We've updated the app to integrate better on native devices when you add the web app website to your home screen. In particular, on iOS there was previously some issues where clicking links within the app would open in a new Safari window. This has been corrected.

A new version of our Android app has been released, which includes two bug fixes.

First, it was previously not possible to update your family photo on the "My Profile" screen. That issue has been corrected.

Second, it was previously not possible to watch the livestream video in fullscreen landscape mode. This is now possible if you have auto-rotate enabled on your device.

When creating messages you can now apply basic formatting, such as bolding, italics, lists, and maybe the most useful—links. And, in addition to the formatting toolbar, the rich text editor also supports the following shortcuts:

• Bold: Control B
• Italicize: Control I
• Underline: Control U
• Create a bulleted list: Control Shift 8
• Create a numbered list: Control Shift 7
• Create a link: Control K
• Add a line break: Shift Enter

Note, on macOS, replace the Control key in these examples with the Command key.

We've fixed a bug on the edit person page (only available to administrators) where when you updated someone's group email preferences (in the edit email dialog), it wouldn't actually save those changes.

You can now personalize prayer requests a little more by adding a photo to them.

We've added a new email notification that is sent to all active members (with an email address set) as soon as new prayer requests are created.

If you'd like to disable this behaviour, there is an option for this on the prayers settings page. There is also a new "Prayer request notifications" option on the "My Profile" page, should an individual not want to receive these notifications.

It's now possible to require that messages created in Church Social first receive approval from a message approver before they are actually sent. You can find this new option on the message settings page under the "Message Approvals" heading.

By default, when this feature is enabled, all messages will require approval, unless they are sent to less than 15 people. You can adjust this threshold in the message settings. Additionally, you can optionally choose to auto approve messages from:

• Office bearers
• Group admins to their groups
• Pre-approved users

To enable the message approvals feature, you must set at least one message approver. When a message requires approval, the message approvers will receive an email notification, making them aware that a message requires approval. They'll be presented with the choice to either approve or deny the message. In the event that they deny the message, they can optionally provide a reason why, which will be sent to the original sender.

We've corrected a bug with the family reports where the email column would be blank in situations where a family only has one member. This was most noticeable in the "Family contact list" report.

It's now possible to have up to ten administrators per group or schedule. Previously you could only have one. Also, now when you print a schedule, it will include who manages the schedule.

We've added the ability to add and remove families from a shepherding group directly from the group page. Previously the only way to change this was to edit this on a person's page in the "People" section.

Now when you (as an administrator) visit a shepherding group page, you'll see a new "Edit families" option in the three-dot dropdown menu. From there you'll see a list of all the active families within your church, and can add or remove them from that group.

Note, there is a "Remove families from existing shepherding groups when adding" option in this dialog, which will automatically remove a family from all their existing shepherding groups. This can be really helpful if families only ever exist in one shepherding group in your church.

Today we added a new prayer wall feature to the app, which gives members a place to share prayer requests with other members. To enable this feature, visit the "Prayers" page within your account settings.

By default, all members are able to post prayer requests. However, you can choose to limit this to only administrators. Further, when posting a prayer request, members can choose to have their name shown (the default), or if they prefer, they can post their prayer request anonymously.

The native iOS and Android apps have also been updated to support this feature. When this feature is enabled, you'll see a new prayers button appear in the main navigation. This screen will show your church's latest 15 prayer requests. Please note that (at least for now) you can only create prayer requests in the web app.

A new contribution search page has been added to the giving section. Previously if you (as a treasurer) were looking for a specific contribution, it could be difficult to find, since you had to browse through each individual deposit until you found it.

This new page makes this process much easier, since you can search across all your church's past contributions. You can search by date, amount, contributor, payment method, fund, and receipt status.

Once you've found the contribution(s) you're after, you can click on them to make changes, or delete them, or view the tax receipt associated with them, or even just jump over to the deposit they're within. You can even export the search results to CSV or Excel.

A new "Shepherding group summary with fund totals" statement has been added to the giving section. This statement is very similar to the existing "Shepherding group summary" statement, with the addition of fund totals below each member. This is helpful for understanding which funds a member has contributed to.

In addition to this, we've also improved the design of the form on the giving statements page a little.

If your church uses a third-party sermon archive, such as Sermon Audio, you can now display this on the sermons page instead of the standard Church Social sermon archive.

To enable this feature, go to the "Sermons" settings page, disable the sermon archive (if it isn't already), and then add your third-party HTML embed code.

There is a new "Empty trash" button on the file trash page, which lets you permanently delete all the files in the trash much more quickly. Previously you had to permanently delete each file one at a time.