The settings below are listed in the order they should appear (in version 0.9.3) within the "Customize ODB Settings" screen of ODB. (To reach the Settings screen, click on the Wrench icon and then click on 'Modify Settings...') Most of these settings are fairly easy to use, although the features relating to downloading and uploading from web sites are experimental and will not be fully documented until the design is finalized.

Note: The settings that have a question mark at the end are all "yes/no" settings; you will be presented with a "yes" or "no" button to choose when you click on these settings.

winTitle -- The title displayed at the very top of the main ODB window. Usually this would be the name of your organization project, or campaign.

progText -- The large text displayed in at the top of the left panel in the ODB main window. The ODB user manual explains how you use a graphic, logo or photo here, instead of using text. If you have a network, a single copy of the logo can be shared on the network, provided it is located in the same folder as your ODB database file.

GroupName -- The name of your organization as it will appear on the reply slips you would send to people when requesting grassroots donations or renewals.

GroupAddress -- The address of your organization as it will appear on the reply slips.

GroupEmail -- The email address of your organization as it will appear on the reply slips.

GroupURL -- The web site of your organization as it will appear on the reply slips.

AcceptCredit? -- Whether your reply slips should include a space for donors to fill in their credit card number.

Checkoff1, Checkoff2, and Checkoff3 -- the text for optional check boxes that will appear on your reply slips. And example for a check box might be "Please do not trade or sell my name." If these values are left empty the no checkbox will appear on the donation slip.

Fineprint -- Small-sized text that will appear at the bottom of your reply slip. Usually this is a statement about the legal status and incorporation location of your organization, or whether donations are tax-deductible.

VIDlabel -- This is the label for the button that is typically called "VID", or Voter/Volunteer/Union ID, in ODB. You could change the text to "Level" for example, to indicate that the codes are used to indicate level of interest or support.

Subcodes -- (Be advised that this feature was changed in version 1.0, to allow 2-letter codes.) Subcodes are used if you want your donation screen to prompt the user for additional information about donations for analysis. A subcode is a single letter, so that, for example, if your organization sends out two annual repeals plus renewals, you could include the single-letter codes "1", "2", and "r" to differentiate between different kinds of donations you might receive in the mail. Currently ODB does not have a method of generating reports from the subcodes. You will need to click the Export Donation Data button to move data to Excel or OpenOffice Calc, or create the reports directly from Microsoft Access (or whatever database report generation software you are using with your ODB back end.) The value of the Subcodes field should be "12r" or "12R". Then you will have 3 choices; the capitalization of the value should not matter, as the user will be required to enter the subcode value in lower case.

defaultcategory -- This value is the default donation category that will appear when you enter a donation. This should be the full text of the donation category, not the code.

VIDWindow -- This is the title text on the top of the windows that appear when you click on a VID button. [note: we may eventually allow the user to also change the labels on the Type, Act, Iss, and Cons fields as part of the customization process.]

VIDPrompt -- This is the text that appears at the top of the VID data entry window, providing the user with hints on what values are allowed in the window.

DonationSlipText -- The text that appears on the top of a donation slip for donors who have not contributed in the recent past.

RenewSlipText -- The text that appears on the top of a donation slip for donors who are within the window within which their membership is expected to be renewed.

MemberSubscribe -- This field affects the tooltip text associated with the "expires" field in the People Entry, Payment History, and Record Selection Tool screens. By default, it is set to "Membership", and you could change it to "Subscription" if you want. If you do that, the tool tip text, when you restart ODB, will reflect the new wording.

RenewFrequency -- The number of months that go by before someone in your organization is asked to renew their membership. This is usually 12, though you may change it.

RenewWindow -- The number of days before or after the renew date that define the window within which ODB will assume that a donation sent on a particular date is a renewal of a membership or subscription. This is by default set to 45 days.

DefaultDues -- This setting is the amount that will appear as the "askamount" in any new ODB record.

TaxReceiptAmt -- This setting is usually set to $250, and it defines the minimum size of a donation for which ODB will offer to print a special tax exempt donation receipt. If you set it to zero, the feature will be turned off. [Note: the setting will probably remain, although the manner in which the setting is used in ODB may change with version 1.0.

