Introduction

This is a list of possible projects (in no particular order) for the Spring 2011 NPSP Developer Sprint (4/27-29/11). These are just suggested projects. Please feel free to develop, discuss or otherwise build any code or project you're interested in exploring as an addition to the NPSP as part of the event. Please contact me directly if you have any questions! -Kevin

Potential Projects List

1. Batch Gift Entry

Introduction

• Currently, there is not an easy way to batch enter gifts. This functionality would allow organizations to easily enter multiple gifts and submit them in batch.

Current State

• Utilizing the Apex Data Loader is currently the only way to provide this functionality

Problems with Current State

• The Data Loader operation for batch opportunity entry is not intuitive for non-technicaly or end-users

Open Issues

Potential Course of Action

• http://www.convio.com/common-ground/videos/batch.html

Implementation Details

• Will be limited to Households or Contacts/Orgs package, which removes the possibility of utilizing relationships/affiliations along with the package

2. Interstitial Opportunity Pages/Wizard

Introduction

• Because a Contact ID is not known until Salesforce automatically adds the OCR to the Opp on insert, we cannot add OCRs for non 1x1 contact household members. This can be solved by created an interstitial new donation page, which then forwards a selected contact ID to the donation for proper household OCR creation and handling.

Current State

• Creating a new opportunity for a non 1x1 contact results in no HH OppContactRoles

Problems with Current State

• This is inconsistent behavior between the two account models

Open Issues

• http://code.google.com/p/npsp/issues/detail?id=201

Potential Course of Action

• With dynamic VF binding, we can now create a VF page to function as a ‘forwarder’ to the opportunity, and override the new button for new donations, w/o restricting the end user to the content defined in the VF page

Implementation Details

• Variations of this exist in various other template, would need to be modeled for both 1x1 and bucket accounts

3. Lead Conversion Improvements

Introduction

• Jason Venable and Evan Callahan created some awesome lead conversion code for the NPSP last year, can we take it to the next level?

Current State

• Creating a new opportunity for a non 1x1 contact results in no HH OppContactRoles
• Lead conversion works but does not allow you to merge to an existing Contact or create an Opportunity upon Lead conversion

Problems with Current State

• This is inconsistent behavior between the two account models

Open Issues

• http://code.google.com/p/npsp/issues/detail?id=237
• http://code.google.com/p/npsp/issues/detail?id=214

Potential Course of Action

• Override standard lead conversion to allow proper handling of bucket or 1x1 contacts, depending on the model

Implementation Details

• Have a VF implementation in C& O. Some matching with existing Households would be a potentially cool feature, but would need to shift to HH package

4. Help & Resources Interface

Introduction

• Creation of a new interface for basic help and issue logging

Current State

• The current ‘About the NPSP’ tab frames in a page from the Foundation website with links to other resources

Problems with Current State

• There’s not a clear area to log bugs, ask questions, or access community resources.

Open Issues

Potential Course of Action

• Continue to utilize some sort of framed dynamic content

provide a more intuitive and accessible interface for bug logging directly to Google Code project via the issue tracker API: http://code.google.com/p/support/wiki/IssueTrackerAPI

• Provide tab-able interface to help/support forums
• Utilize existing sites for feature requests
• Can authenticate via standalone or Oauth, may want standalone to make it easier for end user

Implementation Details

• VF for page
• Google Code API and OAuth for Issue Tracker authentication and posting

5. Update Notifications

Introduction

• We need a way to notifiy end users that a new version of the NPSP or specific packages is available for download.

Current State

• Less than 25% of Contacts & Organizations active users (logged in in the past 30 days) are on 2.x and above of Contacts & Orgs

Problems with Current State

• Continued support of older version adds to the support burden, as well as prevents orgs from utilizing new features and functionality as they’re released

Open Issues

Potential Course of Action

• Provide a way for each package to occasionally (weekly? monthly?) ‘call out’ to an endpoint (the Foundation can provide this) and determine if the current running version is the newest version.
• May need to record the current version as a final var in teh managed package to make querying easier

Implementation Details

• Would need to be implemented for each package seperately, but the mechanism and notification process should be identitical
• Pushable to existing orgs?
• Should provide notification either in the org itself, or notify admin users via email

6. Multi-directional Relationships-Affiliations

Introduction

• Relationships between a Contact and another Contact are not directional--there is no way to track who referred the other besides using record auto-numbers

Current State

• Relationships are uni-directional, do not understand multifaceted relationships (brother/sister, etc.)

