I’ve had a number of questions recently regarding how to manage members and families. Some of these led to slight upgrades. Here is a quick summary I hope will be helpful.

Member and family entry. When entering an entire family, start with Browse families, then add the information the family shares. You’ll be asked to enter a family member, click okay and enter as much information as you have for that person. When finished you can continue adding other family members. If you are entering just one person, you can use the same approach or go to browse members and add a new member. When you add a new member from browse members, the software will automatically create a new family.

Member and family merging. There is an option under both browse members and browse families to merge. If you have duplicate entries for an individual, merge those entries from browse members. If members are entered that share a last name and their address line 1, C/S/Z or home phone number are the same, the software will detect that and merge them into a single family. If you move a member out of the family and re-enter the same address, the tool will not merge them back into a single family. If you merge families, then the family address for the TO family will be retained and the members of the FROM family will merge into the TO family.

Moving family members out. When a child leaves home or in case of a divorce or similar, you can move one person out of the family from the View family/household page. It will give you the option to put them in another family or to create a new family all together.

Deleting families. Moving members can create families with no members, delete these directly from the browse family page. To completely delete a family, browse families to find the family and delete them from that page. It will delete all information about that family and those family members.

Deleting members. The browse members page has options to delete multiple members and to delete members not in groups. Both of these pull a list for your review and selection before deleting. All information on these members will be lost. You can delete members individually from their member information page.

Here is a summary of the new releases the past six weeks

Every other week. Many of you have asked about how to have an every other week option for meeting frequency. You no longer need to use a work around! Yesterday, Mark released a very intuitive feature that allows you to set up frequencies like every other week, every third week, etc. as well as keeping the other selected week functionality. (See Define meeting frequency on the Advanced Setup screen from the SG Admin main menu for details and access) There is also a Next meeting date on the weekly report that accommodates groups using the new functionality to get off their original schedule. Note: Weekly, and both bi-weekly and every other week options that had all 5 weeks checked have already been converted over to the new feature.

Join A Group. The Join A Group option is now being used for class, event, mission, volunteer and other sign-ups besides small groups. That created a need to allow that feature to be turned on (Customization features, security and accessibility) for some types of “groups”, but off for others. From Quick setup, step #2, you can see and then edit the option to Prevent registration / joining of groups with this response. Any group, event, class, etc. that selects as part of their group profile a preference response marked yes to prevent registration will not have the Join A Group option listed beside the group name on the browse groups page.

Link Builder. You likely know that you can link Churchteams from your website to certain types of groups such as students, men, women, recovery, etc.. Video #4 under Videos – Setup & Customization gives you clear step by step instructions on how to do this including how to access our new link builder tool. This tool allows you to pick the criterion you want and then creates the link for you to add to your website.

Performance Enhancements. Over the past couple of months we upgraded our server to improve overall database performance. We also did some internal upgrades to speed up Browse Groups and Browse Members access. You might not have even recognized these, but they are time consuming and essential components to providing you ever-improving service.

Reports & Communication. With input from some of you we’ve added the following:
Export to a .csv – now includes an option for exporting one record per family
Member listing & Group roster. Expanded output options to include photos, family members, current and past group involvement.

Member Searching & Mapping. The advanced option on Browse Members allows you to find people by searching based on an address now as well as email and phone. When you’ve located someone and go to their member information page, we’ve added a map for the individual / family address. This could be really helpful for use on a web enabled phone when doing a home visit.

Group Info Page – E-vites

If you haven’t, try out the Group View options. Notice the ability to add member pictures to your group info page. Also, I highlighted new options to allow group leaders to e-vite people to join their group and to e-vite members to update their information. Use it to: 1) e-vite spiritual gifts class members to enter their information, 2) capture mobile phone carriers to text your group, 3) keep into up-to-date.

Browse Groups Page – Radius Mapping

This one has been around a few months, but has been upgraded. The yellow pin is the search center. Green pins are open groups. Red pins are full groups. Click on a pin to view group info and email the leader. To add a map to your website, see Customization Options, then Church Website Integration.

Children’s Check-in – Stations, Tag & Text

Set up as many check in locations as you need. Families can check all their kids into their classes at any station. Churchteams will automatically combine attendance from each station into one report per class. Click the new tag button to print a label for a diaper bag or other accessory. Use the text button to notify parents if their child has a need. New Check-in video.

Key Health Indicators – Colors, Links & Graph

You saw the new colors and stacking presentation on the monthly summary we sent you last month. Did you click the group names? It will ask you for your password, then create an attendance summary by member for each group. New this month – historical graphing. (See above). Watch for info on a webinar training with our analytics mentor, Damon Stoddard.

Linkbuilder – Expands Your Website Usability

As you introduce people to your different types of groups, including serving projects, etc., why not create a link from that description on your website that just pulls up those groups? The new Linkbuilder feature will create the link you need. Customization features, then Church Website Integration.

