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.  

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.