Here are the improvement, new features, and fixes contained in
version 0.9.5 of ODB. Click here
for the latest release notes, covering 0.9.6 and beyond.
Version 0.9.5b is a minor release that took care of a few small
issues with 0.9.5a. Released on October 27, 2004, updated on
November 8 due to fix one additional bug in "groups" printing.
New Features
a) When Printing out listings with "breaks" in them, it is now
possible to have the "breaks" appear when the list is sorted by
the street name or by the city. (10/22)
b) Added a setting "appealinfolabel" which allows you to
customize the label that appears when the "showappealinfo"
setting in ODB is turned on. AppealInfo is an optional
field that appears in the "Add Gift" window. (10/26)
Minor Glitches Fixed
a) If you install ODB, then move the location of your database,
then select the option to run the setup wizard when you open
ODB, ODB does not show the proper location for templates and
thus errors will occur when trying to create a new ODB
database. Workaround: delete the file
c:\program files\oc\odbsetup.dat before you try to create a
new ODB database. (10/22)
b) The USPS changed the results page for zip code searches, so
we updated ODB's USPS zip code lookup feature to reflect this.
(10/26)
c) The feature for printing details on records in "Groups" mode
was not working; and may never had worked. Thanks to Ellen Hayes
for notifying us of this issue. (11/8)
d) When you ran ODB from the development environment it was
not filling in one of the import fields properly. This issue
was not affecting ODB users, but it was fixed anyway. (11/9)
Major Bugs
a) Exporting "all possible fields" was causing ODB to quit in
newer ODB databases. ODB was trying to export the nonexistent
"voter" field (should have been "vreg"). (10/22)
b) The routine handling some import errors was not working. If you
modified the ODB database structure in Access, it could cause
ODB to quit unexpectedly (saying it executed a "stop statement")
instead of giving an informative error message. (10/22)
Version 0.9.5a is a major maintence release. It includes a
new user manual, and new spanish translation files. It allows
for the creation of "kits" focusing on specific areas of activism.
It adds some powerful features for manipulating codes, and
allows you to save SRC codes as part of a template. A key
diagnostic feature was added: the ability to print out a "tip
sheet" about your ODB setup. The user manual was extensively
revised. An important electoral feature was added allowing you
to attach a "lookup file" of voters to your ODB database for
much faster data entry. Thanks to a user we noticed that importing
of CSV files was broken and we restored it back to working again.
We also provided a way by which all duplicate checking can be
turned off during import, to allow larger files to be imported
more quickly. Finally ODB files can now be linked to external
voter files; to access this feature you need to run the new 0.9.5a
Update utility, also made available today.
Released: September 29, 2004. Re-Released on October 7, after
we discovered that thank you printing still needed a fix.
New Features
a) Added a key customization feature to ODB that allows you to move
codes around more easily. Not only can you take an activity code
and "archive" it to a SRC code (0.9.5 feature); you can also do
the reverse. You can take that SRC code and copy it back to an
Activity, Issue, or Constituency code. To use the feature, you:
- Enable Code Changes
- Bring up any SRC window
- Right-click on the code you want to transfer. This
brings up a menu with 3 new options to copy the SRC
code to an activity, constituency, or issue code.
- After you move the code you must remove the SRC code manually
if you don't want it any more.
Note that at the present time this capability only works with
People records; Group records cannot have SRC codes (6/23). Note:
a major bug was found in this feature and fixed on 7/30.
Note: a minor bug was found on 8/17 and fixed; also we noticed that
archiving codes would crash ODB if there were no records in the
database, this was also fixed, on 9/3. Also we noticed that
after you archive a code there was no redraw, fixed on 7/5.
b) This feature in a) was extended to allow a SRC code to be
'merged into' an issue, activity, or consitituency code (7/30).
When you try to copy a SRC code to an existing activity
code in code changes mode, ODB will no longer force you to
choose a new code. If you chose an existing one, you will
be presented with the merge option. (8/5)
c) The main menu display was extended to show the ID of records
when the window is widened. (7/30)
d) The Spanish translation file for ODB was completely redone,
and now we have translated "tooltips" in addition to the
button, label, and menu text. (8/5)
e) When you save a template, ODB will now save and load SRCcode
definitions as part of the template. (8/11)
f) The SRC code (event code) feature of ODB will now be enabled
by default. (8/11)
g) The capability for ODB to load up with a subset of templates
was added. (8/12)
h) Ability to print out "setup information" added to ODB. ODB
will ask if you want to print the information at the end of
the setup wizard. (8/18)
i) Updates to all the templates that ship with ODB. (8/19)
j) The gender field was widened to accept
two characters.(8/19)
k) Additional generic templates were created that reflect
common configurations of ODB. (9/25)
l) Implemented new feature for setting up categories which
trigger ODB "trial memberships". So if attending an event
automatically gives people a trial membership for a few
months you can automate this. The new settings are
"limitedextensionduration" and "limitedextensioncategories";
set the first to the # of months for the trial membership, and
the second to the categories which should trigger a trial
membership. Note: this feature should be used carefully, as
categories that are "limitedextension" categories will not
be able to be used to trigger a normal membership. (9/6)
m) A new feature called "autofetch" was added to ODB.
