Today we are pleased to announce the release of eWitness support for our document signing module. This advancement means that our Contract Enquiries and Transfers module can handle deed style transfer documents.

eWitness support allows each document signatory to nominate a witness. The witness is sent a link, which takes them to the same document on their device. Through a hand shaking protocol the system ensures that the witness and signatory are together and that there is a clear line of sight between them.

Witnesses are required to provide the legally required information including; their name, address, occupation and signature. Document templates can have merge fields or input fields defined for each of these allowing you to produce professional looking documents close in likeness to your original paper based forms.

The details of each witness are added to the signed document and the document audit log. 

Keeping the pace up on new features, we are pleased to announce the release of our Contract Renewals self-service module.

With this module you can:

•	Send renewal letters to your customers containing a two part secure renewal code
•	Enable your customers to authenticate using the two part secure renewal code, select their renewal option and pay for their renewal.
•	Alternatively, enable your customers to renew contracts from their "My Profile" page
•	Automatically send a receipt to your customer when payment is made

As with all our self-service features:

•	You can tailor the colours and styles to match your website.
•	You can integrate payments with Stripe. 
 

To reflect the advancement in Life Events over the last year, we have updated our website. The new content and layout gives a much better picture of all the amazing things that Life Events can do as a world class, industry leading, product. 

The most impressive part of the new website is the range of our self-service facilities, which we are pretty sure is second to none. 

Today we are pleased to announce the release of one of our most ambitious modules: The Contract Enquiries and Transfers module. 

This module enables the effective and consistent tracking and management of Deed of grant transfers, purchases, surrenders and name / address changes. It includes self-service enquiries for the general public, back office processing and integration with our document signing module.

With this module you can be assured that correct due process will be followed for every transfer with a full record of all documents produced and checks made.

Self-service enquiries:

•	Self-service enquiries can be logged though an intuitive interface for the general public. 
•	Configure the types of enquiries that can be taken, including support for transfers, purchases, surrenders and name / address changes
•	Allows the public to upload supporting documents

Back office facilities:

•	Allows the manual creation of enquiries
•	Process multiple contracts through a single enquiry (provided the parties are the same)
•	Enforces the validation of all details entered through the public interface, including plot references, contracts and customers before processing can continue
•	Allows the back entry of plots and contracts from legacy registers with auto filling of details already provided.
•	Record the details of the documents checked (including identity checks, address checks and name change checks)
•	Generates paperwork for Statutory Declaration, Form of Renunciation, Form of Assignment, Form of Assent, etc. and links to the Life Events document signing module to allow these documents to be signed digitally.
•	Intelligently identifies which paperwork is needed and which parties should go on each document, including support for mixed methods (Form of probate + Form of Surrender + Form of Assent) 
•	Automatically completes document checks and sends confirmation emails when documents are signed digitally.
•	Book and track appointments for a family to attend a meeting in the office to discuss the transfer
•	On completion of checks and forms the system automatically updates ownership records to show the new owner details and dates of changes made, maintaining a record of the previous ownership
•	Allows you to generate new title deeds certificate and associated correspondence for the new owner
•	Raise charges and invoices.
•	Configure workflow automation, including completion emails and chasing emails
•	Merge duplicate customer records as part of the process 

Spotlight on delivery! Quite literally this month, as we are thrilled to announce the release of our shipping and fulfilment module. This module dovetails into our disposal of remains, supplier ordering and online shop modules, to provide the means for shipping items from each module to your customers. With the shipping and fulfilment module you can:

 •	Create shipments containing "ready to ship" items, including stock products, custom items ordered and received from suppliers and cremated remains.
•	Print packing slips
•	Purchase and print shipping labels from a variety of shipping providers, including Yodel, Royal Mail, Parcel force, Dpd and more with ShipStation.com integration.
•	Track parcel progress with your shipping provider, with automatic completion when items are delivered.
•	Arrange self-delivery using your in-house resources and use our QR code based Delivery Tracking application to track self-deliveries, capture signatures and photograph delivered parcels.
•	Generate mailings when deliveries are complete.
•	Tailor the colours and styles to match your website. 

After a very productive month we are pleased to announce the release of our self-service shop facility, along with a number of other significant developments. 

The self-service shop allows pet crematoria to make stand alone sales of pet memorabilia, urns, figurines and other products.

With the online shop you can: 

•	Enter all your memorial products along with images and descriptions
•	Feed sales into our order processing facilities permitting you to review and order customised items from your suppliers 
•	Track delivery to your customers with order fulfilment 

As with all our self-service features:

•	You can tailor the colours and styles to match your website.
•	You can integrate payments with Stripe. 

Other developments in this release include:

•	The support for Pet Funeral services that contract out to crematoria
•	The ability to turn standard fields on an off in the system
•	Support for custom fields
•	New product automations for arrivals, including conditions based on collection distance 

Today we are pleased to release three features that refine the existing capabilities of the system.

1) Statistics have been added to the Plot and Asset inspection module. You can now report on inspection results and risk levels across your cemeteries, cross comparing multiple categories.

2) The emails for standard notifications can now use custom templates, with an easy to configure section in the system settings to assign a template to each type of notification. Standard notifications include: the Invitation to set up a "My profile" account, the Invoice covering email and the Genealogy purchase emails. Custom templates are maintained in the built in word processor.

3) New automation hooks have been added to the booking system to trigger automation events when bookings are created or amended. Coupled with the existing "Send a Document" automation action, this enables the system to generate email confirmations for new bookings and updated bookings, which a very high degree of flexibility over recipients, email contents, conditional actions and follow on automation. 

Following the same tune as our last post, we are pleased to announce that all of our manuals and our context sensitive help are written and live. The help covers all aspects of the bereavement services system, including burial and cremation administration, risk assessment and finance.

Our online help makes use of the Datawing Knowledge Base engine, which was written some 14 years ago when the service was known as CliqueCloud. The knowledge base can be embedded into websites and invoked to show context sensitive help.

Every organisation that uses Life Events has access to the Datawing Help Desk and Knowledge Base engine to help them better serve their internal and external customers. A forth-coming project is to integrate the Help Desk facility more closely with Life Events to provide an integrated Comments and Complaints facility with links to individual events. 

At the start of the Life Events project I created a project chart containing all the essential features I wanted in the system. At the end of the chart was a development labelled "Azure Active Directory authentication". The project chart has evolved over time, with many many additions before and after this development and bit by bit each feature has turned green marking it as completed. 

So, here we are 2 ½ years later and I am pleased to announce that "Entra" authentication, as it is now known, has turned green. Also turning green today is the "map overlays" feature, which allows grave spaces on maps to be coloured based on various categories, such as grave type, remaining space, risk assessment status, and many more.

Today is therefore a momentous occasion because that original plan for the software is complete. But, this doesn't mean the software is completely finished! We have a spectacular vision for the future of Life Events and we are only part of the way there. There's another 14 months' worth of exciting developments in the pipeline already and a road map stretching many more years into the future.


 

Today we released the standard accounting reports for Life Events promised in our new years news post. This includes:

•	Comprehensive cash banking facilities
•	Nominal analysis report
•	Sales day book report

The cash banking facilities include:

•	The generation of banking batches
•	The production of banking slips / cash reconciliation statements
•	Nominal analysis of cash
•	Facilities to search for batches
•	The ability to undo the last batch in case of mistake