Wow! Better file by tonight if you need to!

by Mark Panger18. October 2013 11:05

"The Commission resumed operations on Thursday, October 17, 2013.  Accordingly, the Commission will not pursue administrative fines against filers whose reports were due during the federal government shutdown and who failed to file on a timely basis as long as they file their reports by 11:59 p.m. on Friday, October 18, 2013.  See 11 CFR 111.35.  This deadline applies to both electronic filers and paper filers, including those that file with the Secretary of the Senate.

 

Staff in the Reports Analysis Division (202/694-1130) and Electronic Filing Office (202/694-1307) will be available to assist filers. "

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We must have had a bunch of loose nuts

by Mark Panger14. October 2013 15:55
We tightened a whole bunch of nuts and bolts on today's release.  If you were getting some errors during specific actions, many of those have been resolved.

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Correction To Tuesday's Version

by Mark Panger3. October 2013 08:38

On Tuesday we made some enhancements to the integrity of the data in the Payments section of TB.  One of those enhancements caused the Memo tab to have focus when attempting to pay an invoice instead of the Payments tab.  This version corrects that.

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Got Name Badges? We Do!

by Mark Panger1. October 2013 17:17

 

 You access the name badges from the REPORTS button in the lower right of your screen:

 

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Canvassing list creation is much faster now.

by Mark Panger1. October 2013 16:55

It should run about 50 times faster with today's release.  That will save you some time!

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Would you like to see a list of all your Trail Blazer defined relationships?

by Mark Panger1. October 2013 16:53

A new item was added today.  For political customers it will read Voter Relationships.

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What To Be Looking For in Today's Release

by Mark Panger23. September 2013 16:36

 Partnership was added to the Payment Methods drop down in the Contributions list:

 

 

 


 

 A feature was added so that from the Household list one can set en masse attributes for all members of the household for all included households in the list.

 

 


 

Audit Count

 

You can add to the format 3 new columns.  Audit Count, Audit First Date and Audit Last Date.  The Audit Count column is linkable.  You will be able to see the Trail Blazer audit trail for how frequently that record has been updated.  

These columns have been added to the following tables:

Address
Contribution
Expenditure
Household
Invoice
Payee
Payer
Voter/Donor 

In the picture below, if I click on the 10 in the Audit Count column for Vickie Hull, I will see the following:

 

 

 

This will give me the edit history for this particular person.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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FEC updates today

by Mark Panger9. September 2013 16:13

We had to make some changes for PAC's the file both federally and non-federally.

Also our non-monetary expenditures were not being given a unique transaction ID.  That's corrected.

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For Our Data Geeks (for the rest of you, I'm sorry)

by Mark Panger22. August 2013 14:50

A SQL Query walks into a bar. In one corner of the bar are two tables. The Query walks up to the tables and asks: - Mind if I join you? 

SELECT * FROM [Users]

WHERE [Clue] > 0

 

No records found.

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What? Actual articles in the Best Practices folder of our Knowledge Base?

by Mark Panger1. August 2013 08:31

So, we've had this category in our knowledge base named Best Practices for some time.  However, it's been empty.  Not any more.  Tom has written a few articles and promises more to come. They can be viewed here.

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Images have moved to the Gallery tab

by Mark Panger25. July 2013 18:06

Have you been storing images on your voter/donor records?

 

To prepare for some future enhancements, the images have been moved to the Gallery tab:

  

Stay tuned for more.

If you would like to experiment in this area, be aware that a images and documents placed into the System Gallery...

...are available to other parts of the program including Events, other Voter/Donor records, and soon emails.

 

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Are you a nonprofit with a LOT of Allocation Funds?

by Mark Panger17. July 2013 17:21

Would you like to de-active some of them so they won't show up in your dropdown lists?

With our release today you can do that.

 

 

 

 

 

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Deleting Saved Queries (Favorites)

by Mark Panger16. July 2013 16:20

Have you ever wanted or tried to delete a saved query from Trail Blazer?  It's ah.... quirky.  But I've got a video that will show you how to do it!

 

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Reminders Added to Call Book Report

by Mark Panger1. July 2013 17:38

The Call Book Report will now printed INCOMPLETE reminders in the log notes area of the report.

To run the Call Book Report:

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Keyboard Shortcut to Toggle Open Windows

by Mark Panger28. June 2013 09:31

Someone asked via the comments box: Is there a keyboard shortcut for switching between open windows? 

Yes:   Ctrl-Tab

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Search by Committee ID

by Mark Panger28. June 2013 08:04

Someone asked via the comments box: Can you search for PACs by FEC ID? 

Yes.  It's not a built in search so you will need to use the SQL tab.

Enter the following:

EntityFilerID='Cxxxxxxxx'

Be sure to replace the x's with the Committee ID number.

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Emails Campaigns Open More Quickly

by Mark Panger20. June 2013 10:47

If you were experiencing slow opening of existing email campaigns, today's release corrects that.

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Log Notes Print Again In the Call Book

by Mark Panger7. June 2013 16:16

With today's release we have corrected the problem of Log Notes not printing on the Call Book report found in the File menu of the Voter/Donor Search tool strip.

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Who INCREASED Their Giving Over Last Year?

by Mark Panger3. June 2013 14:22

I got this question from a customer over the weekend:

Is there a report that we can run that will tell us donors who have increased their donations calendar year 2013? We would like to check out increased donations from current donors. Thanks

Kathy

Yes, you can do that.  It will require a few extra steps as outlined here.  In my demonstration database I have 961 donors that gave more in 2012 than in 2011:

 

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New Date Control Can Be Used in your Reporting

by Mark Panger6. May 2013 12:39

Looking for reporting of contributions that roll with the calendar date?  In other words a column named This Year means 2013 when the calendar is 2013 and 2014 when the new year rolls in.  This video will show you how to do this.

 

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Do You Import Data?

by Mark Panger6. May 2013 09:35

A new feature has been added to the import of CSV files. Before you can import the file, you must complete the Pre-Import Check.  More information about this check can be found here.

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Check Out the New Date Controls

by Mark Panger3. May 2013 10:35

 

 Go ahead and give em' a spin.  

 

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CC and BC added to Individual Emails Today

by Mark Panger5. April 2013 15:47

Click the CC button within your email:

   

Click the New button:

    

After a moment or two a familiar search panel appears for you to search to add more recipients. Be sure to use the Include checkboxes to turn OFF:

    

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MN SOS Voter List is Updated

by Mark Panger15. March 2013 15:05

Can you believe it?  It's only taken 4 months for the counties to report their results to the SOS.  There is still one county that has not reported.  Email Tom at tschunk.trailblz.com if you need to know who that is (he loves email, so feel free to email him early and often <g>).  

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What We Just Did Today!

by Mark Panger13. March 2013 14:51

A new version has just been released.

 

Attributes and Pivots
 
- Attribute columns have been added to the Pivot's summable fields.  In the picture below I have totalled my membership levels (Gold, Silver, Bronze) by Gender.
 
 
  

Events

We are still working on the Event system to tighten the bolts on it. These were added today:

  - Duplicate event feature.

  - Deletion of order lines, including tickets

  - Search panel on Product list

 
Walk Lists 

Odd/Even criteria has been added to the address search list.  Useful if you want to pull ONLY those addresses on a particular side of the street. 

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