Goal 2: Increase Mail Room Speed

Context menu

Context menus now appear when you click on any of the rows in most of our mailroom lists. The new menus provide faster access to common functions unique to each list.

Progress indicator

In this latest Mail Room enhancement we’ve added a progress indicator to let you know when page is doing something that might take a second or two.

Bulk mailing performance improvements

We made it faster! Plus, we have updated the Bulk Mail page to list all past mailings as opposed to just the most recent items.

1. Make it easier to find items that you “own”
2. Increase Mail Room Speed
3. Provide a consistent user interface throughout the Mail Room

Goal: Make it easier to find items that you “own”

Manage your batches from My Mail

Sometimes you just want to see the mail that’s in your batches without having to sort through all of the batches that ever existed. Now you can do just that from the My Mail screen. You can also perform common batch operations like “Print/Send” and “Modify” from within My Mail.

Back button support for all pages and filtering options

You can now reliably use your back button or mailroom tabs to return to previously filtered content. We’ve added a “Reset Filters” button so that you can always go back to the default filter set.

Mail Summary on the top of list pages

So that you’ve always got a view of how much mailroom work you’ve got on your plate, we’ve added a handy summary to the top of every list page which allows you to quickly reach your assignments.

Check back soon to see the features we implemented for our remaining goals!

Goal 3: Provide a consistent user interface throughout the Mail Room

Standardized filtering

The new filtering panel on the left side of many lists allows you to easily see, at a glance, how many items of various types are your lists. You can also use the filtering panel to narrow down your lists, hiding and showing items based on common characteristics.

Improved column organization

So that you can more easily see at a glance what is in each list, we’ve cleaned up the column organization, putting the most important elements first and reducing some of the clutter within the columns.

Improved visualization of expanded list views

When you expand a row in the My Mail, Email Inbox or Batch Mail sections, you should now see an easier to read format that mimics a typical email conversation. We’ve also added a few extra fields to make it easier to copy/paste from this section.

Standardized toolbar

Our new toolbar gives you easy and consistent access to all of the common list operations like “Expand”, “Select All” and “Create.”

Our development team has rolled out frequent updates to the CRM platform this year based on client feedback, and you can keep track of these updates in the “What We’ve Been Doing” sidebar of eManager. We’ve rolled out another very exciting update to all CRM accounts. Now, when logging in any kind of correspondence (phone call, email, letter, walk-in meeting) you will be able to upload attachments. This will be particularly useful for:

1. Paper letters/postcards
2. Constituent faxes
3. Letter enclosures

Rather than having to keep track of those paper records or manually entering in the content of a letter, you can scan them, attach them, and recycle! This will save you time and energy when you need to log anything in and also prevents you from having to pass around pieces of paper along with mail assignments. Now your office can spend less time logging in mail and more time responding. Try it out the next time you log a piece of correspondence–your interns will thank you!

If you have feedback for our platform, hop into our chat room and let us know!  As a result of the feedback we’ve received, we have made a number of updates to the platform including last week’s addition of the contact form auto-response email message.

New user summary icons

The user summary page has always shown if a piece of outbound correspondence was closed, but now you’ll be able to quickly tell if the correspondence was closed out before or after the printing/emailing process.  This update will give you even faster access to a lot of valuable correspondence information.

Auto-response for contact forms

You can now customize an email auto-response message to people who fill out your website’s contact form.  Just visit Settings > Write Rep in the platform to draft and test your auto-response.  You can format these responses to look like your other email templates in the system.  This allows you to keep your office brand consistent throughout all forms of communication.

If you have ideas for how we can enhance our platform, hop into our chat room and let us know!

As we mentioned in our recent security post, you need to be on the House network to access your account, but you don’t physically need to be on the Hill to connect.

The House provides a Virtual Private Network (VPN) service that when combined with an HIR-provided SecurID allows you to securely connect to the House network from anywhere. If you don’t already have a SecurID, you will need to fill out a form on this HouseNet page.

By the way, this iPhone screenshot is real. There is a built-in VPN on all iPhones…and here’s a trick to take screenshots: press the Sleep/Wake and Home buttons at the same time and you’ll find a screenshot in your photo library.

IN THE NEWS

Perhaps the biggest news of the year was our departure from the Adfero Group.  I know we will continue to have strong ties to all of our former colleagues at Adfero, but we’re excited about the focused mission of Fireside21.

Along with the launch of Fireside21, we re-branded all of our Web-based software tools:

• Fireside Web™ continues to be the gold standard for Congressional Web site design and content management.  Recent surges in traffic only served as a reminder of the benefits of Fireside Web™. Also, as we have promised, we’ve continued to add new features and functionality to this industry-leading platform.

• Fireside Email™ has also received attention from our development team to establish this email newsletter system as second to none.  We’re excited to be helping our clients communicate more effectively with our integrated approach.