Security

When you go to Church Website Integration, you’ll notice the provided links now have an encrypted password. All you have to do is copy them to your website. This new encryption adds a nice level of security.

Our commitment to you as a trusted client and friend is to continue upgrading and adding value to what we offer. We love hearing from and dreaming / learning with you.

Late last week Mark released a mapping upgrade to Google. You’ll notice familiar Google icons and functionality. Also, you can now enter a specific address under “Pick Your Preferences” and choose to see the groups within a radius of 1 to 100 miles. That means someone looking for a group can enter their address and both see and map groups based on the distance from their house. As you know you can zoom right to a specific house with Google maps. If you prefer greater security than that, click Customization Features, then Security and Accessibility. You can choose to limit the zoom to a neighborhood or area of town. Go to browse groups and take a look. Remember, you can customize your preferences by clicking Customization Features, then Browse Small Groups Customization Options.

Several people have mentioned to us that they would like to be able to customize the email reminders that go to leaders each week. The goal is to leverage those emails as a way to communicate with and resource leaders. One person asked about being able to customize the webpage a leader goes to when they have finished their weekly communication. We loved this idea and feel like it accomplishes the same thing as the ability to customize the email reminder. So, last week, we also released the ability for you to customize the landing page when a leader finishes his/her report. Check it out under Customization Features, then Email Reminder Options.

Is it just me, or is there a sense of excitement in the air about the potential of a new decade and what God is doing among us?

We have one more great addition before the end of the year. How about something to help with assimilation, recruiting and similar tasks?

Through the years, we learned that putting people who expressed interest in certain decisions or growth points (ex. new member’s class, joining a group, volunteering) in a group is actually much more efficient and effective than simply flagging or tagging them with a member attribute and pulling reports every time you wanted to see or do something with them. So, we began using “Connect” groups as a holding / communication pool for these people. It made those folks quickly accessible for everyone and easy to communicate with. However, we found that the extra steps to keep notes, view other information such as date of first visit and transfer to another group were cumbersome. Thus, the genesis and purpose of our NEW, COMPLETELY CUSTOMIZABLE, GROUP VIEW.

The next time you go to a group’s information page, you’ll notice things look a little different. There’s no change at the member level, but at the leader and coach levels, they will see these changes:

1. Check boxes by each name so that you can choose an individual or multiple people to transfer or remove.
2. Click on the name of an individual to view their profile and update their information. This replaces the “View Profile” column.
3. Remove option allows the leader to remove an individual or several people at once. This replaces the “Remove Member” column.
4. Transfer option allows them to remove people from this group and add them to another group in just a couple of steps.
5. Once you have created another view that is accessible at the leader and/or coach level (the small group view is the standard view), the option to pick a Group View shows up like it does at the higher security levels.

From the Administrative Assistant Level on up, in addition to the above, they can:

1. Customize group views by dragging any fixed or customized attribute or any contact information into the group view.
2. Set default view for a particular group.

In addition to all of the above, the Small Group Administrator can click Customization features – Customize Groupfinder – Group view customization and do the following:

1. Add and edit current group views.
2. Remove group views.
3. Set the default view that is used for all new groups that are created.

Notes and Recommendations:

1. You can determine who has access to which group view. The goal is to keep as few group views available at the coach level on down as possible. Yet leaving a wide range of uses for Administrative Assistants and up.
2. Each member attribute has a security level that can’t be compromised. ex. an attribute viewable only by AA and up that is included in a Group View viewable lower than AA will not show up at the lower security levels.
3. Clearly communicate with staff so that they don’t edit important Group Views, especially your primary views for leaders.
4. I’ll get a video on it out in the next few days.
5. Try it and give us your thoughts and/or feedback.

2009 has been an incredible year for Churchteams. Thank you for your encouragement and referrals. I pray you have a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year. It is our privilege to serve you.

Thanks,
Boyd

Here’s a blog copy of the email I sent out today.

Thanks for all the referrals. I can’t emphasize this enough. Your referrals mean the world to us. We’ll keep doing our best to serve you and every new customer / friend helps us continue to move forward. Here’s some stuff to know.

Check in & Security – We’ve learned a lot the past 3 months and feel really great about where we’re at with check-in and security. The videos for setup / customization and training are both done. You can also find them on the admin main menus. We even put the training video on the main menu when you log in using the check in password (view/edit that password at either SG or Membersip Admin levels). It is super easy to use and very effective. You can use the same idea to check in teenagers or volunteers or anyone else.

Add/edit members from meeting report page – In the process of tweaking for use in check in, we upgraded all the meeting reports so that you can add new members or edit members right from the report page. This makes it way easier for your leaders and staff to enter new people.

