IT Strategy on Ulitzer

Convio today announced expansion of its Open Platform which is helping nonprofit organizations tap the power of technology and the Internet to better reach, engage and move people to support their cause. The company is introducing Convio Web Services, a new set of standard interfaces for building client applications that retrieve and synchronize data with Convio. The company has also delivered several new APIs and launched a new developer version of its Open website which offers improved documentation as well as access to more than 60 APIs (application programming interfaces) at www.open.convio.com.

New Web Services
Convio Web Services are designed to empower clients and partners with the ability to implement data synchronization with external systems such as donor databases and also to provide external applications with flexible access to the data captured and stored in the Convio system.

Convio Web Services follow the SOAP standard, in which all messages between the client and server follow a particular secure XML format. In addition, all supported operations are described in a machine-readable document written in the Web Services Description Language (WSDL). The combination of SOAP and WSDL makes it easy to create Convio-aware applications with most popular development environments, including Java and .NET.

Convio’s Web Services will be generally available in late November. Information is available at the new Convio Open website: www.open.convio.com.

ADVANCEMENT OF OPEN APIs
An application programming interface (API) is the interface that a computer system or application provides in order to allow requests for service to be made of it by other computer programs, and/or to allow data to be exchanged between them. Convio’s rich set of APIs empowers organizations to create custom experiences that result in higher activity levels and deeper engagement. For instance, using Convio’s constituent API with a Facebook application, an organization can reach and acquire new constituents without ever taking the constituent out of the Facebook environment. Convio currently offers APIs to customize the constituent management, donation, team fundraising, events and authentication experience, and now there are new capabilities offered through the API set, including:

• Designated Giving –Allows the organization to incorporate designated giving options into their custom built donation forms
• Flexible Sustainer Giving –Allows the organization to incorporate donor defined recurring giving schedule options into their custom built donation forms
• Participant Center –Allows the organization to build a custom participant center experience for their race participants
• Address Book –Allows the organization to build a custom address book management experience for their constituents