Feature upgrades / new releases often come from users' input and end up making their work a little easier. Here's what Mary shared with us recently. (Stock photo, not really Mary.)
"Adobe wouldn't let me save my latest email newsletter because it was too big to save the way I always used to do it (8 steps 😝). So, I decided to try your “create a link” feature in Email Templates.
It worked beautifully! And in the future will save me SO MUCH TIME! Thank you for providing this tool! You guys are so wonderful at providing what we users need to do our work for God’s Kingdom."
Thank you, Mary. And here is a list of some new things we've added the last few months that you might want to know about.
- Loading speed improved for groups of 500+
- Use Member Attributes on forms to Autoregister into groups
- Coaches can access the Service Volunteer scheduling feature (Must be enabled by clients prior to 3/1/23)
- Volunteers will not be copied to new schedule if dates are blocked out
- Control which URL links show up on Text-to-Me / App page
- Emails sent through Workflows can personalize "From Name"
1. Loading speed improved for groups of 500+
Most groups don't have this problem, but groups of 500 or more used to load noticeably slower. We recommend using lists for most large collections of people like newsletters, but larger event registrations and other scenarios require use of larger groups. To solve that problem, groups with 500 or more people no longer load immediately. Instead, these groups will quickly load without showing the full roster. You can select the option to show the full roster, but that is not necessary to use other features like sending an email or text to everyone in the group.
2. Use Member Attributes on forms to Autoregister into groups
Many churches use the "Auto-register" feature associated with dropdown choices on customizable registration attributes to place people into groups from registration forms. We've now added this same option to member attributes. Go to Members > Settings > Member Attributes and select or create a dropdown attribute to see this option. The major request for it has been related to grade in school. When a family registers for anything and selects the grade for their child, the child will be automatically enrolled into the associated class.
When completed, it looks like this on the Member Attribute page.
3. Coaches can access the Service Volunteer scheduling feature (Must be enabled by clients prior to 3/1/23)
There is now an option to give people with Coach level access the ability to use the Service Volunteers feature. With this option enabled, coaches have access to the same Service Volunteer features as users at higher security levels. They can Draft edit many schedules and then send the invitations to serve all at once. This is not available at the leader only level. Also, Coaches are not restricted to creating schedules only for the groups underneath them. Current clients can enable this feature under Settings > Accessibility. It is defaulted on for all new accounts.
4. Volunteers will not be copied to new schedule if dates are blocked out
This was a logical update that has been corrected. Volunteers with the date blocked out will not be copied to the schedule for that date.
5. Control which URL links show up on Text-to-Me / App page
You can create Text-to-Me Keywords that link to any URL you choose. These also show up on our online giving / activity App. Create these by going to Communicate > Text > Settings and clicking to +Add Link. All of these links used to show up on the Me page. By checking the box as illustrated below, you can now control whether a Link shows on the Text-to-ME page.
6. Emails sent through Workflows can personalize "From Name"
If you use Workflows, you have seen this for awhile and may not have realized it wasn't there before. When you click to +Create Workflow (Communicate > Workflow), we added an option to include a From Name in addition to the Reply To email address that had been there previously. This personalizes the emails sent through Workflows so that recipients will see the name of the sender when reviewing emails in their inbox. If From Name is left blank it uses the church name as the From Name as before.