The SmartSimple Blog

The November upgrade demonstrates our continued focus on improved usability with enhancements designed to offer an even more intuitive user interface. These latest changes have led to visual updates to the look of your system , easier configuration options, greater searching capability, and a new security summary feature. User Experience: Interface Enhancements We’ve done some considerable work to simplify navigation and enhance functionality of the platform to deliver a more intuitive user experience. Specifically, we’ve improved the layout of record pages to make better use of screen real estate. We’ve also focused on making it easier to find the information you need to complete your work easier. Watch the video below for complete details on the new left navigation, application tabs, and profile cards: Security: New System Security Summary Page Quickly access and review the security of your system anytime. This valuable feature will highlight the most importan...

SmartSimple’s 2017 annual conference was the largest in the company’s history With over a hundred of our friends, partners, and colleagues, SmartSimple hosted the first ever ELEVATE conference down in sunny Los Angeles (November 1-2). ELEVATE is a new event that evolved from the previous community conferences that SmartSimple hosted twice a year in Toronto and Chicago. “ELEVATE is a reflection of the ongoing maturation of SmartSimple as a company. We’ve seen some rapid growth over the last few years, and we wanted to deliver a memorable conference experience for our clients, new and old alike,” Says Mike Reid, Co-founder and COO of SmartSimple. From early morning walks on the Venice beach boardwalk to watch the sunrise, to a Lego-inspired collaboration exercise, the conference was high energy from start to finish. Client demos from JDRF and The Coca-Cola Foundation offered attendees a unique chance to see what their peers are doing with their systems, while member...

The current statistics on hunger in the United States tell a very distressing story that should concern everyone currently living in the country: ●      13 million children face hunger in the United States today ●      In 2014, 5.7 million senior citizens - that’s 9% of all seniors in the US - lived with food insecurity, meaning no reliable access to affordable, nutritious food ●      Nearly 3 million rural households live with food insecurity ●      There are 12 states that show significantly higher household food insecurity rates above the national average of 13.7%, including Mississippi (20.8%), Arkansas (19.2%), and Louisiana (18.4%) Considering that the US is one of the top 20 of the richest countries in the world, the number of Americans living with food insecurity may seem surprising. Yet, according to Feeding America , the country’s largest domestic hunger-relief organization,...

Enhancements to user experience have again featured prominently in our August upgrade, as we strive to continually develop a solution that is intuitive and easily accessible to all users. Beyond making the platform more user friendly, we’re happy to introduce our integration with GuideStar Charity Check , a pre-grant due diligence service that provided information on 2.5 million organizations in the U.S. in 2016. Read our highlights below. User Experience New viewing experience for object list views Need to cross-check an individual record? In this upgrade, we’re introducing a split screen layout for list views. This new feature enables users to preview a record without navigating away from the list. On the left, users can quickly scan through the full list view. On the right, you will see details of the selected record which you can view or edit. Simple, intuitive user interface As part of our commitment to making the platform even quicker and easier to use, we’ve made ...

As recently as 1980, measles has been responsible for an estimated 2.6 million deaths each year. That’s almost as many deaths as there are people living in Chicago today. Each August, the National Public Health Information Coalition (NPHIC) celebrates National Immunization Awareness Month , highlighting the benefits and importance of vaccination for people of all ages. NPHIC provides a website and series of downloadable toolkits to help promote vaccination for pregnant women, children of all ages and adults. While vaccination of children has been controversial of late, there’s little doubt that the development of vaccines and immunization programs have significantly improved life expectancy around the world. According to the World Health Organization (WHO ), immunization prevents illness, disability, and death from vaccine-preventable diseases, and currently prevents approximately 2 to 3 million deaths every single year. The ongoing development of new vaccin...

73 million young people around the world between the ages of 16 - 24 were unemployed in 2016 . That makes them three times more likely than adults to be out of work. The problem really hits home when you consider that it means   20 million Americans are currently not working who could be. So what is being done to reverse this trend? With events taking place all over the world this coming July 15 to commemorate Work Youth Skills Day , it’s good to know there are organizations tackling this important issue, getting to the root causes and finding ways to increase the number of opportunities available for youth everywhere. The Helios Education Foundation is one such organization, taking the initiative to provide grants and form strategic partnerships with communities across Arizona and Florida. Helios strives to provide the resources needed to ensure everyone has access to the education needed to build the skills that will improve their chances of achieving gainful...

This month, SmartSimple landed its first client in Australia, as part of a broader expansion plan to grow our presence in Asia-Pacific (APAC). In Australia, SmartSimple will offer process automation solutions to a government-backed agency in New South Wales (NSW) who lead on a strategic Government-backed economic development initiative.   NSW is Australia’s startup capital, with nearly half of startup businesses calling Sydney home. “Australia is a priority growth market, and having our first client here establishes SmartSimple as a truly global provider of software solutions,” said Michael Reid, Co-Founder of SmartSimple. “We anticipate significant growth through our ability to offer comprehensive, dedicated solutions to new clients, and our commitment to host data in the jurisdiction of the client through our partnerships with AWS (Amazon Web Services). Importantly, our presence in APAC will complement and connect the ongoing development of our global Par...

Usability has been at the forefront of this upgrade. As part of our commitment to making the platform even quicker and easier to use, we’ve significantly cut down the time it takes to configure and make changes to your system. For end users, we’ve continued our priority focus on improving user experience on both desktop and mobile devices. User Experience Enhanced Settings pages With system administrators in mind, we’ve enhanced navigation on the ‘Settings’ pages so that choices are clearer and it’s easier to find exactly what you’re looking for. Here’s what you’ll notice: Need a particular setting? We’ve added a search function to the top right corner;  Some menu options are reorganized and renamed - so finding what you need is straightforward; Lesser used settings are out of the way in the ‘Classic Options’ tab: Layout and navigation of a number of pages has been revamped for ease of use. Better usability for mobile device...

Predictive analytics is used to calculate your insurance rates. It even tells retailers how to design their stores. Whether you realize it or not, the uses for predictive analytics aren’t only expanding but becoming more and more ingrained in our daily lives. The world of grants management is no different. Tim Daciuk, Director, Data Analytics at SmartSimple What is Predictive Analytics? The term “predictive analytics” means different things to different people depending on the context. So what does it mean for grantmakers? Basically, predictive analytics takes historical information and combines it with data science and math to comment on future events. For granters, that makes it the ideal tool to leverage in order to increase the impact of funding and improve outcomes. How? By using prediction and segmentation . Prediction Forecasting outcomes is an important part of what predictive analytics does. By looking at your past granting activities, it can help you ma...

Our Development team has been busy upgrading our platform so that our users have access to even more enhancements and new features. Our first upgrade of 2017 sees us focusing heavily on the continued evolution of the platform user interface (UI). We’ve made a number of changes to the List and Object Views that will improve usability, and make it easier and more intuitive to navigate. We’ve also released the next series of enhancements to our exciting new Media Library feature, and added to our platform’s Data Exchange functionality with OData support. User Interface (UI) Enhancements Clean List Views and Object Views We’ve applied a simpler, cleaner look to the List and Object Views to help make navigation more efficient and effective. For those who work in the platform regularly, the first thing you’ll notice is that we’ve shifted a couple of buttons and menus over to the right side of the screen. The Search bar, is now on the right of the screen while the View menu is u...