RemotePW -- The password used to connect to your web site to download files. This is used with the RemoteAccount setting (see below).

requireindtype? -- The setting is off by default, but we strongly recommend turning it on after you have customized your ODB type codes. This is for non-overlapping categories, unlike activities, issues, etc. The purpose of requireindtype is to force all people records to be entered with a Type, so that you can segment the list. If you don't turn this setting on, your users will enter a lot of records without any Type, and then it will be difficult later to segment your list when you want to do a mailing.

requireorgtype? -- This setting does the same thing as requireindtype, except that it affects the type code for organizations (Groups). We also recommend that you turn this setting on once you customize the ODB type codes for groups. That way you can segment your list of groups by the type of organization more easily.

lockexistingcodes? -- This setting will prevent users from changing the Activity, Issue, Constituency, and VID codes in ODB without entering a password. We strongly recommend that you turn this setting on if you are sharing your ODB database on a network. Currently ODB only uses one Administrative password for everything.

protectexport -- This setting will prevent users from exporting your entire database without a password. Please note that ODB does not fully protect the database at this time, but a future MySQL/SQL server version will offer greater database protection if you need it (though a setup cost will be necessary if you do not have an experienced database administrator in your organization.) By default, this setting is off: it is set to a value of 0. If you set it to 100, it will permit you to export up to 100 records without a password.

protecthidonors -- This setting will prevent users from viewing the donation histories of your members without entering the administrative password. If you set it to $50, your users will be able to see histories for donors of up to $49. The protection will also apply to searches for donors. By default, this setting is off: it is set to a value of 0. If you are using ODB on a network we recommend turning this setting on.

adminpassword -- This is the password that is used to access any of the administrative functions of ODB. Initially, the password is set as described in the ODB user guide. We only recommend that you change it if you have security concerns and if you have confidence that you can remember the new password! The password is case-sensitive.

resultlimit -- The number of records that can be displayed in the main menu screen at once. We strongly recommend, if you have a 1000 Mhz or equivalent computer, that you increase this setting to 4000 or more. The resultlimit is initially set to 2000 to avoid a potentially long delay in displaying records on a slower computer running ODB.

showfax? -- Whether a fax field should be made visible in the People Entry screen.

allowzerodonation? -- Whether ODB's donation entry screen will permit a donation of $0. The purpose of this feature was to allow you to record non-donation items in the ODB Ledger. For example, if you have monthly homebuying trainings and quarterly membership meetings, you can add a donation of $0 with a donation category of "homebuying" or "member meeting" set to the date that the meeting occurred. This feature is no longer necessary, as you can use SRC/Event codes to track attendance at a meeting. You can also set donation categories to not affect the membership.

requireorggeog? -- As in the requireorgtype field, this setting will force users to include information for later use in segmenting your database for targeted mailings. The setting applies to entry of the geographic scope (national, state, local, etc.) information of a group.

externalprogram -- This setting is the name of an executable file that you may place in the ODB program files folder. This file will be called with no arguments. A button will appear allowing your users to access this linked report.

externalreport -- This setting is the name of an executable file that you may place in the ODB program files folder. The file will be called with the ODB database pathname as the first argument. If the file is present, a button will appear (currently in the Admin screen) allowing your users to access this linked report.

MaxComment -- The number of characters allowable in a comment. The default is 2000, but you can easily make this much larger, i.e. 20,000.

GroupPhone -- The phone number of your organization as it should appear on an ODB reply slip.

subcatlabel -- The label used in the Add Gift screen for subcategory.

minimumdues -- The minimum amount you will accept to fully advance a person's membership.

RemoteAccount -- This setting is associated with the RemotePW feature, listed above. In this box you should put the web site address and file location for ODB to retrieve web sign up information. The information is in SCP format: ODB depends on the secure free software SCP program to connect to your web site, and encrypts the information during transit (unlike FTP, which can expose your web site password to people outside your organization). The format of this is a string: [machine domain name]:[file path and name]

sidebarcolor -- The color of the left pane of the ODB main menu in hexadecimal (web style) values. You have to reverse the hex digits, i.e. FF0000 becomes 0000FF.

progtextcolor -- The color of the text at the top of the ODB main menu, in hex. You have to reverse the hex digits, i.e. FF0000 becomes 0000FF.

useregion? -- Turn this setting on if ODB will access the special region tables within the zip code file in order to assign a geographic region to members of your database. The zip code file that ODB downloads currently has a basic region configuration for Massachusetts, which can serve as an example.

dolookups? -- This feature will tell ODB to go beyond region lookup and also try to determine the congressional district based on zip code. The lookup tables for doing this are located in the zip code database that comes with ODB, and are preconfigured for Massachusetts only. You may add zip code ranges for your state if these zip codes are entirely contained within a congressional district. In the future, a dolocallookups setting could be added to instruct ODB to do additional field lookups (such as precinct) based on city, street name, and street number. However, this data must be updated on a regular basis and it may not be easy to obtain it for free. (Programmers who want to work on this functionality are encouraged to contact us for some source code we have already written.)

