Product Update: Performance Improvements

AmpliFund has made some changes to frequently used pages in order to improve system performance. We want your input! Please send any feedback on these improvements to [e-mail].

Why these pages? 

The grant, award, sub-award, expense, and payment request pages are among the most frequently visited pages in AmpliFund. Based on the expected performance improvements and effort required to implement the updates, we determined focusing on these updates would have the largest immediate impact on user experience.   

What did we change? 

Grants, Sub-Awards, Awards, and Awarded Grants grids 

There were a number of icons next to each record name that allowed users to copy, edit, and delete the record. In order to display these icons, AmpliFund needed to do a user security check to determine if the user had access to each icon. This security check slowed performance for accounts with many records.  

To increase system performance, we have disabled the display of these icons on the grids, with the exception of the “View Award” icon on the Awards grid.  

Important note: There is no change in system functionality. The functionality of all removed icons is still available when viewing the record.  

We analyzed usage of these icons and determined that these are not heavily-used. We are confident that for those users who did leverage them, the performance gains will outweigh the cost of the change. Additionally, we are investigating alternative approaches to re-introduce this functionality in the future and will be monitoring client usage patterns and feedback to evaluate the importance of this functionality.   

Summary of Changes:   

• Fund Management 
  • Awards  
    • Current Icons: View Award, Edit 
    • Removed Icons: Edit  
• Grant Management 
  • All Grants 
    • Current Icons: Edit, Copy, Delete 
    • Removed Icons: Edit, Copy, and Delete  
  • Grants Awarded
    • Current Icons: Edit, Delete, Send Activation Email 
    • Removed Icons: Edit, Delete  
  • Sub-Awards  
    • Current Icons: Edit 
    • Removed Icons: Edit 

Expenses Page (Activity>Expenses)  

The Expenses page performance has been improved by targeting the page design and reducing the amount of data being loaded per user request. For example, previously we were loading all of the values for every possible field the user could show or hide. With the update, we will only retrieve that data when the user selects a new column or updates the filter results.    

In order to accomplish this, updates were made to the filters and grid presented on the page.  

Important note: There is no change in system functionality. The functionality of all filter options and show/hide columns is still available.  

Summary of Changes: 

• Filter By 
  • The Time dropdown and Run button were moved to the right 
  • The Clear All button was added to the bottom left on both the Expense page and Expense Detail modal  
• Options 
  • The show/hide column checkboxes were removed.   
  • Users can now show/hide columns from the column name (similar to other grid pages) 
• Actions 
  • The show/hide icon was removed 
• Icon Bar 
  • The Export icon will not be available with the initial release. We will be releasing updates to the Expense Detail and Recipient Expense Detail reports to ensure that users can still generate an export with all of the same data. This functionality will be reinstated in the near future.   

Payment Request Approvals, Payment Requests, 

The Payment Request Approvals (Activity>Payment Request Approvals) and the grant and award Payment Request (Post-Award>Cash Flow>Payment Requests) grids have been updated for performance by improving the efficiency for database queries and process for loading the results. This update was made entirely on the backend; no changes were made to the frontend.