Using autofetch you can have two databases, one for a
huge "voter file" or master ODB file, and one for your
working file.
You fill the autofetchdb setting with the name of the
voter file, that's it. ODB will then automatically
prompt you when you enter a new record to indicate
whether you want to pick a matching person from your
voter file. To see the choices, you have to enter a
combination of the fields first name, last name, street
number, street name, or zip code. Then you click the
automatch button to see names that could be brought over
from the bigger "voter file."
If you turn the setting autofetchalways to true, ODB
will be more intrusive, always prompting you on a match
with new records and allowing you to replace existing
info with new data from the voter file (you are provided
with some date information so you can judge the accuracy
of the data). (9/6)
n) 16 pages were added to the user manual, including graphics.
The new user manual is much more user friendly, and
reflects lots of work by the OC staff and interns. (9/8)
o) Improved ODB's behavior when importing large files. Now
you can elect to turn all duplicate checking off, which
should improve import speed by a factor of 2-3. (9/8)
j) The party field was widened to accept three
characters.(8/19)
k) The printing menu was expanded, so that a custom header
may appear at the top of each report. If you turn this
option on, the SQL query will appear and you can change
it to any text you want, for the first four ODB printing
formats (listings). (9/20)
l) Added capability to indicate places where sort keys
change. This is useful for printouts sorted by fields
that have a limited number of possible values... currently
ODB is set up to do this when your data is sorted by any of
the following fields (as the first sort key):
ward Pct cd hd sd vreg voter
state zip region askamount nospam zip (9/21)
m) Made ODB automatically adjust the field size for the small
fields to correspond with the size that is in the database.
Fields are CD, HD, Ward, Pct, SD, vreg, and party. (9/28)
o) Added graphics and 10 pages to the user manual, including
a new customization survey and truth in advertising statement
(9/28).
Minor Glitches Fixed
a) If you did a search by ID number with exactly five digits, as
in searches from the main menu for '#12345' or '$12345', ODB
would interpret the number as a zip code rather than
as an ID number. This affected people and groups (6/22).
b) There still were some circumstances under which you would
get a message saying you could not create a new ODB database
in the location where the program was installed -- even if you
were not trying to do that. (6/23)
c) In some builds of ODB, modifying a code description would not
let you start from the existing description, you would have
to type the whole thing. (7/30)
d) Version 0.9.5 of ODB was opening to a larger screen by default,
which was not intended... (7/30).
e) If you tried to delete someone's only donation after you
erased their "joined" date in the people view screen, and
you then clicked on the "save and view payments" button, ODB
would quit with a "runtime error". (8/5).
f) The language localization routines were not reading in any
strings with a double quote (") in them. For now this issue
was resolved by changing the strings to single quotes ('). (8/12)
g) About 20 different labels and fields were widened to make
more room for non-English translations of ODB. A few missing
or incomplete tooltips were added. (8/12)
h) The backup routine of ODB was using the Program Files\OC
folder as a temporary folder to speed the compaction process,
for people who kept their database on the network. This would
fail if the Program Files folder was protected. The location
is now changed to the user's "Temp" folder. This is usually:
C:\Documents and Settings\\Local Settings\Temp (8/12)
i) Additional space added for the date of birth field in the people
entry area. (8/18)
j) The "Date of Birth" field was using an improper import code
(-10 instead of -11), thus it was not imported properly. Also,
data like "01152004" for a date was not recognized. Now, ODB
will recognize this as january 14, 2004 when importing. (8/18)
k) The change listed in h) was not working because ODB was not
automatically creating a "backup" folder in the user's. Now
ODB will do this automatically. (8/24)
l) If you were using the membercategories feature in ODB to
set some categories to advance someone's membership, it was
filling in a "joined" date even in cases where the gift was
not in one of the "member categories." (8/24)
m) When you deleted a person from ODB, that person's SRC
codes would be left, stranded, in the database (taking
up extra disk space, but otherwise not a problem). (8/25)
n) The "2 line listing" (voter list) printout was a bit too
long... (8/27).
