Dear Website Service Users,
One of the unique things about RescueGroups.org is how we are able to implement user suggestions in a very short amount of time. We are planning to release a group of updates to our website service later this month!
We have a list of things we'd like to do, but we need to know what enhancements would provide the most value to you and your pets. Although we're happy to make a note of your new feature and new service ideas, we're really interested in enhancing the features we currently have -- for example, adding the option to set page backgrounds per web page, or being able to use HTML in success stories, events, memorials, etc.
So, what's most important to you right now? Even if we don't implement your ideas right away, we'll add them to our TODO list for later! You can either email us at info@rescuegroups.org or post a message on this blog. We'll contact you if we have any questions regarding your suggestion.
Thank you for your time and support.
RescueGroups.org
By Cheryl December 4, 2009 - 12:13 AM
We REALLY want the html available on the Event page! We’re having to list our events on the event page, and refer people to other pages with the flyers for the event.
By Bob Donham December 4, 2009 - 2:17 AM
OH OH OH!!! Please! The option to set different backgrounds for per web page!!!! And being able to use HTML per above. If I could just copy and paste HTML from a webpage I had designeed in Front page or Word (including a custom background) I would be one happy old retired accountant turned rescuer and webpage developer! Heck, I went a took a class to learn about HTML…Now I want to use it!
Can I have this new feature by Saturday!!!???
Thank you for all that you do for our Rescue groups.
PAWS UP….TAILS WAGGING
Bob Donham, Vice Pres
Dakota Dachshund Rescue
By Brenda December 4, 2009 - 3:20 AM
Hello All,
I want to first say how much we love our website. It has so many wonderful features. So any suggestions are just to add icing to a really great cake.
I would love to be able to customize the website more. We have done a lot already and get nothing but complements but it would be great to do more. Not very specific suggestion but I trust you know what I mean. The functionality ROCKS.
Since we have been using it actively, the things we would like to have would be the ability to print a contact from the information that we have entered. Example, when we do an adoption we would like to have the persons information be inserted in the fields that print out on our contract. I hope that makes since. Enter, print, sign, print a copy for them and away we go.
Next thing would be a microchip search field. I know we can do it under reports but being able to just type in a microchip number and up pops the animal would just be great. Perhaps you can add it to the search field that searches by ID or Name.
Newsletter ability would also be awesome.
A mailing label function would be super helpful. So that you can print out mailing labels by the relationship. Adopter, member, and so on. The ability to print out labels for new adopters would be wonderful for thank you cards and such.
Also something like mass email ability.
We would also like to be able to do email invitations to events. We plan to do a family reunion of a littler of 10 puppies and would like to go in and post that event and pick specific adaptors to send the invitations to.
Ok so I know; we are asking for a lot, again I think your program is great and we brag about it all the time. These might even be things it already does and I just have not figured it out yet. I have only been using it for about 4 months now. If so can you instruct me how.
Thank you again,
Brenda Mitchell
www. Animalcompassionteam.com
By Harold Weiss December 4, 2009 - 8:32 PM
Brenda,
I think you can do mass emails through “Campaigns”. I haven’t explored the option fully but it looks like you can send some simple emails to groups of people.
By Bob Donham December 11, 2009 - 6:21 PM
Brenda
Suggestion on your Newsletter question; since I have a feeling that this enhancement could be awhile down the pike.
You or your Newletter Editor Volunteer could do is create the newletter in MS Word, Publisher or even Windows Live. Once done, then scan and upload to the website as either a doc. or jpeg file. Did you want to just display it on the website or do an emailing with attachment? Just displaying on the website would be easy by just creating a new webpage and menu item called “Newletter” or?? And there you are.
Hope this helps.
By Michelle Peters Spivack January 19, 2010 - 3:03 PM
Brenda,
You can do this via the campaigns feature. However, it is limited-plain text only. You assign contacts categories-volunteers, donors, adopters etc. then you can choose who will receive that email. However, if a person is assigned multiple categories–they will receive the email based on each category–something to keep in mind.
