Release Notes - 2nd May 2008

We've got a pretty huge list of updates for you this month - and it's really worth taking some time to read them to help you make the most of the changes! As always - if you've got any questions please don't hesitate to contact us.

Join a Group

One of the great features of ChurchInsight is that folders in your site structure can also represent groups of people - enabling you to provide content specifically (and privately) for them, and allowing you to mail them.

Marshalling hundred's of people into the right folders can sometimes be a problem though. The "my involvement" page can obviously allow your members to apply to groups - but it can often be confusing to tell people about all the groups they could join (especially if you have a lot of groups), and you still have to make sure they visit that page...

So we've upgraded the "join a group" features. There's two new ways you can get people to join:

Using a link - when you click the button in an article there's two new link types, join a group and leave a group. So any text in your article can be used to add people to a group.
Using a component - the new join group component in the layout editor will display a link to join the group. If they are not a logged in user you can also display options for registering; and if they're already in the group they'll see options to leave the group.

The same rules apply for how these "join" actions are handled; if you've set the group to auto-approve applications (in the advanced options of the summary tab) they'll automatically be added, otherwise you'll need to approve the application as usual.

Mailing and the "Join a Group" feature

As a tool for helping you organize the people in your site into the right group this feature is invaluable but it's also got some killer side-benefits too...

Supposing you send five regular mailings to the people registered on your site. Up until now if people didn't want to receive one of those mailings they would have to select "no mailing" as their preference - and so they'd stop receiving all five (or they'd have to email you to ask you to remove them from the group). Now you can create a link in your mailing saying something like...

"If you don't wish to receive the 'Dancing with the Stars Small Group' weekly newsletter simply click here"

and link the text to "leave the group" and they just leave that group but keep receiving the other newsletters!

Mailing enhancements

Editable 'sent from' address
You can now send mailings through the Web Office from any email address. This enables church office staff to send mailings from the office email address rather than their personal email address.

Test mailing
The mailing editor screen now has a "send test email" option - so you can send a copy of the mail to your address before you send it out to everyone else. That means you can check it looks great in your mail client, give it a final check over and make sure all the links work; and, if you're not ready to send it out, you can now...

Save as draft
A 'Save as Draft' button enables a mailing's contents to be saved so it can be easily resumed and sent later.

User global fields

User global fields (custom fields on user records) can now be inserted into mailings.

Store enhancements

Flexible Contents Listing
The "digital files" tab for an item has now been replaced by a "contents listing" tab. You can still use this to attach digital files as before - with a couple of handy new features (see below), but you can also now use this area to describe the contents of a pack, or attach a pdf preview for a book.

Enhanced Item Previews
We've added a whole bunch of new options for the "preview" on purchased audio files. From this release you can now:

Automatically generate preview files from any audio file (previously it was only available for mp3s)
Set the duration of the preview (whether you've uploaded a preview file yourself or the preview has been automatically created).
Set how many seconds into the recording the preview should begin.

Plus, it also adds a nice little fade in to the start of the preview automatically!

Item and Order notes
You can already expand the database for people and organizations using the group notes feature - now you can do the same for store orders and store items. At first this might not sound that exciting - but bear with us while we explain...

For example - suppose you want to classify Bibles by translation, or the music you sell by the artist? In both cases you could create a separate category - but group notes on an item allows you to do this and retain the items in the same category. We'll also be adding further components in future to allow you to filter items in the store by these group notes; so you can allow people to refine their selection by different criteria.

In the same way - you may want ask "how did you hear about us?" with some preset options on an order - you can now do this just by adding drop-down list group note to your orders.

Store notes can be added under the new 'Notes' tab within the Store settings. If you want to display item group notes within the Store you'll need to add the new "item notes" component to your layout.

Separate listing of Digital Orders
Orders that contain digital items only are now listed separately under the 'Digital Only' title. As previously, payment is taken immediately for Digital items, but now you can view which orders came in before sending them to the archive. This is useful for seeing the amount of digital orders being made but also means refunds can be made even on Digital orders that use the ChurchInsight payment processor.

Other Store enhancements:

Store order search enhanced - email address, user id and customer name can now be searched for on Store orders in the web office.
Store Order Notifications - When a store order has been placed the confirmation email the customer receives can also be set to be sent to order managers. This is set in a new 'Notifications' tab within the store Settings.
Store item save improved - When saving changes to a store item the item is no longer closed enabling further changes to be made.

Other enhancements/fixes

New Group Note field types - We've added several new group-note field type options including Multi-selection list box, radio button, and link to article, shop item or shop section. The 'link to article' group note could ,for example, be used in a shop item display to link to the Biography of a particular author.
Payment groups - Different discounts on payment groups can now be applied to different payment schemes. This would enable a deposit and balance to be taken separately without the discount being applied to both or could be used to apply a discount for a limited period e.g. early bird discount.
New selection of "web safe" fonts added to theme editor.
Improvements to the family selection when adding an individual user record.
Email address validation enhanced.
Discuss this poll link fixed.
User merge code upgraded.