New DevResults users often ask about renaming terms on their DevResults platform. This article is a complete guide to what you can and can't change, and why.
- Configuration vs. Customization: Our approach to tailoring our software
- Renaming terms: Changing the terms applied to core data structures in DevResults
- Other Configuration Options: Descriptive activity fields, questions for narrative reporting, and drop-down menus
Configuration vs. Customization
DevResults is fully configurable. This means that 100% of the content of the platform is defined by users: your activities, frameworks, indicators, disaggregations, geographic places, reporting periods and cycles, narrative questions, tags, sectors, status options, users, user permissions groups (both the group names and their permissions settings), and organizations. You can also choose which features of DevResults are turned on or off, and brand your site using your name and logo.
DevResults is not fully customizable. Customizing software means making a copy of the code and changing certain parts. This is not how DevResults works by design; there is only one version of the DevResults software for all users, so any change we make to the platform affects all users. If you have ideas to make DevResults more flexible to suit your needs or others', we'd love to hear about it! Check out our article about feature suggestions for more info.
While we favor configurability over customizability, there are many elements within the DevResults software that you can 'customize' or tailor to an extent. Read on to discover some of these options.
Renaming terms
Because DevResults is used in a variety of contexts and settings, we try to use generic terminology whenever possible. For instance, we decided to refer to activities as 'activities', mostly because that's how the International Aid Transparency Initiative (IATI) refers to them. But many organizations use terms like projects, programs, awards, or grants. Using 'pseudonyms', you can rename certain terms in DevResults to fit your organizational preferences.
Currently, we support renaming for the following terms:
- Activities
- Locations
- Awarding organizations
- Partner organizations
- Organizations
- Indicator result comments
- Sectors
- Tags
- Mechanisms
- Activity description fields (see Customizing activity description fields below)
- Activity budget tab fields:
- Deliverables
- Memo
- Expenses and Disbursements
Terms can include spaces and some punctuation such as dashes, underscores and vertical bars, but cannot include ampersands (&), slashes (\ or /), asterisks (*), or question marks (?).
Renaming these terms offers familiarity to your users, but it comes with drawbacks. These terms can only be renamed on your site, not in our Knowledge Base, Helpdesk, Release Notes, or webinars. Organizations must weigh the cost of introducing friction between their platform and support materials versus the benefit of keeping their existing terms.
Please contact help@devresults.com if you'd like to rename one of these terms on your site, or if you'd like to suggest that we make other terms rename-able.
Other configuration options
DevResults enables users to define what fields appear on two pages:
- You can define the list of fields that appear in the description section of the activity overview page. This enables you to organize descriptive information about activities under headings that are meaningful to your organization.
- You can define the narrative questions posed along side indicator data entry for each reporting period for activities. This allows you to tailor the set of questions that ask for context, explanations, feedback and insights alongside quantitative data.
Finally, most dropdown menus throughout DevResults can be configured with options relevant to your work. These include:
- Permissions Groups
- Tags and Sectors
- Activity status options by going to Administration > Status Options
- Activity funding mechanisms by going to Administration > Mechanisms
Didn't answer your question? Please email us at help@devresults.com.