Multiple file attachments, family names, and more printable content
This week we have a bunch of small updates we wanted to share with you, and decided a summary blog post would be the best way to do that. We've made improvements to the messaging tools, family names, and have added more printable content to the app.
Multiple file attachments in messages
You can now add multiple file attachments to messages again! We had removed this functionality in the redesign in an attempt to simplify the new message form, but we've heard you loud and clear—you want the ability to do this! Keep in mind that the combined file size for all attachments can only be 8MB.
See recipients in message emails
One thing that wasn't immediately obvious when receiving an email from Church Social is who the message was all sent to. Was it sent to everyone, or a group, or maybe only a few people? To find out, you had to log into the app and view the message there to see the recipients list. To make this more clear, we've added a recipients description to the top of all message notification emails.
Family name improvements
We've made two small, but important changes related to family names. First, previously, when viewing a widow in the member directory, the widow's maiden name was not visible. This is because we only showed the maiden name for families with active marriages. However, in situations where a woman has lost her husband, it makes a lot of sense to still show this information, and so we've added that in.
The second change is a little more subtle. One really great feature of Church Social is it's ability to automatically generate family names for you. We do this by looking at the primary family member name, the spouse's name, their membership status (they must be an active member to appear in the member directory), as well as their privacy settings. Pulling this all together, we can determine an appropriate family name. However, there has always been a bit of a glitch with non-member families. Since they don't have active memberships, it only ever showed the primary family member's name. Now this wasn't a big deal, since these families only show up in reports. However, we wanted to fix this. Now, when we generate family names for non-member families, we simply ignore their membership status and privacy settings (since this information is only ever available to administrators).
Council family cards
Some congregations maintain a printed version of the member directory specifically for office bearers. This includes extra information, such as the ward (district), birth dates, marriage dates, baptism and profession of faith information, membership status, in addition to the family's contact information. These council family cards can now be generated directly in Church Social from the council section. To do this, find a family member in the "member close-up" tool, and click the "download family card" button.
Printable member directory card view
We recently had a request from the Aldergrove Canadian Reformed Church where they wanted to print the card view of the member directory. This view includes just the family photo and their names. They include this with their church's welcome package for new members. We thought this was a neat idea, so we added the ability to generate a print ready version of this right from the member directory. Just click the "more" button, and then click "download print version".