• Fireside CRM™ gained preliminary approval from the CAO and will be entering into the Beta phase early in 2009.  Advances in software technologies have been slow to reach the Hill and we are excited about this new service and the potential it offers to all of Capitol Hill.

We were also proud to show off our creative skills in helping the office of Rep. Mike Roger’s announce and promote his Energy Independence Plan.

A welcome announcement came from the House Committee on Adminstration to finally relax the rules related to third party/Web 2.0 services.  Many offices had been ingoring the rules anyways and we expect services like YouTube, Twitter and Facebook to gain wider adoption as tools to communicate with constituents.

THE FUTURE

There’s no time to rest in 2009.  As when the new Congress kicks-off, we anticipate launching many Web sites for new members of the House.

We also anticipate launching user interface enhancement that will guarantee that all our software services continue to offer the best balance between ease of use and advanced functionality among Congressional vendors.

Increasingly, small businesses and Capitol Hill offices are turning to hosted, software as a service tools to improve productivity. All of Fireside21’s services (Fireside CRM™, Fireside Email™, Fireside Web™) are hosted solutions.

As Jeremy Quittner explains in How SaaS Helps Cut Small Business Costs,

Hosted software, or software-as-a-service (SaaS), has been around for about a decade. It’s software delivered via the Web rather than residing on a company’s own servers. Companies pay a monthly fee instead of buying the software outright, and don’t have to worry about software licenses, server maintenance, or IT staff to manage complex programs.

One common concern is data security, but as he says,

That might sound like a security hazard, but your SaaS provider probably has better security than you do.

Alluding to Malcolm Gladwell’s concept in The Technology Tipping Point, Gene Marks writes,

Do you really need to drop a few grand on another server this year? Can’t it wait until next year? Isn’t there some “cloud” to put it on or something?

The benefits of SaaS are clear,

The guys I know who go for SaaS do so because it makes their people more productive. They can get data to and from their people faster, no matter where they are. They don’t have an internal IT infrastructure and find it less expensive to rent the software rather than set it up themselves.

In particular, Customer/Constituent Relationship Management software is particularly well suited to the SaaS model.  So how do you know if CRM software is right for your office?  Well, pretend that Marks is speaking of constituents rather than customers when measuring the ROI of CRM,

By making sure that all quotes are being pursued to their very end. By making sure customers who haven’t heard from you in the past six months are hearing from you. By making sure prospects who may in the future think about buying something you sell are hearing from you frequently enough to make them come to you first. By making sure you don’t look like a dope when customers call because you don’t know who communicated with them last and what problems they may be having. Think of all of all these situations you’ve encountered in the past three years, calculate how much revenue you’ve lost, and then compare that against the cost of a CRM system—and voilà!

On Capitol Hill, Fireside21 is the only vendor to offer a hosted CRM solution that unites traditional correspondence tools with our web and email platforms.  This is the future of Congressional communications and is exactly what Fireside21 is all about.

• Transition into office
• Make staffing decisions
• Develop your first budget
• Get started with mail and a web site

Fireside21 is ready to help too.  We have Fireside Web sites set up already for every incoming member of the House.  We can launch these new sites in just 72 hours!

Pair this new Web site with our Fireside Email and Fireside CRM services and your office will be off to a great start!

From the press release:

Today, Adfero Group announced the launch of Fireside21, a new company that was formed from Adfero’s growing Congressional practice. The spin-off marks Fireside21’s evolution and growth as a provider of Web-based software for elected officials including award-winning Web sites and highly efficient methods for delivering emails to targeted constituents.

Here is a little more about us:

What is Fireside21?
Founded by former congressional staffers, Fireside21 creates easy-to-use Web-based tools that help legislators keep in close contact with their constituents. We produce attractive, highly functional Web sites; offer improved methods of delivering emails to the right constituents; and provide a simplified method of managing the overwhelming volume of constituent letters, emails and requests that are sent to elected officials.

Where does the name “Fireside21” come from?
Just as President Franklin D. Roosevelt connected with individual citizens via radio through his “Fireside chats” radio broadcasts, we believe politicians in the 21st century can similarly build close relationships with constituents using the latest technologies and strategies. Hence the name Fireside21.

What happened to Adfero Group?
In a sense, Fireside21 and Adfero Group are sister companies. We are both rooted in providing innovative services that help our clients leverage the Internet to advance their message. Adfero is primarily a public relations firm that integrates sophisticated digital strategies with traditional communications tactics to advance the public affairs or business agendas of corporations, associations, non-profits and government entities.

As Adfero has expanded its capabilities to become a full-service PR firm and offer new software services to Congress, it only made sense to spin off the congressional division to minimize any confusion and to establish a separate brand that reflects our total dedication to the delivery of superior Web-based software services to congressional offices.

I look forward to telling you more about Fireside21 our new services in the near future!