Problems with Current State

• Inflexibility and inability to allow extensive customization and still automate the process

Open Issues

• http://code.google.com/p/npsp/issues/detail?id=173

Potential Course of Action

• Custom setting to define relationship direction? Some other method?

Implementation Details

7. Membership Improvements

Introduction

• You can call out a single opportunity record type as a membership type for seperate donation rollups

Current State

• Membership rollups allow you to assign an opportunity recordtype as a ‘Membership’ type, and then ‘rollup’ that information to contact, account and household records
• Supports ‘Status’ on the Household. Other fields are defined, but not necessarily implemented

Problems with Current State

• Does not allows flexibility in assignment, statuses, etc.

Open Issues

Potential Course of Action

• Expansion to include membership levels, tiers, etc.

Implementation Details

8. User Defined Rollup Expansion

Introduction

• Version 2.1 will introduce user defined rollups for opportunities to households, accounts or contacts over the opportunity contact role.

Current State

• Users can define rollups across the OCR by utilizing the UDR wizard

Problems with Current State

• Does not support filter criteria (rollups for specific record types or criteria)

Open Issues

Potential Course of Action

• Expand the functionality of the existing opportunity rollups and wizard to include a new rollups set utilizing user defined filter criteria

Implementation Details

9. Household Name/Greeting Customization

Introduction

• Version 2.1 will introduce automatic household name and greetings (formal and informal)

Current State

• Household name, formal and informal greeting are created automatically on contact update

Problems with Current State

• Does not allow modifications of the default pattern for household names or greetings

Open Issues

• http://code.google.com/p/npsp/issues/detail?id=3

Potential Course of Action

Implementation Details

10. Custom Validation Error Notification

Introduction

• The majority (33%+) of the errors recorded by NPSP users are related to record updates on objects that have custom validation

Current State

• Apex has to play by the same rules as the rest of us, which means honoring custom validation
• When rollups update records that have user defined custom validation, those updates fail, without warning

Problems with Current State

• Opportunity rollups, household creation, etc., can fail, without sufficient notice as to ‘why’

Open Issues

Potential Course of Action

• Catch all insert/update calls for custom validation exceptions, trigger some sort of notification back to the user of the potential issue.
• A setting for email notification or on screen notification?
• Page warning in custom settings or oppty rollup screen? Not enough?
• Provide userful information to user about how to resolve issue

Implementation Details

11. Recurring Donations Improvements & Recalculations

Introduction

• Recurring donations allow users to create a group of opportunities ‘under’ a common parent object. Sara Chieco wrote some great payments code that has yet to be implemented.

Current State

• Payments are not currently implemented for Recurring Donations

Problems with Current State

• Once the recurring donations object is created, opportunities are not updated or changed with updated to the recurring donations object, or uncollectable donations
• There’s currently no way to pass custom/other values to recurring donations being created
• Payments are not yet implemented

Open Issues

• http://code.google.com/p/npsp/issues/detail?id=208
• http://code.google.com/p/npsp/issues/detail?id=209
• http://code.google.com/p/npsp/issues/detail?id=211

Potential Course of Action

Implementation Details

12. Trigger Toggles

Introduction

• This project would seek to add control over the record triggers in the NPSP for developers

Current State

• Triggers in the NPSP are currently not overridable

Problems with Current State

• Substituting custom functionality for the NPSP standard functionality is very difficult (impossible?)

Open Issues

Potential Course of Action

• Allow triggers to be turned off/on via custom settings.
• MUST be locked down to prevent accidental changes

Implementation Details