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Product Updates
Product Updates
Product Update - September 2024
David Simpson
September 1, 2024
We've been working on harnessing the power of modern AI and building some amazing new features which will make using Beacon easier every day. This is Beacon AI.
We believe that every charity should have access to the latest technologies to maximise their impact, but we don't build features just to show off, or to hop on a tech bandwagon. We've taken time and care to build three brilliant features which you can use every day to make your life easier and using Beacon faster and simpler:
With AI comes data concerns. At Beacon, we are focused on protecting your data and take our responsibilities as a trusted technology provider very seriously. As such:
You can find more information in our Introducing: Beacon AI Blog post.
With Beacon address autocomplete you can start typing an address, or type a postcode, and Beacon will suggest addresses that match. When you select one, Beacon will populate the different sub-fields within the location field for you - no need to type out the whole address.
Address Autocompletes are available both inside of Beacon itself and in on all of your Forms (or some of your forms, your choice!). We've worked with an amazing provider called Ideal postcodes, and are able to offer this at a highly discounted price of just 2p per lookup.
You can find more information on Address Autocomplete in our Guide here.
We know at Beacon that optimising your CRM often requires removing as much as adding, and sometimes you want to remove a field. Previously it has been hard to know if removing a field would have knock on impact to your users who might be using the field in unexpected places.
We're now adding checks across Beacon to reduce this unexpected behaviour, including checking in Import & Export Templates, Charts, and Forms. We'll be adding additional checks through the next month as well.
We've had our API for awhile now, but before this month, you had to make a request to our support team to get your own API Key. We've now added the ability for you to both create your own API Keys and the ability revoke them if you want to stop using them. More information on both our keys and our API are available here.
We're also working on advanced permissions for API Keys, so watch this space!
If you've ever wanted to be more precise with how dates appear inside of Document merges, we have added the ability to choose between date, time, or both!
This works across all date fields, and can be viewed by pressing on the "View Cheatsheet" button inside of your Document templates.
Connect with fellow Beacon customers, share ideas, get tips, and discover best practices.
You can find the group here and we'd love to welcome you in.
Please note that this group is exclusively for Beacon customers.
Next, we're going to be working on faster exports and adding a new way for you to control which records your users can access.
Stay tuned for even more exciting announcements! Keep up the incredible work, and we'll keep building tools to help you succeed.