It’s been a great way to make sure people know when a pdf of our newsletter is online and to let them know when the next fundraiser is happening.
-Michelle
By Lynn K December 4, 2009 - 11:14 AM
We would love to have forums on our site. We need these for board member discussions so we can get away from the endless emails and someone always getting left out!
We love our new website even though we are still learning how to use it!
Lynn K
By Lara December 4, 2009 - 2:10 PM
I would like to have HTML editing available for all of the pages… But even more so I would REALLY like to have the HTML formatting saved. Right now if you go in and edit the html, once you save it jumbles it back into one long paragraph which is a pain to find stuff in. I understand that not everyone uses html, but I would really really find it helpful if there was any way that paragraph structure could be saved.
How about being able to write your own html for page layouts too? So we could create our own page format template to apply.
I would also like to be able to get to the html code for other areas (like the site menu bars).
Thank you!
By Larry December 12, 2009 - 11:09 PM
Lara, I agree 100% with you here. I would also like to have access to HTML in every page, section of our site, and the menu’s. That would be great.
By Harold Weiss December 4, 2009 - 8:28 PM
Group Roles. Every time I have to add a new foster I have to add about a dozen individual roles to their profile. I want to add a new foster to the foster group and they inherit all the roles assigned to that group.
Better instructions on the roles. The new management interface doesn’t have (or I haven’t found it yet) help on the roles like the old interface did.
By Kathy December 4, 2009 - 8:45 PM
Thanks so much for everything you already do! We love using RescueGroups pet portal and now with the PetFinder Sync tool, it is great to not make 2 updates anymore.
Something we would like to see is when adding relationships for animals, i.e. siblings, if I enter that Cat A is a sibling to Cat B, Cat C and Cat D, it would be awesome if it could auto-populate those relationships to all 4 cats instead of needing to enter them separately. So it would auto populate that Cat C and Cat D are siblings, just by entering Cat A is a sibling to both of them. Also, parent relationships to children. we had a litter of 11 kittens this year so it took a while to get them all linked up!
Thanks!!
By Harold Weiss December 5, 2009 - 12:44 AM
Forms are filled out with a default status of “Complete”.
We have feral cat help request forms and when we finally finish trapping their colony we need to change the status to something like “Closed” but there’s no status of closed or anything close.
Normally I would say we would change it to Complete when the request is fulfilled and have the forms come in with a default status of incomplete.
So either add a new status called Closed or allow us to set the default status of any newly submitted form.
By Kathy December 9, 2009 - 7:26 PM
I have a few more thoughts about the Reports section of data management: it would be nice to be able to modify our custom reports without having to recreate the whole report, for example if I decide I want the columns in a different order, I would like to be able to edit the report. I would also like to see more reports with the Excel export functionality, and if there is any way to remove the hard returns from the description field when exporting to excel, that would be great! Otherwise excel merges the other fields and splits the descriptions out onto multiple lines. This makes sorting and filtering impossible without a lot of clean up first. Also, when adding report criteria, it would be nice to see a drop-down for the field values for fields that are drop-downs when adding an animal, i.e. the Status field choices. Thanks for your consideration of the ideas!
By Larry December 12, 2009 - 11:18 PM
One feature I would love to see is FTP. I realize why Rescue Groups is set up the way they are, which is perfect for rescues that do not have web savvy people, as far as using HTML and or JavaScript.
Right now we are working on a project that requires us to upload one entire folder, and the folder structure needs to stay intact. This project is a Flash page flip book for our 500th rescue. At the moment we will be needing to find a different web host for this project, which is sad because we can’t keep this project on our own site. With FTP access we would be able to do so much more, for instance we could keep this flash page flip book where we want it.
One more request would to have access to insert JavaScript links in the head of some of our web pages. This would really enhance this already excellent service from Rescue Groups.