posted by Matt McAdams on August 23, 2008 01:12 AM

Last week I declared that we'd launch a new feature or improve an existing feature every week -- I called it New Feature Friday. Well, this week's feature did get launched on Friday...somewhere in the world. But the description of it had to wait until today, Saturday.

This week's product improvement consists of some useful enhancements to database views:

• You can now publish statistics views to your website, or to a public URL. So to publish a pie chart of donations by source, for example, simply create a TrackVia view with just the "Source" column, set the view's default format to "statistics," and paste the "publish this view" code snippet into your webpage, as usual. Like with table-formatted reports that you publish, the pie chart will always reflect the latest, real-time data from your TrackVia database.
• You can now email statistics views, either on an ad-hoc basis using the "email" link, or using a Distribution Schedule. Thus that pie chart, or perhaps a total of all donations received to date, can be delivered to your email inbox every morning.
• Emailed views, whether formatted as tables or statistics, now show up in the body of the email, not just as an attachment. This lets you see the key info in Outlook's preview pane (for example) without having to open the message and then open the attachment.  
• Views and individual records that you email now include a link that takes you directly to the live version of that view or record in TrackVia. You'll first be prompted to log in, and then redirected to the page that was sent by email. If you have a TrackVia login box on your own website, the emailed links will bring you in through your own website. The link can be removed in Distribution Schedules that go to large audiences.

None of these are earth-shattering, but they've been requested by enough customers that I know they're a definite step forward. One week's worth, at least.