The SmartSimple Blog

It’s officially spring, and that means the SmartSimple Spring Community Conference 2016 is only a few weeks away. SmartSimple community conferences offer a unique experience for both clients and the SmartSimple team to come together for a day of engaging conversation, learning opportunities and networking with peers in your industry. Gain insights from other SmartSimple users, share ideas for enhancements and meet your peers from across the United States and Canada. Get On the Right Track Based on your feedback, we decided to expand this year’s conference to include more targeted sessions and client participation. In addition to adding more ways to get to know other SmartSimple clients, we’ve expanded the scope of topics, increased the number of sessions and created two SmartSimple user tracks . General User Track Industry-specific sessions for system best practices and usage This user track will be broken down into industry-specific sessions for non-developers and IT...

Each year, The British Academy for the Humanities and Social Sciences holds a series of conferences in London, England. These conferences provide opportunities for leading and emerging scholars to discuss innovative themes in the humanities and social sciences with significant academic impact. Earlier this month, The Academy hosted the highly topical conference Empathy Neuroscience: Translational Relevance for Conflict Resolution . Specialists in the fields of neurology, psychology, psychiatry, communications, international affairs and cognitive sciences gathered to discuss this dynamic, new theory for conflict resolution in the Middle East. SmartSimple was honored to sponsor the reception held at the end of the first day of the conference. Conference attendees at the SmartSimple sponsored reception "There is a great deal of research happening in the neuroscience of empathy,” says Haifa Staiti, Gather Fellow, Seeds of Peace , and one of the conference organizers. “...

At SmartSimple, a good number of new features and enhancements we introduce every upgrade come directly from requests, recommendations and suggestions from our clients. Through our user community, clients provide crucial feedback on how the system works and what would make it work even better. So when several of our clients indicated they were interested in an enhanced support offering, we put our heads together to come up with a service that was proactive while still being responsive to immediate calls for assistance. Introducing Premium Support Services Premium Support Services is designed to offer a more personalized support experience. Clients are provided with a dedicated SmartSimple representative to act as their main point of contact for all support related issues. This adds an additional level of accountability, and provides clients with the peace-of-mind that they have a dedicated resource who is familiar with their specific needs and challenges. Who should use...

Strong security practices must be the number one priority for any cloud solution vendor you choose. Without that commitment, there’s a good chance your data will be at risk. So how do you know if the SaaS (software as a service) provider you’re using or considering choosing has the right security protocols in place to ensure your valuable information is protected? We’ve compiled a list of the top seven security practices any vendor should be using to ensure they’re meeting their obligations to your security. 1. Penetration Testing Penetration testing assesses how easy or difficult it is to hack into a system. This method uses what’s known in the industry as a White Hat Hacker . White Hat Hackers are ethical computer hackers or computer security experts specializing in testing methodologies to ensure the security of information systems. Their job is to make sure a malevolent hacker can’t access your data, hijack other user accounts or redirect your users to bogus sites, even ...

To get the New Year started on the right foot, the SmartSimple team is pleased to bring you our first round of system upgrades for 2016. This cycle, we’re focused on improving the flexibility of your system. We’ve made it easier for you to control your screen views, customize batch update buttons and added new List View options. This upgrade goes live on Thursday, January 28th. Maximize and Restore Button on Title Bar - Global System Feature Now you can maximize sections in Arcadia X to better focus on the data and tasks you need to accomplish. This gives you more control to see your information, your way. Customizable Batch Update Options - On-Demand Feature This feature offers the ability to create multiple unique batch update buttons, each having its own discrete batch function. For example, Batch Approve Status, Batch Change Manager and so on. This means System Administrators have the ability to make customizable batch update buttons available to users based on th...

Creating forms, whether they be grants applications or funding status reports, within any database system is easy. Just as long as everyone is meant to see and fill in the same fields on the same form. However, in the world of grants and research management, this is not the reality. Grant seekers need to see one version of the application form when they apply for funding. Staff need to see additional fields in their version (in the old paper-based world this would be labelled “for office use only”). Then, of course, additional fields are needed for the reviewer that may not contain all the visible fields that staff need to see and use. Add post-award reporting forms, site visit forms and payment request forms to the mix and you’ve got a lot of work ahead of you. It’s all about resource efficiency This becomes a full-time job for someone just to develop, design and update all these applications if you’re using what’s known as a form-based system. A form-based system uses st...

It’s the time of year when everyone is rushing from festive events to the shopping mall as people get into the frenzy of holiday activities. But for many families, this is more a season of stress than joy. Parents may worry about not having enough money to pay the bills each month while still wanting to ensure their children still have something to look forward to Christmas morning. That’s why April and Sarah Rutka created Holiday Helpers and the annual Adopt-a-Family program. Since 1996, Holiday Helpers has donated Christmas packages to over 1,700 families in the Greater Toronto Area. And, for the third year, the SmartSimple team in Toronto has once again raised funds and purchased gifts to ensure one more family has a very merry Christmas. The SmartSimple adopted family for 2015 was a single mother with three children, and their wish list included basics such as winter coats, boots and pajamas. As part of the Adopt-a-Family initiative, each family also receives a tree ...