showtitle? -- If turned on, ODB will allow you to enter a title field (Mr/Ms, etc.) for all people. We recommend entering this data only if your relationship with the person is a formal one, as it causes things like thank you letters and envelopes to be printed with the title. For many grassroots groups, the relationship with constituents is a very personal one, so it may be best to leave the title field off of most people and remove it once your relationship with "Mr. Jones" becomes "Steve."

showbiglist? -- The biglist field is an optional field that provide a long value list of choices that can be linked to web sites. If you turn this field on, you can click on the biglist field on the People Entry screen and it will pull up a popup menu of choices. The field is intended for very long lists of 100 or more choices, lists that tend to be dynamically updated. It is also possible to associate each entry in the Big List with a web site so that you can right-click on the entry and go directly to a web site associated with that entry (i.e. a list of universities associated with web pages for that campus or for the "directory page" within that campus; another option is a list of organizations associated with their web URLs.)

showsrcfield? -- Set this to true if you want the SRC field to show up in the People entry, Import, and Select Records screens. The SRC field is for adding a simple tracking code to a person's record. This can be done with activity codes as well, but the SRC field is different from activity codes in four key respects. First, the SRC codes field can be automatically populated when importing data. Secondly, the SRC code fields are automatically associated with the date the code was added, so by default you only see the codes that were recently added, and therefore tend to be in active use. Third, you can rename the SRC code field so that different terminology is used. We often recommend that people turn this field on and rename it to 'event' so it can be used to track meeting attendance or registration for a training.

srctooltip -- A mechanism to customize the tooltip text of the SRC buttons in ODB.

srclabel -- The label used on the SRC button, and in other ODB text referring to the SRC field.

thankyoucheckbox? -- Set this to true if you want a check box during the process of adding a gift so that a thank you note can be immediately generated. We recommend that you also set up your "thankyoudefs" to associate your donation categories with different thank you notes.

showsuffix? -- if turned on, ODB will allow you to enter a suffix field (Esq, III) for all people. By default this is off.

userfieldname -- The "userfield" is a user definable field (user1 in the database). This is provided for consultants who want to add a single field to the ODB database and have it appear as part of the main ODB screen. The Userfieldname by default appears in the same place as the region code.

userfieldproperties -- "Userfieldproperties" allows you to specify property names and values for the userfield. Right now the properties height, width, left, top, maxlength, tooltiptext, font, and fontsize are supported. We recommend that you try different values for this until you find ones that are right; they have to be entered as (property):(value), and if you have more than one property you want to set, you need to separate the two with a space. The valid properties are:
height - the height of the user defined field, which is a number (defaults to 300, which is equivalent to 30 pixels.)
width - the width of the user defined field (default is 1575, which is equivalent to about 157 pixels.)
left - the left position of the user defined field relative to the whole window (default position is a fairly large number; if you reduce this to 100 the position will be flush left instead of flush right.)
top - the vertical position of the top of the user defined field area relative to the whole window.
maxlength - maximum number of characters allowed for entry into the user defined field.
tooltiptext - the tooltip text that appears when you hover the cursor on top of the field or label.
font - the name of the font that is used for text in both the label and the field.
fontsize - the fontsize that is used for text in both the label and the field.
For example, one organization gathering petition signatures wanted to add a field called "Pledges" to keep track of the number of signatures turned in by volunteers. Once they set the userfieldname property to "pledges" all they had to do was set userfieldproperties to:

biglistlabel -- The label of the Biglist field. Default is "BigLst:"

biglisttooltip -- The tooltip text of the Biglist field.

hidepeoplecontrols -- a list of form control names that should be hidden on the people entry form. The control names should be separated by spaces. A "control" is an object such as a text field, a label, or a button and there are about 60 different peoplecontrols that you can hide. For instance, if you put:

hidemaincontrols -- a list of main menu control names that should be hidden on the main menu form. If you set it to "CmdAddGift CmdLedger" it would suppress the donation entry and view. If you want to hide the groups button, you will need to specify 'optgroups' as the name of the field you want to hide.

hidegroupcontrols -- a list of form control names that should be hidden on the groups entry form. The control names should be separated by spaces.

hidesearchcontrols -- a list of form control names that should be hidden on the record selection tool. The control names should be separated by spaces. Optgroups and optdonations will hide the groups and donations buttons, respectively; these are special cases and are not the form control names listed in the ODB source code.

