We are really excited to release Biographica. This application integrates The RAiser’s Edge with Gmail (or Google Apps). This means that from within your Gmail inbox you can see details of a supporter as their email arrives. At the current time we show the biographical details (name, address, email and phone), constituent code, solicitor/canvasser, a gift summary and recently attended events. We only show this information if it is available for the constituent (so we don’t leave a lot of blank headers and take up a lot of space). Check out the product and view the screencast on our Zeidman Development site: http://www.zeidman.info/Integration/biographica.php

How do we make this magic happen? Well we make use of a third party extension for Firefox, Chrome and Safari called Rapportive. Rapportive (who were recently purchased by LinkedIn) show you a lot of information about the incoming email address. In fact they will show you information about any linked email address or twitter handle. Their system allows for extensions called raplets which can also display information in the Rapportive bar so not only do you get some Raiser’s Edge goodness you also get a lot of social media information too including LinkedIn, Twitter feeds, Facebook activity, links to other social media sites that the sender has and not to forget information that you have about them in your contact address book within GMail.

Unlike our other products we do not have a free download of Biographica at this time.  If you are very keen though we may be able to arrange a trial!

Unfortunately, in common with all our other customisations, Biographica will not be available in Blackbaud’s hosted environment at the current time however it may work in other hosted environments so do please ask for details.