What difference does a good team make?  Check out these new upgrades!

Have you ever been a part of or had to interact with a team that hated what they do?  All of us have and it's no fun.  In fact, relational issues are the #1 reason people leave a job.

Not so with Churchteams.  We have an incredible team that loves Jesus, each other, what they do and serving you!  I offer this blog post on recent upgrades as evidence.

All of these upgrades, released in the last three months, came from listening to you, interacting together, and using our gifts to better serve Jesus by serving your church.

Overview them all or click on one for more details.

1. Solutions for Text-to-Church number mix-ups.
2. Amount remaining added to the pledge report.
3. Mass Update Member Attribute report improved.
4. New print option for Service Volunteer teams.
5. Access Growthfinder from Me (Member Activity) page.
6. Replace coaches in ministry organizational structure.
7. Performance upgrade to reports.
8. Fix to rare payment reminder email error.

1.  Solutions for Text-to-Church number mix-ups.

Even though the actual number is usually the same, the field that contains a person's Text-to-Church number is different than the field for their mobile phone number.   Occasionally a person's Text-to-Church number gets associated with a spouse, parent, or child.  This can cause confusion when using Text-to-Church.

We recently upgraded the advanced search bar on the home page to search the Text-to-Church number as well as the home, work and mobilie number fields.  This will help you find data problems associated with Text-to-Church phone numbers.

To research or fix problems, the search will take you to a member's profile page where you will see refreshed looks for the texting icons. 

If they have a T2C number, it can be viewed and edited by clicking the text settings (blue square) icon just to the right of the mobile number and before the Text-From-Church (blue bubble) icon.  

On the settings page, be sure to leave the email address.  It is the online giving username.  

Texting END also removes the mobile number. 

 

2.  Amount remaining added to the pledge report.

The Pledge Summary report in both summary and export formats now includes the Amount Remaining if there is a positive balance.  If the pledge is fulfilled or overpaid the report shows a $0 balance.  It also shows percentage fulfilled.   

 

 

3.  Mass Update Member Attribute report improved.

 

The blog posts on tracking signs of discipleship use this report type to automatically update member attributes, but this is just scratching the surface of what you can do with this report.  The original report updated attributes for everyone that met the criteria.  With this upgrade people who already have that attribute are excluded in the update.  This improves the performance of the report and gives more accurate records of changes made.    

 

For multi-select dropdown attributes only the option to "Delete all existing values for this attribute" was updated to use this exclude logic.

 

 

 

4.  New print option for Service Volunteer teams.

To make printing more convenient we added a print option to the Service Volunteers and Team Calendar pages.  You will see this option in the menu for each team or date.  Selecting this option opens up Print Preview on your computer.

 

5.  Access Growthfinder from Me (Member Activity) page.

If Growthfinder, our customizable discipleship assessment, is enabled members can now create new and view their existing assessments by clicking the Growthfinder button on the bottom of their Member Activity page (Text ME or login to online giving > Activity).

 

 

6.  Replace coaches in ministry organizational structure.

Our scalable ministry organizational structure is unique as a way to manage groups and communication / reporting.  Our default (but customizable) language for leaders of leaders is Coach.  Previously if you needed to remove a coach from the structure, you would have to re-assign all the groups (leaders) underneath them.  With this change you can replace one coach with another.  Here's how:

Groups & Events > Organization > Coach Area.  Click the red X to delete a coach, confirm the action to get to this new page that allows you to replace them with another coach.

 

7.  Performance upgrade to reports.

Some churches with larger numbers of people and/or custom or registration attributes experience a greater lag time in putting together reports.  We added some functionality to speed this up.  Here's a short summary.

 

If filters for Custom Member attributes are chosen, the system now provides a spinner to see what's happening.  If not, then this section no longer slows down reports. Only churches with a lot of custom and registration attributes will even notice this.

 

 

Functionality of the back button has been improved.  Selected filters were previously lost if you hit the back button / arrow even though the summary showed them. For Saved Reports that were edited, the back button reverted to the original Saved Report rather than keeping the edits.  Both of these have been fixed and in most cases the fix also increases loading speed.

 

8.  Fix to rare payment reminder email error.

When sending out an email reminder for payment in a registration an error would occur if none of the selected people had a balance due.  The fix gives you a message and does not allow you to create an email reminder if none of the selected individuals has a balance due.

 

Thank you, Lord, for a great team of people who really care about the details that make churches and church staff better. Be honored in our efforts for your sake.  Amen.