hideimportcontrols -- same as above, but for the Import form. Optgroups will work also on this form.

emailbiglistadditions -- If you add an email address here, ODB will offer to send an email address to a maintainer whenever a user adds an entry to the large value list, specifying the value added. The ODB users can choose not to send the email, of course.

requireimportsrc? -- Set to true if you want to require that when importing data, a SRC field should be specified.

requireimporttype? -- Set to true if you want to require that when importing data, a Type field should be specified.

requirecomment? -- Set to true if you want to require that during data entry, a comment should be included describing why that person or group was entered into ODB.

usehalfmemberships? -- Set this to true if you want to give someone a "consolation prize" of a half membership when they give you a donation that is less than your minimum donation.

membercategories -- An optional list of 1-letter donation codes that affect membership renewal status. If you leave this field blank, all donation codes are valid for membership renewal. Donation codes appear in the Add Gift window and within the Record Selection Window (donations section). ie. You may not want grants to appear as member dues. If you leave this blank, all donation categories will affect membership. If you put a single unused category or number from 0 to 9 in this setting, then none of the donation categories will affect someone's membership.

giftcategories -- An optional list of 1-letter donation codes that affect the lastgift, lastgave, and askamount values but are not valid for membership renewal. If you have a set of donors who will not receive your standard "membership" information, their donations could be entered using a donation code that is one of the 'giftcategories.' If you leave this blank, all donation categories will be considered to be giftcategories.

showapt? -- this setting is for future use, will not do anything yet.

maxmembershipdate -- this is a date in mm/dd/yy format that can put a ceiling on the dates used when someone's membership is renewed. So if you are set up for having everyone pay their dues for 2004 in Jan. 2004, you could set maxmembershipdate to 12/31/04.

sortcodesby -- This is the settings default for all of the type and activity code screens, to determine the basic sort order. If this setting has a value of "code" these screens will be sorted alphabetically by the tracking code. If this setting has a value of "desc" or anything else, these screens are sorted by the description of the code.

leftmarginpoints -- The size of the left margin to use when printing thank you notes in ODB. Default is 79 points, or 1.15 inches.

rightmarginpoints -- The size of the right margin to use when printing thank you notes in ODB. Default is 79 points, or 1.15 inches.

showcountry? -- Default is off. If it is set to ON, ODB will show a country field below the city, state, and postal code.

protectcopyemails -- Default is 0. This value can be set to define a dollar amount for donors, above which they will be excluded from mass email lists (any of the first five right-click options on the copy emails button).

defaultsubcategory -- A single letter code that determines which subcategory is the default. If left blank, the first letter/number of the subcodes setting will be used.

remoteaccountupload -- Future feature, for specifying fields to be uploaded with the special button in settings, upload to web site.

addgiftlabel -- If this is filled in, the text will be used to rename the Addgift button on the main menu.

thankyoudefs -- Allows mapping of donation categories to thank you notes. For instance, if you have a T code for T-shirt sales you could put "T-tshirtack.txt" into this category so that the thank you letter "tshirtack.txt" would be used for donations marked by the code "T". Do not put spaces between the code, the hyphen, and the thank you letter.

showappealinfo -- This is a new feature that we recommend you do not use, because more design changes are in store, but basically it adds an additional field to the addgift screen that in the future will be availble for more sophisticated reporting on donations. The additional field can be up to 10 characters (all capitals or numbers) that you would use to code your gifts. HP200304 could be 2003 house party #4, for instance, and PR200403 would be Prospect Mailing 2004 #3. We want feedback on this as we want to have more reporting capability before people start using this in large numbers.

topmarginpoints -- The size of the top margin to use when printing thank you notes in ODB. Default is 79 points, or 1.15 inches.

showgender -- Default is off. If it is set to ON, ODB will show a gender field (2 characters text), which will appear on the 2-line printout

showDOB -- Default is off. If it is set to ON, ODB will show a date of birth field, which will appear on the 2-line printout

limitedextensioncategories -- Payment categories which automatically extend membership, sort of a trial membership

limitedextensionduration -- Number of months to extend a person's membership if they have made a payment in one of the limitedextension categories

autofetchdb -- Absolute file path of another ODB database containing lookup data

autofetchdesc -- A description of where the data is from, it is from a ______ .

autofetchalways -- If true, ODB will be more aggressive in prompting the user to take advantage of looked up data

thankyoudateshift -- If true, the date on a thank you note will be shifted to the left margin.