By: Chris Gegenheimer (Chemonics) and Leslie Sage (DevResults) Back in September, Chemonics and DevResults spoke at MERL Tech DC about the inherent compromise involved when purchasing enterprise software. In short, if you want good software that does everything you want exactly the way you want it, cheap software that is affordable and sustainable, and fast software that is available immediately and responsive to emerging needs, you may have to relax »

Here at DevResults, we believe in transparency and openness. It's in our company culture code. It's why we support things like the International Aid Transparency Initiative (IATI), both philosophically and technically. And as part of the international development community, we just think transparency and openness make sense. That's why we've been following the development and implementation of USAID's Open Data Policy, aka ADS 579, aka the Development Data Library (DDL) »

All of the world's major donors have agreed to publish their data using the International Aid Transparency Initiative (IATI) standard. Many now require that grantees and recipients report back to them in IATI format. In 2017, DevResults responded by developing one-click IATI exports. Earlier this summer we expanded our IATI support to include additional activity information. Now we've added even more options to better serve our customers who face mandatory »

We're actively working to expand our support of the IATI activity standard. We've already enabled IATI exports for the activity data housed in DevResults and this next phase will expand the scope of information you can include. It is our intention to offer complete tools for adding and exporting the following IATI activity elements by July 15th, though you may see some of them go live earlier: recipient-country recipient-region sector »

On May 23, DevResults hosted a discussion on the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). In partnership with Sonjara and SurveyCTO, we wanted to bring together our clients, partners, and the international development community to discuss GDPR and its implications for the community as a whole. With just two days to go before the law came into effect, the room was a mixture of stress, excitement, and uncertainty. Our »

You’ve probably received a dozen emails in the past few weeks from companies letting you know that they’ve updated their privacy policies and terms of service. The impetus for this is the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) -- an EU regulation that seeks to protect the privacy of individuals -- which comes into effect on May 25. Why is this important? The new regulation means organizations (private, public, »

It's been happening again lately: I'll be working with an organization to figure out how we can help them manage their data. They'll be excited about working with our team, getting organized, and of course, a future filled with beautiful visualization and dashboards. Then, I'll get the call/email. "My boss/board/C-suite exec wants to know if we'll own the system." "Do we have to keep paying for the »

Stage one is complete. We're in the middle of a big project to bring you relational data tables. Relational data tables will allow you to link one or more tables by information common to both. For example, you'll be able to have one table of trainees and a separate table of all the trainings they attend without needing to repeat demographic information (age, sex, etc.) about them every time. This »

What are relational tables? Relational tables let you link two or more tables using information shared between them. Imagine a table of beneficiaries and a table survey responses. The beneficiary table includes the beneficiary's ID and demographic information about them. In the table of survey responses, each response set would be identified with the ID of the beneficiary who took the survey. If these tables are relational, or "linked", then »

While there is no way to guarantee that M&E software will solve all of your problems or make all of your colleagues happy, there absolutely are things you can do during the discovery, procurement, and contracts stages to mitigate against the risk of getting bamboozled. #1 – Trust no one. Test everything. Most development practitioners I speak with are balancing a heavy load of client work, internal programmatic and »

After months of work and four months in beta testing and refinement, we are proud to announce the official release of our New Dashboards. Dashboards have been completely rewritten to provide snappier visualization, multiple and shared dashboards, customizable default dashboards, faster performance, more filters, and an updated look. Here's a rundown of the changes. New Functionality Multiple Dashboards - Create a dashboard for your own navigation. Create one for the »

We are pleased to announce our latest major visualization overhaul: the new Indicator Choropleth Map. What It Gives You The new version of the Indicator Choropleth Map (visible on the Indicator Reports tab under Map) will generate a choropleth map based on your indicator's data, just as it always has, and you can configure which reporting period and geographic disaggregation you want the map to display. But we've added several »

We know how hard it can be to manage an ever-growing suite of tools and software across your organization. While we work hard to keep improving DevResults to meet your M&E data management needs, we know we're not the only piece of software in your toolbox. We're continuing to look for ways to offer smooth and more seamless integration with your other tools, and so we're happy to »

