Here is a summary of new features in the Batch Gift Entry tool release of November 2018. Some features require an update of the Batch Gift Entry package to version 1.7 or later. You can install the most current version from our AppExchange listing.
Identifying the Donor record of a Batch Item #
Two new fields, Donor Account and Donor Contact, have been added to the Batch Item object. These fields are automatically updated by the Batch tool when a Batch Item is created. For details on how this works, please see this link. These fields are available in version 1.7 of the Batch Gift Entry package.
Adding Opportunity Product records #
When creating a new Batch Item, you can now elect to display a panel for showing related Opportunity Product records, and add records into that object when committing the Batch. This can be useful if your organization tracks Opportunity Product records as part of the Gift, e.g., for tracking ticket sales.
You can set the visibility of this panel via the Batch Gift Entry configuration popup.
Selecting the columns shown in the Batch Item child tab #
You can now use the Set Columns button in the child tab to select the columns of the Batch Item that you want to show. This can be particularly useful in conjunction with the Donor identification fields described above. For instance, you can show the Donor Contact field, as well as the Donor Contact’s Account field (because you can include parent object fields in the grid) in the child tab. With this in place, you can tell in one glance exactly which donors gave gifts in a particular batch.
Partially committed batches #
If there is an error during the commit process of a batch, the batch’s status will now be set to Partially Committed, and the “Retry Commit” button will be available in its detail area. This makes it easier to quickly identify incomplete batches.
The Middle Name field in Contact lookups #
Salesforce SOQL has incomplete support for the Middle Name field, and this causes queries that include that field to produce no results. So in essence, you cannot search by names that include the middle name. This code update includes a way to omit the middle name part of the search string, by matching just the first and last name parts, so that Contact records can be retrieved more reliably.
