[odb-help] 0.9.3 Update; ODB in 28 states; Customization Question

[Rich Cowan]

Three updates for ODB users:

1) If anyone had any difficulty downloading ODB today, that was because
we had a disk quota issue on the server where the download resides.
No problem, this is now resolved, you may download freely!

Also, there were some glitches in the initial 0.9.3 release: the ones that
were noticeable are in the release notes.  Only one was very noticeable:
a version of ODB that had no working "import" button was on our web site
for a short time (10 people downloaded it).

All of these issues are now fixed.


2) I asked if there was anyone out there using ODB in states where we
had no record of an ODB user.  We had two additional states identify
themselves:  one user in Oregon, and another in Colorado, plus one user
in Ontario, Canada


3) Below is a question from one of the new ODB users, on how to
set up ODB so that it does not assign expiration dates:


Hi,

I'm a volunteer with a new non-profit foundation that is setting up
a donor database.  We really like ODB, it's easy to use and the
documentation is great!  We are interested in using ODB as a donor
database but not in assigning membership expiration dates - can you
advise on how to set up this new customization option?  I'd like to
do this before we start to enter data.

Thanks,

Bruce Stermer
Rivers Foundation of the Americas
Portland, Oregon



RESPONSE:

If you do not want expiration dates you can use the "MemberCategories" feature
to list the donation codes that should increment the membership.  If you go
into the "Wrench", and click on "Modify Settings", you will see this.  By 
default,
the setting is blank.  If you put an "X" in it, it will turn off assignment of
expiration dates (except for the 'X' donation code, if you have that).

Then, if you want to completely hide the membership expiration field, you
can put the following into the ODB setting for "HidePeopleControls":

txtmemexpire   lblmemexpire

If you want to hide "txtjoined" and "lbljoined" you can do that as well using:

txtmemexpire lblmemexpire txtjoined  lbljoined


The ODBsetting for HideSearchControls should have the same value, in
this case, as HidePeopleControls.