o) When loading in a query definition, ODB was appearing to
include the sort order information, but actually was ignoring
the new sort order when you clicked the Search button (9/21).
q) Exporting data in CSV format was not working; it was
generating a file with headers only (9/21).
r) The limit of characters you could enter into the Precinct
field in the Groups screen was supposed to be set according
to the size of the field in the Groups table... by mistake
ODB was using the size of this field to determine the #
of characters you could enter into the People screen. (9/28)
s) This change did not make it into the 9/29 release, but was
added on 10/4. ODB was warning the user if they upgraded ODB
and the user was not using ODB in a standard location. The
problem was that the warning was coming up even if the user
did have ODB in a standard location, making the warning
somewhat confusing. (9/30)
Usability Enhancements
a) Clearer prompts for the "Load Language File" option on the
Admin screen (8/13)
b) If you try to create a new ODB database on top of an existing
one that is open, ODB was giving a confusing error message. Now
the message is clear (8/17).
c) Made it possible to easily save ODB templates to any location,
instead of just to the current "Templates" folder. (8/17)
d) During the backup operation ODB was not displaying an hourglass
to indicate the operation might take a while. (8/24)
e) When you pasted a 9-digit zip code into the zip code field,
if there was a leading carriage return nothing was happening.
Now ODB will intelligently strip off this carriage return (8/25).
f) Improved the dialogue that appears when you import with
one-by-one duplicate checking turned off. (9/10)
g) When saving a language file, if one of the forms has not been
opened ODB will now allow you to continue saving the language
information for the rest of the forms. (9/21)
h) If one line in a template is bad, ODB will let you skip
over it rather than aborting the loading of the template (9/24)
Major Bugs Fixed
a) Thank you note printing was re-implemented completely. The
new implementation more permissive in the setting up of
the thankyous and will give better error messages. Going with
the general design of ODB, the system will first look in the
location where the ODB database resides for the thank yous.
If there are no thankyou notes there, ODB will look in your
local ODB program folder. The option "use category default"
will be shown if you have defined "thankyoudefs"
in the ODB settings. Thankyoudefs are used to associate a
ledger code with a text file that contains the thank you
note text. (6/24) Turns out that this reimplentation
broke the capabilty to print thank you notes without
using "use category default". So this was fixe on 10/7.
b) Major bug affecting 0.9.4 and 0.9.5 resolved. The import
CSV file option in ODB was completely broken... and we did
not notice it until now. All the files you imported were
treated as tab separated even if you specified comma separated.
Thanks to Jeff Miles of Huntsville, AL for giving us the
information we needed to find and fix the problem (8/19).
c) SRC code importing was broken; there were occasions where
not all the info would be imported into the SRC area, or where
information would be imported erroneously (8/25) Also, ODB
was adding an additional spurious entry into the "SRClink"
table under certain circumstances.
d) The SRC code updating problem we had in December 2003 was
still an issue: if you created a SRC code that contains another
SRC code, ODB would check off the shorter code whenever you
turned on the longer code, and ODB would fail to remove
the shorter code if you tried to uncheck it. This should
now be fixed at last (9/13).
Version 0.9.5 was a major ODB release. It rounded out all
of ODB's basic capabilities. We expect 0.9.5 to be the most commonly
used release from May to November of 2004. The most significant
improvements are: enhancements to the donation search and report
functions, the ability to "archive" tracking codes, the ability to save
sort order with a query, the ability to enlarge the main menu window,
better detection and resolution of issues where a PC lacks database
support, improvements in the uninstallation routine, and the ability
to print out a report on the donation data you entered today to make
it easier to prepare bank deposits.
Released on May 14; rereleased on May 20, final release May 26, 2004.