We are very pleased to announce the Beta Release of our New Dashboard functionality! Unlike previous beta releases, this is available to all users directly in your live site by going to the Dashboard menu and selecting New Dashboard (Beta). With multiple, shareable dashboards and interactive widgets, the New Dashboard gives you more control over more engaging dashboards. Here's what you need to know to go test it out. What's »

We believe that development data is critical for transparency and accountability, and we're committed to making practitioners' work easier. That's why we're excited to announce one-click exporting of DevResults data in the International Aid Transparency Initiative (IATI) format. The XML file that's generated can be published to the IATI Repository, used for reporting to funders, or shared with other organizations. 1 Why is this important? IATI was created to help »

One of the features our clients appreciate most is the submission, approval, and locking workflow we have for direct entry indicator data. Many of you have requested a similar process for data stored within data tables. This is much trickier, since each data table might feed dozens of indicators, with multiple date columns, etc. But never fear! The lovely and talented engineers here at DevResults put their heads together and »

The donors of the world invested $132 billion last year in global development projects, but most donors and implementers are still unable to account for results. And most development workers in the field still don't have the tools they deserve. The solution is not to keep trying to re-create commercially available software in-house. Some history: A few years back, before we made DevResults, we were a web development shop. Much »

When we first started on DevResults in 2009, our goal was to make it easier for projects to manage their work and use their data. Over time, we expanded the scope of our software to support entire USAID Missions, regional programs, and globally-distributed organizations managing portfolios across dozens of countries. Today, our goal is to make software that meets the local and evolving needs of practitioners in the field while »

We are pleased to announce the first of our major visualization overhauls: the new Indicator Targets vs. Actuals Graph. What It Gives You The new visualization unleashes all kinds of new functionality, including: Depending on the indicator's configuration, you can choose from one of four graph types: Line (like the old visualization) Area Column Stacked Column You can choose whether to display data incrementally or cumulatively. You can choose to »

No matter how great your workflow is, odds are that eventually someone will create a duplicate location in your DevResults site--even if you're the only one creating them. And it's totally possible that data has already been collected or calculated for that duplicate location. We wanted to make finding and merging duplicate locations simple, so we are proud to introduce our latest addition: the Merge Duplicate Locations Tool! 1 Why »

Over the last two years, we've greatly expanded the ways we let you know about changes in the software. We're excited to announce a new addition to this: Release Notes. We also wanted to take the opportunity to remind you of all the ways you can stay up to date on what's happening with us. Release Notes We make changes to the software almost every day. In the last year, »

DevResults provides unlimited document and photo storage, and many clients love this feature. But for those of you who already have existing document storage solutions, never fear! We're excited to introduce our latest feature: the ability to connect your Dropbox account to your DevResults site. 1 Why Would I Use It? Bottom line: it lets you keep using the Dropbox structure you're used to while also exposing that in DevResults, »

We're always working to make DevResults easier to understand and use. Last year we released our Something's Wrong tool to make it easier to report bugs or ask questions from within your DevResults site. Now we are proud to unveil our latest tool to help you use DevResults better: the Help Menu. This makes a lot of our help site resources available from within DevResults. The best thing about it? »

Reporting Cycles will let you more easily assign different reporting frequencies to your indicators, like having some indicators report annually and some report quarterly. 1 How Does It Work? Reporting Cycles contain Reporting Periods. A quarterly Reporting Cycle contains all of your quarterly Reporting Periods; an annual Reporting Cycle contains all of your annual Reporting Periods. You can view and manage Reporting Cycles under Administration > Reporting Cycles. Reporting Periods are »

When we released the new index pages in December, we added bulk import of new activities, organizations, and locations and promised you bulk import of new indicators. Well, the time has come--we now have a bulk import tool for new indicators, too! To celebrate, we wanted to give you a refresher on how to use the bulk import tools for all index pages. 1 When/Why Would I Want to »