Our team has been busy the last few months responding to customer ideas that make the software just a little always-better. 

These are listed in order of their release with the most current one first.  All of these were released in June, July, and August. 

It just happens this time that my favorite one, the update that I think may be most useful, is #1.  It was released a little over a week ago.  I think you'll love how it improves your website registration experience.  

1. Use pop-ups for registration from your website.
2. Use text message templates with free texting.
3. Guardrails for group auto-registration from forms.
4. Button and page title changes in service volunteers.
5. Print option added to service volunteer schedule.
6. Check-in Adults and College roles with other families.
7. Incremental search now includes legal first name.
8. Donor portal option shows giving for entire household.
9. Filter reports for families with or without children.

Over time data has a tendency to drift off the road and even crash.  The application itself might be fine, but the data is a wreck. When this happens, those depending on it no longer trust it, and start looking for something new.  

One popular solution is to put a sentry at the gate of the database.  This person is responsible for all data entry, reports, and maintenance.  This solution helps keep data safe, but it also creates a bottleneck on use of the data.  Like an accident on a 4 lane highway narrowing traffic down to one lane, church staff end up looking for detours to get their work done.  Pretty soon the staff has data in so many locations they find themselves once again lacking trust in the core data.

We've felt for a long time that the database itself could become a decentralized sentry.  We built reminder emails (groups, volunteers, payments) to make sure data is consistently collected.  We built scheduled reports to automate communication of information.  

We've also started building guardrails designed to keep data from getting wrecked.  In fact, we've released seven of these in the past couple of months.  Here they are along with a few other new releases.

This morning we released an upgrade to automate important database changes that need to happen when someone is marked as deceased.  Usually this comes up because a surviving family member has received a letter, an email, a giving statement or some other communication that includes their deceased loved one's name or other information. 

The development team has been busy responding to requests and upgrading the system.  This first one has been requested a lot and will speed up check-in for events where pre-registration was required and you want to have everything ready as soon as people arrive.  No electronic check-in required.

1. Pre-print check-in name tags and security labels.
2. Disable Text-to-Chat.
3. Two word keywords for Text-to-Church.
4. New email editor options.
5. Report filters by next month dates for workflows.
6. Include "Fees Covered" on financial reports.

Just this week I received texts from my dentist, doctor, city utilities, a political survey, Verizon, Chase Bank, Honda, and Eddie Bauer.  I can even text my dentist back if I have a question or need to change my appointment and they respond personally!  I bet you've had the same experience. 

You've cast the vision for a new year, a new building, or a new missions opportunity.  You've asked people to pray to determine the part God would have them play in investing in this vision over the next months or years.  Now, it's time to let them respond.

The cardstock pledge cards have been handed out.  With them you gave out some really cool, branded pens as swag. The cards are collected and expectantly prayed over.  

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.

If you follow this blog, you know that last week we released an important change to our look and feel.  The post focused on the ability to quickly look at a series of pinned attributes to have a sense of where someone is on your discipleship profile spectrum.

As you can see it gives a picture of their involvement with just a glance.  And it's fully customizable to accommodate the attributes you define as discipleship measures.  (Check out the Discipleship Signs series for more on that.)

Six years ago we released an initial version of our volunteer scheduling feature.  It has been updated many times since then, but nothing like we are rolling out tonight.  Tonight's release of SERVICE VOLUNTEERS fills in the gaps to elevate this feature to the very top tier in the industry.

Our Volunteers feature lets you create a group and then schedule that team to serve.  With SERVICE VOLUNTEERS you create Templates made up of all the groups serving during a given service. 

Using the template you can schedule volunteers across all teams, see blocked out dates, potential conflicts, email or text everyone, and choose from 3 options for volunteers to get their own substitutes.