Top 10 Affino Developments in 2012

I’ve been tweaking this list for a few days now, there are so many improvements in Affino over the past year. We completed a record-breaking 1,580 projects over 6 releases, and brought out Affino 7 during the course of the year.

1) Productivity

In 2012 our top focus was to make each and every Affino user as productive as possible. Users will now find that no matter what they do, it will be faster, more intuitive and will simply work.

We spent a lot of time meeting with, observing, and listening to the Affino community over the course of the year and have made hundreds of improvements to address pain-points and repetitive tasks. Anyone using Affino 7 will find that things get done much faster than ever before.

2) Control Centre Update

Every aspect of the Control Centre has been re-imagined, from direct URL access to all screens, through to smart sorting of all the Control Centres to show you what you have / haven’t worked on.

This meant going over each and every management screen in Affino and making it as effective as possible. Listing screens now all have smart searches and filters, they have smart links and better sorting. View screens have many more in-context lookups, have been simplified, and are easier to find. Edit screens have new instant lookups, improved help and improved feedback and previews.

3) Design Centre Update

The new HTML-based Design Centre has been a major undertaking. It’s already more intuitive than the previous one, and will be evolving rapidly over the year ahead. It’s a great new foundation for all the improvements we’re going to be doing on Responsive design.

4) Mobile / Tablet New

Affino’s newly mobile / tablet optimised Control Centre is a major step forward in making everything about Affino mobile and touch friendly. Affino now also has much improved Viewport support and better mobile Skins, and we have a great platform for moving ahead towards a Responsive world.

5) Checkout Update

The new Checkout was a project eight months in the making. To achieve it we re-wrote all the ecommerce engines from the ground-up. We also greatly improved and simplified the store management to make it much easier and more approachable for beginners.

6) Newsletter / Messaging Update

Affino has greatly improved messaging all round. Every aspect of how messages are generated, sent, personalised, tracked, bounce-handled, managed and viewed have been improved.

7) Customer Ladder Update

The new Customer Ladder Analysis centre delivers a far more effective experience, surfacing new leads, community leaders and productive members of the team. New incentives, Conversion Event chaining and triggers mean that you can now create advanced automated marketing workflows and responders.

8) Social CRM Update

Affino’s Social CRM had some important new capabilities including Project, Contract and Opportunity management. It also has greatly improved Contact and Account management. When combined with the automation of the Customer Ladder and Lead Generation tools, Affino is now a great online B to B sales tool.

9) Styling Update

Affino pages can be styled much more effectively than before as a result of the dozens of improvements we’ve made over the course of the year. All the Design Elements had a make-over. Design Styles are far more capable, especially for font styling. Design Menus have smarter layouts, and Forms have been re-styled so they look great on whatever device.

10) Recruitment Update

Affino’s Recruitment engine has been majorly evolved during the course of the year. It can now handle multiple territories; integrates with Broadbean and Bullhorn. It has greatly improved job matching and recommendations, along with CV and member management.

For the full breakdown of the top new features of 2012 see the Mindmap below.