University of Edinburgh

The University of Edinburgh - Project Progress Report

In January 2006 ESiT submitted a tender to replace the existing Visual Arms fundraising and alumni management software used by the University’s Development and Alumni department. The contract was awarded in June and the first phase of the project goes live in September 2006, with further development continuing into 2007.

the new system

The new system is to be installed in three phases.

The implementation of phase one began at the beginning of July and sees the installation of the standard thankQ configuration with minor modifications to accommodate a few extra data fields and different terminology.

Much of the time in getting to this point has been spent on developing the data transfer routines, taking the data from the old system and making sure it has been interpreted correctly when viewed through thankQ. Getting thankQ in place for the autumn means it can be used in time for the launch of the University’s new £350 million fundraising campaign.

In November during the second phase of the project, further enhancements will be made to thankQ to accommodate bar code processing for ‘gone-aways’, international addressing formats and the inclusion of the currency symbol in ‘thank you’ letters, which will put the final piece in place for full multi-currency donation processing.

In 2007 the last phase of the project will see the integration of thankQ with the MyEd web portal which allows students and alumni to access their personal details, donation history and mailing preferences. The integration with other existing elements of the web portal means that the existing EASE user authentication method needs to be used and built into the thankQ web modules.

University of Edinburgh (PDF - 34KB)