Think Say Do - Web Applications, User Experience

What A Year Brings

Amazing how quickly time goes by isn’t it. I’ve heard so many people say that, but it’s SO true! In May we celebrated our son’s first birthday with about 50 guests. Lots of fun!

And, in July, Think Say Do is preparing to celebrate the first year in business. Thank you to all of our great customers! What a year!

Lately, we’ve been hard at work on a few new projects. Here’s what we’ve been doing:

• Auto Data Connection (ADC) software for Microsoft Dynamics: Great Plains Accounting and Raiser’s Edge donor management system. Yes, both. Think Say Do was retained this spring to write a small piece of server software (in PHP5) that connects nightly, automatically to pull down essential data into a MySQL database for use by web sites during the day. The software we wrote pulls well over a million records from two massive legacy software applications’ Microsoft SQL Server 2000 databases. It completes the process in about 15 minutes due to some heavy SQL code optimization and our use of PHP command line scripts. The data then becomes accessible to partner web sites, without the risk of connecting directly to these legacy applications via the web server, and without the performance drop sometimes associated with the API connection methods offered as product add-ons. The ADC project has been a success so far. Constituents are now able to participate in organizational transparency like never before.
• Donated Project: Stand Against Trafficking site design and development: http://www.standagainsttrafficking.com/
• Email template for CampaignMonitor - small local publisher, Priester Publishing.
• Data Search Engine to filter through records visually, using jQuery UI.

And, as with any good business, there are always irons in the fire. Think Say Do and e-Media Resources are building a streaming video site for small businesses, which will launch this summer. We’re also working on a new site and content management system for a non-profit to help children in need in Macon, Georgia. I am working with my good friend Jared at The Art Press on a new customer-service application that we think will revolutionize the way people work with screen printers. And, we’ve got a few internal projects coming this year. More on all of these projects later.

So, time goes by quickly, but it’s always more fun when you enjoy what you do. Enjoy life and your loved ones. Drop me a line and let me know how quickly your time has been going! Perhaps Think Say Do can help write something that will make your time more enjoyable this year.

~Collin Schneider
Founder / Systems Designer
Think Say Do, LLC 
Business Systems Designed for People.

A Quick List Of What We've Been Doing

For those of you not familiar with Think Say Do, LLC, here’s a quick list of what we’ve been working on in 2008 and early 2009:

• Training Application System for Associated Training Services
  Allows applicants to apply for classes online and apply for financial aid. Ties in tightly with legacy applications in MS SQL Server. Applicants can save their progress and return later for status updates. This project was in partnership with e-Media Resources, LLC.
   
• Customer Information Management System & Visual Query Builder
  for Chamberlain Research
  Allows potential research participants to sign up online and fill in extensive background data. They can opt into and out of research panels. The system also includes a sophisticated Visual Query Builder for Chamberlain Research staff members to build participant lists in real-time. I’ll post more on this project in the future. This project was in partnership with e-Media Resources, LLC.
   
• Online Donation System for The Wesleyan Church World Headquarters
  (See earlier post for details about this project.)
  
  
  
• Inventory Management System for Peterson Machinery
  Prior to our involvement, customers were waiting several minutes to view a massive list of inventory on their browser screens. We reviewed the process and rewrote the entire system to allow searching and browsing. In addition we developed a back office management piece to allow staff to manage their complete inventory, including location information, as inventory is spread across several states. The site was a big success and has streamlined inventory management. As a final piece, we added a dynamic email quote builder to automatically create machinery quotes based off inventory data.
   
• A Bride’s Choice Florist, An award-winning wedding florist in Indianapolis
  Although we don’t often do web site designs, we took on this project for enjoyment. The site is built on a custom Content Management System (CMS) that allows staff to make content updates themselves. We also did some SEO work to assist with search engine ranking.
  
  
• Real-Time Sales Quotes iPhone Web Application for The Art Press
  The web application allows staff to generate real-time t-shirt order quotes for clients. Sales staff just visit the web application, add the job requirements, and they can get a real-time cost complete with material costs, labor costs, and delivery fees. The application can also take completed quotes and send them directly to customers via the iPhone’s email software.
   