Texting Ideas

1. Give preschool parents confidence by adding their cell #s and carriers to pre-schooler information. Then you can text mom/dad if they are needed.
2. It looks like it might be a cold winter. Why not use the request to upgrade member info (see below) to update cell #s and carriers so you can use texting as well as email this winter to alert everyone to weather driven schedule changes or remind them of events?
3. One student pastor is looking to have a text ready to email from Churchteams at a critical time in his message to get feedback from the kids (it will go to his inbox). For those who don’t get the text, he’ll have them text their name and mobile carrier to his or someone else’s phone to collect the new numbers. Can you imagine everyone’s phone buzzing at once?

Request for members to update their own information – It is worth repeating. From member or group reports there is an option to send an email to ask your people to update their own information – a self-updating database! You choose who to send it to and using the “other options” you can send reminders to those who haven’t responded. Combine it with announcements on Sundays and you’ll have better info than you’ve ever had. Control what information they can access under member customizations. This would be a great way to grab mobile carriers for texting.

Contributions – We added a new report at the member administrator level to be able to pull detailed reports which essentially recall all entries over a designated date range including a single day / batch. The summary report enables you to see your giving over any period of time. Churches that are using this part of the tool are giving it a thumbs up.

2010 – The new year is just a couple of months away. Have you thought about upgrading your use of Churchteams? You have all the features already. It might be a great way to help your budget and stewardship.

Coming soon – some of you are curious as to what we’re working on. Right now, we’re taking the assimilation lessons we’ve learned the last 3-4 years and adding features that will simplify and smooth out the flow of people from one place to another or from decision to application. Also, we’re going to upgrade our mapping features.

We value the opportunity you’ve given us to serve you. It is our commitment to serve you well for the honor of the One we all serve.

(This is updated from the original email)
About 18 months ago we decided to begin creating a full Church Management System option. So, we created the contributions feature, then we expanded what we were doing to an extensive members and family tracking and much more. We’ll continue adding features, but with this one, I believe we’re ready to offer you a full CMS solution. We’ve pretty well learned how to do check in for kids and volunteers and last week we added security. Here’s the scoop.

Electronic children’s check-in and security! This is huge. From the Administrator Assistant main menu only, click on the Childcare check-in customization steps to customize labels and set up / test your label printer. From the Small Group Admin or Membership Admin level go to password administration and customize a password for check-in login (default is admin password plus “check”). Then using Internet Explorer 7.0 or higher login using this new password. Hold down control and click Check-in for the groups you want to check in at that station. All you’ll have to do is check them present and click on the label button to print a label for kiddo and another one for dad/mom with a randomly designated 5 place alpha-numeric. When everyone is checked in, just click to save the attendance. If you want to send an email, put in the parent’s email for the kids and email parents an update on what happened in class. I’ll update the video page soon with a new video to walk you through training volunteers.

Manual check in roster and entering attendance. Click “Reports and Communication” – “Group Reports” – “Check in roster”. Allows you to pick dates / groups to print out a check in sheet for either a single group or a whole set of a certain group type. When you’re ready to enter attendance as a batch, login as the Administrative Assistant, click Enter Batch Attendance, then designate the same groups and dates. This will enable you to enter attendance for each group quickly over any date range.

Parent and family communication. Click “Reports and Communication” – “Either Group Reports or Member Reports” – “Family Labels”. Notice we have added two new options to designate “Parents of” or “Lastname Family”. This will be great for sending out postcards, flyers and letters.

How much extra does it cost? Nothing extra. We’re not going modular in our business plan. If you start using these other features, you might find you have more people in the database which may take you to the next pricing level. We figured that would be enough. Plus, this is aligned with our commitment to constantly improve the tool to better serve churches. I pray you find these features for children’s ministry helpful.

We’re here to serve you. For real.

Picture the closet with the fan running to keep the server from overheating. Remember the frustration of the server going down and lost time as well as the repair cost? Remember back further (those who can) – there was a day we didn’t have a server in the church office. We used a rolladex and index cards and miles of files. I’m glad the rolladex, index cards and the miles of files are gone; but I miss being server free. What if we could have both? I’ve had several conversations the last few weeks about such a church office heaven. Yesterday with Greg Atkinson of the Church 2.0 project and a noted blogger and speaker on church tech. You have to check out his stuff for leadership network as well as GregAtkinson.com. Especially check out his blogs on May 5, 2009 and the responses. It’s beginning to happen. Churchteams was made for such a time as this. For almost 10 years we’ve been preparing for the future. It is exciting to see that it is just around the corner. Someday, we’ll look back and write about church servers and categorize them in the same file as the rolladex. Just watch. When you’re ready check in with Churchteams. We are ready now and will even better then. BTW, we’ll give you a simpler tool and save you a bundle of money. That’s the beauty and value of the Internet!