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Product Updates
Product Updates
Product Update - July 2026
David Simpson
July 1, 2026
We've released some shiny new features, we've upgraded some existing ones, and we're storming ahead with our project to completely overhaul the core Beacon database. It's an exciting time at Product HQ!
Back in March I described the Beacon engineering team's largest undertaking of 2026, moving our main data store from Amazon RDS to Google Spanner. Excitingly, this project is on track and we're looking forward to sharing shiny new blazing fast Beacon with you before the Summer is over. This week we've been load testing our new system with tens of millions of records and putting the finishing touches to the new system. We're expecting to have everyone migrated to the new system by the end of September. You can read my product update describing our motivations and the benefits we're expecting.
Ultimate plan account admins can now view a historical log of all of the changes that have been made to their record types. Adding a field, deleting a dropdown option, even updating a smart field will now be logged for you to review. You can see who made the change, and the before and after states of the changed field.
This is really handy for fixing mistakes, or understanding who made changes to a record type and when if things don't quite look right.
For now, you'll only be able to see changes that have happened over the last couple of weeks, but from now on you'll find all changes to your record types will be logged for you. You'll find your customisation logs under Settings.
You can now hold the 'Ctrl' or 'Command' key and click a record in a list page to open it in a new tab. Special thanks goes to Tom McHale in the Beacon sales team for complaining for almost three years that you couldn't do this!
Stewardship is a UK-based Christian donation platform that provides tax-effective giving solutions for individuals. Their popular Giving Account acts like a personal charitable fund, allowing supporters to manage all their giving in one place and benefit from Instant Gift Aid, which Stewardship claims and adds to the donation immediately.
We've built a new import template, available in your import section of Beacon, to simplify your imports from Stewardship. We've put together a Stewardship guide article to make importing your data from Stewardship a breeze.
Every year we are audited to ensure that we're still adhering to the requirements of the ISO27001 security specification. We've had the results of our audit from a few weeks ago and I'm delighted to report that we've been given another perfect score from our auditors. No major or minor non-conformities were found in Beacon's security systems and practices. Our auditor had this to say about our security position:
"Several areas of good practice were evident throughout the audit with [Beacon] being proactive in the adoption and use of platforms to improve the overall security posture and reduce any gaps in terms of monitoring and alerting"
Good secure stuff.
We've upgraded Beacon AI to run on top of the latest Google Gemini model. You might find that the responses from Beacon AI are a bit livelier and friendlier now! Find out more about Beacon AI.
Connect with fellow Beacon customers, share ideas, get tips, and discover best practices.
The Beacon Chat Facebook Group has over 700 members and we'd love to welcome you in.
This group is exclusively for Beacon customers.
Our focus is currently on our migration to Google Spanner - but next we'll then be working on our new contact preferences system to support soft opt-in.
See you next time, Beacon fans. Stay cool.
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