Six weeks ago we released the Member App.  Many of our clients have jumped in with both feet using all of the features.  Some have other systems in place that are similar and are still in process of evaluating how to best use the Churchteams App.  

Still others haven't jumped in.  If that's you, come on in!  The water is great.  You'll love the functionality for staff as well as members.

As is usual in a release of this magnitude, new insights and ideas come up as people swim around in it.  We've already done several upgrades and just released four more.  The first two add to the App.  The last three are settings that hide extra parts of the app.

Yes!  We've been on an exciting journey the last couple of weeks as we rolled out the new Member App.  Our thanks to so many of you for sharing your time in the briefings (recording), your excitement about the feature,  and your kind words.

In a previous blog I mentioned that there are always tweaks, and often new ideas that come after a release.  This one was no different.  The most significant one empowers staff in a completely new way on their mobile phones.  They can now use the full software through the Member App.  Yes!

By staff, I am referring to anyone that has been given access to the software at the coach level and higher.  These are assigned under Settings > Users.  

We built and have promoted the use of texting in church for a very long time.  There are things we do with Text-to-Church that are amazing.

But, for many months now we've been working on a "not so" top secret project that is ready to launch next week,  our brand new - MEMBER APP.  It is designed to give your church members and regular attenders easy, contemporary access to everything they need. 

We plan to release it next Monday night, then Tuesday morning send you an email introducing the app with a list of specific features and an introductory video that will demonstrate the User Experience.  We will also release Knowledge Base articles for customizing what groups, events, and resources are included in the app.  In addition, we are going to offer a couple of  Zoom webinars with our team to overview and discuss it live.

Register for Member App Briefing (8/24 or 8/30)

In preparation for that, here are answers to 6 questions behind our vision for this latest, very exciting upgrade.

My bookshelves used to be organized by topic and alphabeticized by author.  I could find anything quickly.  Not so much anymore.  I could give excuses, but they're a mess and make it a challenge to find something when I need it.  

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."

This is the time of the year most of us like to look back and  review what the Lord has done in our lives and work.  I know this exercise helps me put things in perspective and realize again that everything we do comes from Him.  I'd like to invite you to join me in a time of gratitude and praise for what He has done in 2022 at Churchteams.

Here's a top ten highlight list of new features pretty much in order of their release.  Keep reading for my 30,000 foot view of where we're headed and how this year prepared us for 2023 and beyond. 

1. Text-to-Chat - Two way texting.
2. Ten digit mass texting, scheduling, history
3. Pledge campaign management and self-registration
4. Pre-print name tags and security labels
5. Automate deceased actions
6. Guardrails for data - registrations, merges, deleting an attribute, changes to pledges
7. Content Pages - Links, Emojis, Tags
8. Landing pages
9. Reports - performance, tags, saved areas
10. Text-to-Chat notifications

1. Text: Chat Notifications
2. Text: Volunteer (ME) page minor changes
3. Volunteers:  Leader opt-out of accept / decline notifications
4. Volunteers:  Reminder text messages link directly to schedule
5. Volunteers:  Texts to scheduled team members who've not responded now link to schedule
6. Giving: Address for online giving
7. Giving: ACH refunds
8. Giving:  Default contributions set to start of previous year
   

We have been building software for churches for over twenty years and have regularly heard from clients about how cumbersome reports are across the industry. 

Some systems are so complex that creating a new report takes a degree in computer science. Others provide so many options that you're not sure which report is for what purpose.  Still others allow everyone to create reports and over time you're not sure who created what and which ones are still useful.

All of us realize that email marketing and website hosting are two different things. However, as we talked about last week's release of email links for text and social with our development team; we recognized that hosting email content was just a half step from being able to provide hosting for landing pages.  

It was so close in fact that we decided to build a Landing Page feature and released it with Email Links last week.  You can find it on Content Pages option under the Communicate button.