New Features
a) Added the ability to do donation searches on multiple categories
at once! There is no longer a pull down menu for category in the
Record Selection Tool; it is a pop-up checkbox window now. ^
b) Added a "deposit report" to show what was deposited today, grouped
by category.
c) Added a "code move" capability so that you can move any Act, Iss,
or Cons code to a SRC code. The reason for this is so that you
can easily "archive codes" and then make room for more codes. (1/25)
d) Added the ability to alter the date that is associated with a
SRC code. This is a right-click option in "code changes" mode.(1/25)
e) Added the ability to save sort order within a saved query. This
alters the format of saved queries slightly, but it is backward
compatible with the old format. (1/25)
f) Add the ability to set ODB to automatically give everyone a
trial membership based on entering new data, or certain kinds
of payments. (2/25)
g) Now the "nospam" checkbox will cause "nospam" to appear when you
view a record in the preview pane (2/17).
h) If you select a record in the main menu area of ODB and press the
enter key, the selected record will open up (4/12). ^
i) The voter registration field was added to the Select Records screen,
replacing the obsolete "voter" checkbox (4/14).
j) Added the ability to resize the main menu window (5/7). Also, ODB
will remember the window size in between invocations of the software
(5/11).
k) Provided ability to access the last query (lastquery.txt) in the
folder where the ODB database is located. This is an enhancement
to enable developers to do more sophisticated external reporting. (5/7)
Modified this on 5/19 to also save the results of main menu searches
to this file.
l) When you make the main menu wide enough, you will now see a
see a button to modify SRC codes for the selected record (in
Details mode for People only). (5/12)
m) Searching without typing anything in the search box is now equivalent
to "Select All" (5/17)
o) Extended the capability for ODB to create and read language files
that translate the non-changing text on all forms and buttons. (5/17)
Also added a preliminary translation of buttons into Portuguese.
(5/26)
p) Major revision to the user guide to bring everything up to date
(5/15).
XP/2000 Compatibility Enhancements (5/7 & 5/20)
a) There is now more control over the location of the backup
folder. Some users were operating on computers that were locked
down, and they could not save to c:\program files\backup. So now,
if there is a folder called backup in the same location as your
ODB database, the backups will take place in that folder instead.
ODB will attempt to create this folder automatically if the
program files backup fails.
b) There is now more control over the location of the queries
folder. Some users were operating on computers that were locked
down, and they could not save to c:\program files\queries. So
now, if there is a folder called queries in the same location as
your ODB database, the queries will be saved in that folder
instead.
c) There is now more control over the location of the importspecs
folder. Some users were operating on computers that were locked
down, and they could not save to c:\program files\importspecs.
So now, if there is a folder called imports in the same location
as your ODB database, the import specifications will be saved in
that folder instead.
d) There is now more control over the location of the templates
folder. Some some users were operating on computers that were
locked down, and they could not save to c:\program
files\templates. So now, if this folder is locked down, you will
be given an option to save the templates in a folder called
templates in the same location as your ODB database.
e) The default folder for creating a new database on Windows XP/2000
is now: c:\documents and settings\all users\odb databases
instead of c:\my documents\odb databases (the default for Win98/Me).
Minor Glitches Fixed
a) Addresses like "37th & O" were not showing up properly, the field
for the Line2 was set up to provide keyboard shortcuts and thus
the & character was treated as an indication of a keyboard shortcut,
or "mnemonic". This is no longer the case, removed the designation
for this and city/state/zip and phone and web site.
b) When you modify a SRC code description and make it too long ODB
shuts down. This is now corrected. (Note that a related issue,
a shutdown when you were adding a new SRC code that was too long,
was fixed in the previous ODB release.) ^
c) The window when you add a new code was resizable, and it should
have been "fixed" size. This is a minor cosmetic thing. ^
d) ODB was treating the address "37th & O" as if 37 was the street
number and "th" was the street name, and offering to split it
into the two fields. Now ODB will leave it alone.
e) When you are doing a search, ODB was limiting the number of
boxes you could check for the various tracking codes. This
limitation did not make any sense, so it was removed. ^
f) When you went in to modify an existing donation, ODB was updating
the gift entry date. This was confusing, because it would
lead to older donations showing up in thankyou note searches.
The behavior of ODB was modified so that the initial entrydate
of a donation will remain unchanged. (You can still delete
and reenter a donation if you need to update the entry date
to today) The entrydate provides a way so that people can
more easily find the gifts they need to acknowledge. Thanks
to Liat Wexler for noticing this behavior.
g) Extra space added before "no $ calls" in main menu display.
h) In the new "Ezcut" procedure for printing donations slips, there
as an error message printing the last slip if the number of slips
was one less than a multiple of 3.
i) If the user entered date into the "joined" field that was
not a date ODB would unexpectedly quit. ^
j) In 0.9.4a only, the extended import would include school district
as an optional import field even if the user's ODB database did
not yet include this field. This could cause import problems,
especially in files with lots of blank columns after the columns
with real data.
k) Fixed the printing problem on inkjet printers, and on any
output device with nonstandard margins, such as a PDF file
(which has no "unprintable area"). (2/5)
l) When you were in one of the code windows and switched to another
software program and then back to ODB, all changes would be
erased. This was not affecting SRC and VID windows. (1/28)
m) Fixed a bug introduced on january 2 where if you edited a
payment and it was the only non-donation payment in ODB,
ODB would crash (2/12).
n) The main menu search was assuming that if you put St. Nick
in as the name, you were trying to search for an email address.
