New Releases: The Reason We Invest So Much In Support

The reason we invest a disproportionate amount of resources for a software company into support is development. 

Our clients are our friends and our friends are committed to giving us their honest feedback and best ideas on how to make their lives and this software better.   

As we get those ideas we evaluate them.  Sometimes they go into production - like that afternoon.  Sometimes we put them in the hopper to evaluate by asking and listening for confirmation.  I keep a rolling log of notes from our team and every 3-4 months or so pull those notes together and translate them in a new release blog.

Executive Summary:

1. Tracking who opened an email.
2. Update a note for more than one person in a group.
3. An easier way to manage your email subscribe lists.
4. Second attendance report filter.
5. Register and Donate for mission trip support teams.
6. Add a Release Form / View Waiver to an event registration.
7. Registration matching logic for VBS and camp. 
8. Disable coach and staff notifications for event registrations.
9. Deceased church members removed from check-in.
10. Use the new editor to evite people to update their info.
11. Email or text scheduled volunteers.
12.  Create a link to give a specific amount to a specific fund.
13. Grand total given on pledge summary report.

Nitty Gritty:

1. Tracking who opened an email.  Previously the email history (Communicate / Email Settings / Email History) Opens statistic was just the total number of opens.  If one person opened an email 5 times, each time was included in the total number.  We added a Unique Opens metric to show you the number of different people who opened the email.

2. Update a note for more than one person in a group.   From within a group, you can now select multiple people, click the Action button and select Add a Note to enter the same note for everyone selected. 

The number of people receiving the note on their member record is listed at the top of the note entry page.

Note: the Email Lists attribute is a member attribute that can be customized (so you can define the name and number of subscriptions available) but not removed.  When email recipients click the option at the bottom of their email to manage subscriptions, they are taken to this page to choose which email lists they want to receive.

If you select None in any of the columns to unenroll everyone from a list, you will get the following warning.

4. Second attendance report filter.  We added Attendance Filter #2 to more easily accommodate more complex report questions. For example, you want to find people who attended worship at least 4 times in the last 6 months but have missed the last 4 weeks.  You could even use this filter with report type "Add People to a Group" to kick off a workflow.  Example two, you need to know the number of people who attended a service group 3 times and also attended a small group 6 times over the last 3 months. 

5. Register and Donate for mission trip support teams.  We recommend mission team members create their own groups and use the registration feature to recruit and communicate with a prayer and donor support team.  To help with this we added an option to allow people to register for a fundraising group without having to make a donation.

When this option is selected the registrant has two options after filling out the registration form:

6. Add a Release Form / View Waiver to an event registration.  When creating the form for an event on the Registration Settings page, we added a dropdown Registration Attribute option to add a link to a Release Form.  When you select this option you will be able to provide a link and directions that will be added to your form.

7. Registration matching logic for VBS and camp.  When people fill out a form to register for something, the system does a search to match them to member profiles already in the database.  These changes are subtle but helpful to avoid duplicates.

1. Family ID from the parent registration is used to match children on the secondary, child registration form for children or youth events.  See the event registration video for more on this.
2. We added Birth Date as a field to help match people registering for events.  This is especially helpful with kids.  First and Last Name, Email, Mobile Phone, Home Phone, Work Phone, Address1 and now Birth Date are the attributes used for identifying and matching people from a form to a profile in the database.

Both of these should really help with Camp and VBS registrations.

9. Deceased church members removed from check-in.  We added code that excludes people with the Church Member Type "Deceased" from showing up during check-in.  

11. Email or text scheduled volunteers.  We added options to email or text people who have accepted or not responded to a volunteer request.  The email and text options below the roster on the schedule are for people who have Accepted and who have Not Responded to the request, but not people who Declined.   

12. Create a link to give a specific amount to a specific fund.  Under Settings / Contributions / Settings, we added a tool to build unique giving links to:  1) a pre-selected fund, 2) a pre-determined amount, 3) a pre-defined frequency, 4) 2 of these, or 5) all 3 of these. Here's an example of the tool building a link for people to give $25 per month for missions.

13. Grand total given on pledge summary report.  We added a new bar graph at the bottom of the Pledge Summary report to show the progress as compared to the goal amount for a pledge campaign.