• Custom Artist Stores for Vardagen Brands
  Vardagen prints private-label shirts for bands, artists, and small independent lifestyle brands. As part of the deal, artist get their own private-label store through Vardagen where they can sell their shirts to fans. Totally sweet gig. Vardagen fulfills the order and the artists get a generous cut of the proceeds. Think Say Do wrote the custom code for Shopify to allow per-artist private-label stores. Check Vardagen out!

We’ve been doing even more than that, but I wanted to list the major projects. If we can assist you in any way, let us know! Call us at 317-489-9184

~ Collin Schneider, Founder / Systems Designer

Platform as a Service

Ran across an interesting article about Software as a Service (SaaS), explaining the tiers involved, and how the approach to SaaS (and Platform as a Service - PaaS) is progressing.

SaaS: All PaaS are not created equal.

This article is relevant to us because one of the core pieces of our business as we grow will be SaaS. Although I cannot say much about our offerings yet, I can say that we are investing a significant amount of time into our technology, including developing a new scripting language to power the applications. After years of working in enterprise scripting languages developed years ago, I felt that it was time to develop something new designed to work the way modern web applications work. My hope is that it will increase our internal efficiency by a large magnitude, but I am also hoping that it will get some other people talking about a new approach to language development - one that is not tied to a particular platform or programming language. More on those vague statements at a later time. In any case, SaaS is the future for businesses and non-profits. We want to be a part of that and so should you.

~ Collin Schneider, Founder / Systems Designer

Online Payment System

Online donations to non-profits have been steadily growing as people look for more convenient donation methods that offer more control over giving. According to the Center on Philanthropy at Indiana University, in 2007, Americans donated $306 billion, three-percent of that was given online. That’s more $9 billion dollars donated online! If you’re working for a non-profit, are you getting a piece of that?

In 2008, Think Say Do was commissioned to design and develop an online donation system for The Wesleyan Church World Headquarters, based in Fishers, Indiana. In previous years, The Wesleyan Church had taken online donations via email. There was no real-time credit card validation, no automated fund transfers, and no instant receipting. This caused some big problems come December, as you might imagine. Donors scrambled to donate before the end of the tax year, only to find their cards rejected because of mistyping, or worse, no one in the office to actually run the cards.

Late in December 2007, while the entire office was out for the holidays, one lone employee had to actually visit the office to process cards so donations could be taken. Not an ideal situation for an organization with hundreds of thousands of constituents.

That’s where we came in. After assessing the situation, we began the process of studying legacy donation methods - how do people currently process donations? Come to find out, they use a piece of software called The Raiser’s Edge from Blackbaud Software. Many non-profits use this software to manage their constituent lists and to keep track of donations. But the software has antiquated methods for online donations and no web-based API. So, we wrote our own.

We first started by building a new online donation form, one that could easily take multiple gifts from all over the Wesleyan web sites (there are three donation-driven sites, each for a different department at the church). The new form backed into a custom online payment system, which works much like PayPal, but it’s all in-house. The service-oriented architecture (SOA) allowed constituents to easily add items as they browsed the site, for example, adding a missionary donation here and a special summer project there. Once they’d finished browsing, they could “checkout” and finish their donations, selecting recurring options, designations, and updating account information.

We also built a powerful, yet simple to use management console for Wesleyan HQ staff members. From the console, they can manage donors, view online giving histories, and export donations directly - get this -  into The Raiser’s Edge! We wanted the entire system to operate smoothly, from end to end, for everyone involved, not just the constituents, but also the staff.

After weeks of reviewing Raiser’s Edge, we decided the best, most stable approach would be to tap the SQL Server database powering the software. We wrote a process that runs nightly that dumps data from key tables into a web application that then conforms the data to a MySQL Server database accessible to the Internet. The MySQL tables then are accessed by the Online Payment System (known as OPS) to allow constituents to retrieve their Wesleyan Account information. After a constituent gives, we flag their record to be updated in Raiser’s Edge pending human review. We also take all gifts made, and pending human review, automatically export the gifts into a Raiser’s Edge CSV format. A custom macro written in VB then allows the staff to import the CSV and automatically add the online giving history into Raiser’s Edge.

The system works incredibly well for them. We were delighted to do the project, and enjoyed working with the great folks over there.

Bottom Line: If you’re not taking online donations, you’re missing out on that $9 billion opportunity! We’d love to talk with you about implementing an Online Donation System for your organization.

Email us: projects at thinksaydo dot com or call us at 317-489-9184.

~ Collin Schneider, Founder / Systems Designer