Fireside21

You may have noticed a new feature that we recently launched when you sent your last email. Based on feedback from our clients, we’ve developed an alternate view for drafting and sending your email. In this view, instead going through each step like a wizard, we’ve including everything on one page.

Take a look when you send out your next email and click the “Single Page View” link next to the “Create/Edit a Message” page title.

We hope you like this new feature and it helps you send your emails even faster with Fireside Email!

We have recently completed an overhaul to the design of all our web applications. Why? Well, we’ve done some testing to improve how users navigate all the different tools of our software. Also, we wanted to update the interface to mirror our Fireside21 brand.

No need to worry though—no major changes have been made to the tools you use daily to accomplish your tasks. Here is a screenshot and a summary of what you will see:

• You can’t miss the change in the color scheme—the colors now match our Fireside21 brand. Plus, they will be a little easier on the eyes.
• The biggest change is the move of our application navigation from the top right to the top left of the primary navigation. It has been confusing having two navigations, so we have consolidated the two. Look for a drop-down menu to switch between our web, email and constituent tools.
• Another update is the move of our tools sidebar from the left to the right side of the page.
• Finally, we’ve stretched the design to take up all of your browser’s width. It will stretch to fill 100% of the page.

Keep an eye out later this week for the new design to launch. Please let us know of your feedback on these changes!

This week we enabled Secure Socket Layers (SSL) encryption on your eManager account. SSL is the same technology used by banks and online shopping sites like amazon to protect your personal information that is transferred between your computer and the website.

This is just one of several mechanisms we have been implementing to make your account’s content and constituent data more secure.

Unfortunately, we have found one annoying consequence to this update: users of Internet Explorer are getting lot’s of pop-up warnings about “mixed content” and other alerts. Don’t be alarmed, IE just wants to let you know that some of the content is coming from a different site, which in this case is usually images from your public site.

Here’s how to update your browser’s setting to make these pop-ups go away:

1. In the IE menu bar, select “Tools” -> “Internet Options” (you may need to press “Alt” to view the menu bar)
2. Click the “Security” tab
3. Click the “Internet” zone icon and then the button for “Custom level…”
4. Scroll down a little past halfway and you will see a setting for “Display mixed content”
5. Click the radio button to “Enable” this setting
6. Click OK, then Yes and OK again to save this new setting

You may need to restart your browser for the setting to take effect in your eManager account.  If you continue to get any pop-up warnings, please let us know.

Last week we pushed up a refactored version of eManager’s audience tools. Refactored is fancy computer speak for taking stock of everything you have learned and then overhauling the code to work better.

That’s right – the code that powers your targeted audiences is brand new!

Why did we do this?

Well, Fireside Email is more popular than ever: we have sent over 20 million emails on behalf of our clients. This is actually the second time we have refactored the audience mechanisms. Each time was a result of learning from the systems we had in production to make things work faster.

I guess you could call it preventative maintenance. As a result, you should notice several pages in eManager loading more quickly and large email audiences will deliver more efficiently.

We also built this new code with several future enhancements in mind. Stayed tuned for some exciting new features!

If you didn’t already know, your Fireside Web™ site produces an RSS feed that allows constituents to read the latest updates from your web site. That feed is found at:

http://YourSite.house.gov/News/Rss.aspx

We’ve recently made an update that now lets you slice up your feed into different flavors for issues or document types! For instance, if you wanted a feed just for energy related items, you can use this feed URL:

http://YourSite.house.gov/News/Rss.aspx?CategoryID=IssueID

Or if you would like to offer a feed just for your news clips, you can use this feed URL:

http://YourSite.house.gov/News/Rss.aspx?DocumentTypeID=DocTypeID

* You will need to customize these URLs with your web site’s address and the matching issue (the IssueID above) or document IDs (the DocTypeID above) from your account. Let us know if you need help looking up these ID numbers?

Here are a couple of new features that are automatically available to our Fireside Email™ clients:

1. Forward to Friend form – this embed tag lets you easily include “Forward to Friend” functionality in any of your messages. Just add [friend] anywhere in your email that you want the link to appear.
2. Web Version – this is another embed tag that creates an automatic link through to a web version of your email. You often see this in commercial emails, with text at the top like, “If you are having trouble reading this email, view the web version.” Just add [link] in your emails.
3. Automatic Archive – You may have already noticed the “P” or publish button next to emails you have recently sent. This one-click tool will automatically compile an archive of your emails on your web site. Try it out, then navigate to your homepage and add “News/Email” to the URL.

We hope that these will be useful features for all of you. As always, please let us know of your ideas so we can continue to improve our Fireside Email™ service.

Integrated Flash Video

Our video player features the latest flash technology to allow videos to be played directly in any browser. This is a great tool to share floor speeches, news clips, or personal messages recorded by the Congressman with your constituents.

Plus Fireside Web™ video tool provides video embed code to be shared just like YouTube.

Animated Photo Slideshows

Reorganize your photo albums in a clean, attractive and engaging new interface. Instead of clicking to new pages, this photo slideshow lets you browse hundreds of photos with no delays.

The intuitive user interface displays previews, captions and smooth transitions.

Social Bookmarking Tools

Social bookmarks allow constituents to “tag” web pages they find interesting and share them with their friends. Fireside Web™ social bookmark integration provides one-click shortcuts on documents in your new room for all the popular social networds including: Facebook, Digg, Newsvine and Yahoo News.

Through these networks, your site’s content will spread virally through your constituents friend networks.

Interactive Google Maps

Google maps are an engaging and interactive feature for any web site. These maps will not only dress up your site’s district page, but also enhance up your “Visiting Washington” page or be implemented as an “accomplishments” map.

I’m excited to announce a couple of new Fireside Email™ features that have been widely requested by you! We’re happy that we are able to continue to innovate to meet the needs of all our Congressional clients.

Please keep the feedback coming!

1. The automatic unsubscribe link is now embedded in test messages. This should eliminate the need to use a dummy audience to get a test for franking approval and, in turn, eliminate clutter in the Fireside Email™ Administration page.
2. Ability to disable the unsubscribe link. We’ve heard many of you are using Fireside Email™ to target and track messages to press contacts. Now, you can disable the automatic unsubscribe link in messages to these targets. Look for the checkbox on Step 1 of sending a message.
3. Automatic survey results page. This will be a welcome addition for many offices. Take a look at your Form Administration page and you will see a new column for “Responses.” That gives you a count of the total number of participants. Just click the link to see a detailed report.

We plan to have a couple of more new feature announcements in the coming weeks, so stay tuned.

We have received a number of calls this week about web video and what Fireside21 has to offer. A Roll Call article last week started the conversation. I’m happy to report that video has always been a part of eManager and is 100% compliant with the franking rules.

Here’s a full run-down of how video works inside of Fireside Web™.

Easy Upload and Playback

• Fireside Web™ allows you to post videos in minutes.
• Videos play in the browser right on your web site.
• Avoid constituents leaving your site.

Viral Sharing

• Fireside Web™ makes it easy for bloggers and media outlets to display your videos by generating unique links and embed code.
• You can embed all your videos on any page of web site.

Franking Compliance

• Fireside21’s video servers are within the House domain.
• Fireside Web™ allows you to have your own private video channel.
• No advertisements or “related” videos.