I attended the Aptify Users Conference in Chicago last week. I always enjoy the users conferences because I get a chance to hear what the company is rolling out in the coming year, and I also get a chance to hear the experiences of the users themselves.
Aptify is rolling out version 5.0 of their association management system sometime before the end of this year. They demoed some of the new features in 5.0. Below are a few that I found noteworthy:
- Role-based profiles. With these profiles, when users log in, they will be presented with certain types of functionality based on their role. For example, if you’re doing membership processing, you’ll only be presented with functionality that applies to that. I think role-based profiles (aka, “personas”) are going to be a key feature in future AMSs, because these profiles will help increase user adoption. “Screen noise” is one of the major hurdles to user adoption, and role-based profiles will help eliminate screen noise and allow the user to focus on the task at hand.
- Aptify is adding an “awards module” to 5.0, which will be included in the baseline system (i.e., no additional cost).
- Version 5.0 now has a recently used views along with recently used records. This means the user can quickly access a screen view that was recently being used (e.g., a query result) rather than having to navigate back to it with multiple clicks.
- Spell checking on all fields. Not surprisingly, I hear this from a lot of my clients. Spell checking on a database can be a tricky thing, but Aptify has added this functionality, although it has to be manually executed (“on demand”) rather than spell-checking while you type. Still, a nice feature.
- Save pending changes. With this functionality, users can save changes to the database that actually won’t take effect until some future date. For example, if you learn of an address change for a company that will take place in the future, you can add the data now but save the changes to take effect on some future date. Pretty slick.
My only criticism of the users conference was that the presentations were too heavy on the Aptify side and too light on the user side. That is, a users conference should be about the users, and presented (to the extent possible) by the users. I know Aptify is working on this for future conferences.
You can read my other users conference reviews here.
Full disclosure: EDM is an independent third-party consulting firm. This means we have no financial relationship with any of the vendors mentioned in this blog. We provide unbiased opinions on what we see.