ODB will now assume you are doing a name search. (4/12)
o) If you tried to print a thank you note ODB would fail to
print the first name on the letter, if you had both the
"usetitle" and "usesuffix" options turned on. (4/27) Also,
if you were using the new "GiftCategories" ODB setting, which
filters out thank you notes which are associated with non-gift
payments, ODB would report errors and fail to complete the task.
This behavior should be fixed, with the release dated 5/19/04.
p) The ODB installer will now offer to do a more thorough
"clean-up". I.e. it will offer to remove the entire folder
where ODB was installed, including the zip code file, the
old backups, etc. The installer will also be accessible
via the Add/Remove programs Control Panel. (5/10)
q) A duplicate warning of a large search result was removed (5/15).
r) An 'overflow' error when using the shift-F10 accessibility function
on the search results in the Main Menu was fixed (5/15).
s) When you paste in a 9 digit zip code ODB was not accepting the
full zip code if there was a space at the beginning or end. Now
it should work (but only if the zip code file is installed, which
is still not the best behavior) (5/17).
t) If you entered two gifts for the same person on the same day, and
the second one was the more significant gift, ODB should have been
updating the "lastgift" amount to the larger of the two gifts. (5/19)
Usability Enhancements
a) The message that you get when there are no SRC codes now
says that you can change this from two different places; before
it only gave one option (go to import screen). ^
b) When you paste in an email address that looks like this:
<joe@domain.com> ODB will automatically strip off the
'<' and '>' characters for you. This is an addition to stripping
of 'Mailto:' which was previously implemented. ^
c) All 1 and 2-character code windows are slightly wider, and ODB
will now prevent you from typing in more than the maximum number
of characters in any type of code. Before ODB was truncating
the info. (1/25)
d) The SRC code window is now also wider. (1/27)
e) When you delete any kind of code, ODB will now ask you to
confirm the operation. (1/25) ^
f) Improvements in the new thank you note feature, for usability (2/1)
g) There is finer control over exporting: you can determine the records
you want to export by right-clicking on the Export Records button.
Turning on 'enable code changes' no longer affects how many fields
are exported. (5/13)
h) When ODB detects that a computer does not have database
support, it provides much more informative error messages
than before, and even offers to download and run the database
support installer for you. If you click no to indicate that you
do not want ODB to download the installer, or if the download
of the installer fails, ODB will go to the support web page
where additional information is provided. (5/14)
i) A new database support installer that can fit on a single 3.5"
diskette was developed and is available on the database driver
support page (odbsupport.html). (5/14)
j) It is now easier to Select All records; just click the Search
button in the main menu with nothing in the search box. (5/15)
k) Error reporting was improved for two situations: when the
user tries to open up an Access2000 format file, and for
when the database backup procedure fails. (5/17)
l) ODB will now prevent you from creating a new database in the
same location where you installed the program. This is to
prevent people from later uninstalling the software and in
the process, deleting their database. (5/17) Note: this
feature was erroneously set up to test file locations when
you were trying to connect to an existing database, and in
the process it was generating "false positives". This was
fixed. (5/26)
m) The error message when your donation search retrieves more
records than the "result limit" setting was improved so that
people know they can change the limit. (5/16)
o) The precedence for looking up thank you notes in ODB was
changed. Previously ODB would look in the program files\oc
folder first; now ODB will ignore any thank you note
definitions in program files if there are definitions in
the "mergetext" folder located in the same folder as your
database file. (5/19)
Major Bugs Fixed
a) The Import and copy emails routines were removing Hyphens and
apostrophes (') and accented characters from imported names.
ODB will now leave in these characters.
b) Importing was getting interrupted if you set ODB to automatically
separate names into last and first name during import, and your
data contained a last name longer than 20 characters. Now any
extra characters will be truncated, as they should be.
c) The first donation entered into ODB for a person should determine
that person's "askamount". However, this was not working if the
donation was lower than ODB's "default dues" setting. ODB was
leaving the askamount field alone, instead of lowering it to
the amount of the first gift.
d) When you had more than 94 SRC codes, ODB would quit every time
you went into went into the SRC code area. This is now fixed;
there should not be any limit. (3/4)
Questions? Please send an email to oc2006 oc-tech.org.