'Expected Payment Method' columns added onto the receivables financial report.
  
• Digital singles with product options - digital singles can now be purchased when a store item has options.
• Mini-layout editor validation - the mini-layout editor will now warn you of mistakes in your configuration.
  
• Hidden Shop Items  - Links to hidden shop items now correctly display the "item not found" message, rather than an error. 
• Wishlist and Cart text link option - Text link option added to wishlist and cart components.
• Store offers fix - Fix made to some specific offers that were set up with the "can be used in conjunction with other Store Offers" option selected. Specifically a if a % discount off the total value was given the highest priority it only applied this discount but not other discounts that should have also been applied.
• Unsuspended payment group registrations - Reactivated payment group registrations now correctly collect existing receivables and display a message indicating they will be taken.
• Manual taken payments log - Manually taken receivables on Payment Group registrations now correctly record the details of the administrator who took the payment.
• Shop order line query fix - Fix to shop order line query results display.
• Voided receipts can now be viewed in the financial reports.
• Shop users being created with INVALID_SURNAME issue now resolved.

Firefox 3 fixes

• Article links - Links can now be added within articles using the new Firefox 3 Browser.
• Query results display - Fixed issue in Firefox 3 with adding columns to query result.

Mailing Enhancements

Mailing session timeout

Now when your web session times out during creating a mailing and you are asked to login the content should be recovered, just like it does with the document editor. Remember you can also Save a Draft version.

Other enhancements/fixes 

• Theme preview group appropriate - Opening the "Theme Editor", now opens the with the group you selected displayed rather than defaulting to the homepage. This works for group-pages, system pages and shop page.
• Deleting Themes fix - Themes can now be deleted correctly.
  
• Article list component fix - Homepage layout didn't save if 'Articles from current group' option selected.
• Shop Item Ordering Priority - Changes to shop ordering Priority level now saves correctly for all items.
  
• Uploading user photo fixes - Several upload individual's photo issues fixed.
  
• New media folders XML link fix - Fixed issue with new media folder XML link not displaying correctly.
• Country drop-down list updated - Western Sahara added to country drop-down list.
• Images Browser enhancement - Entire cell containing image within the media tab now links to the image properties making editing small images easier.
• Menu bar caching improved.
• Sign-up Sheet pop-up styling - Sign-up sheet pop-up styling options added to the theme editor.
• Article Title support for special characters - Special characters now display correctly in article titles.
• Moving Directories enhancement - Directories can now be moved to all valid groups in the site structure.
• Creating a group help text - Help text updated when creating a group.
• Quickfind Group Search improvement - Fixes to group search in Quickfind meaning all appropriate groups accessible in the web office to the currently logged in user are found.
• Digital Preview - Fix to issue with digital file previews temporarily displaying the paid for file before upload to the Media server is complete.
• Long media filenames stored on an external media server are now handled better.
• Save Draft mailing fix - Nested tables are no longer inserted when draft mailing is saved.
• Article component handles deleted article references better.
• Fix to user merge process.
• Deleting Audio/Video files doesn't error any more.