A few days ago we wrote about three time-savers you'll notice straight away, with a short walkthrough video. As promised, there is a good deal more, so here is the next instalment.
No big headline features this time. What is here matters just as much, though, because it is the sort of thing that helps you look after your church's data properly. Knowing who changed what and when. Recording a death with the Care it deserves. Keeping phone numbers in a field that understands them. Stopping someone quietly creating a second account for themselves.
One of them needs you to switch it on. The rest are there now, waiting for you.
The short version
When someone books an event or signs up for something while logged out, they often create a second account. You are then left with two records for the same person, and the job of merging them.
Each payment group now has a setting that prevents this. With it ticked, a logged-out visitor is first asked for their email address. If it matches an account on your site, they are taken to the login page with their email already filled in, then return straight to the form, pre-filled from their account and scrolled to where they left off. If it doesn't match, they go straight to the form with their email pre-filled. It also matches guest delegates added to an existing account, using their name and email address.
Only accounts that can log in are matched. That is deliberate, so an unverified email address can never claim someone else's profile.
You need to turn this on.
It is off by default, and you can set it per payment group on either the simple donation settings page or the full settings page.
It suits conferences, events and subscriptions best, where giving an email address before you book is a normal part of signing up. We would leave it off your donation pages for now. It is a hard gate, and anything that adds a step before someone gives can put them off. We are working on a gentler version that matches people quietly in the background, which will be much better suited to giving, and we will write about it once it is ready.
Open any heading below to see what has changed.
Hubb now records what changed on a record, what it changed from and to, who did it and when. The Audit Log page in the web office gives you a timeline for any record, and it records phone number and address changes against the person or family they belong to. A bulk import writes a single summary entry rather than thousands of separate ones, so the log stays readable.
Alongside it, a new Export Data permission covers every way information can leave your site, so you can decide exactly who can export.
When an administrator marks someone as deceased, a date of death field appears on their record. Marking someone as deceased also archives their roles with an end date and a reason, and removes them from mailings.
You also get their age at death on the record, an age column and minimum and maximum age filters on the member list, and date of death available both in the query wizard and as a report column.
A new Phone Number type for custom fields, using the same international number picker as the mobile field on a profile. It formats the number as you type, validates it, and shows it as a tap-to-call link.
It works everywhere you edit people, including registration forms, the app profile, events, attendance and check-in, and it imports cleanly whether your spreadsheet holds numbers in national, 00-prefixed or formatted style.
Image custom fields on people and events now show a thumbnail you can click to open the picture, rather than a plain link, and the edit box previews whatever you have picked.
There is also a new 'Link to Event' custom field type, available in the web office.
The Permissions tab on a user profile now gives you a summary of what that person can actually do, rather than leaving you to work it out. Admin banners and site administrator labels are hidden from anyone without those permissions.
Not every church calls it visiting. The module can now be renamed for your site with 'Name for this module' in its settings, for example 'Pastoral Care Log', and your name carries through to the app menu, the list, the create screen and the report titles.
A few fields have changed to match. 'Contact date' replaces visit date, without the time picker, and 'Person contacted' replaces person visited. 'Visit type' becomes 'Contact type', now including 'Letter/card' and 'Flowers delivered'. There is also a new 'Download all data (CSV)' export that gives one row per visit, with your custom field values filled in.
The Role Details popup on the rota editor now takes a 'Minimum needed' number for each Role. The rota header shows it, and any slot below the minimum is highlighted in amber, updating live as you add, remove and drag people.
A new 'View gaps' task gives you a date range report, set to the next month to start with, listing every Role and date that is short and by how many. Thank you to Runnymede for asking for this one.
A rota's Properties tab has a new setting for who sees serving reminders in the app: everyone on the rota, nobody, or only the members of a group you choose.
That fixes the double reminder people were getting where a master rota and sub-rotas are used together, while leaving leaders their master view. Email reminders are not affected.
Row and column headings now stay in place as you scroll a rota on your website, so a long rota makes sense all the way down.
The form responses list now has tick boxes and a select all, with a bulk action to set the status of everything you have selected.
Better still, if your form sends an email notification when someone submits it, you can now automatically mark those responses as emailed. Edit the form, open Form Details, and tick 'Auto-set Emailed status' under Form Response Notifications. Every response then moves to 'Emailed' as its notification goes out, so it never shows as needing action in the first place.
If you haven't set up notifications yet, you will find them on the group's Summary tab, under 'Jobs'.
Between them, these two clear up a long-standing annoyance: the site tree showing outstanding items that were actually dealt with by email weeks ago.
Changing a booking that belongs to a series now offers to apply your change to the whole series, the way events already do.
You can email the set-up and clear-up contact when a booking is approved or changed if you tick the box. You can also choose to show a booking's title, rather than the resource name, on the public Resources Calendar.
The Stripe Online Bank Deposits page now exports the deposits for whatever window you choose as a CSV, with arrival dates and amounts. Much kinder on your treasurer than copying figures off the screen.
It says 30 days, and it now lasts 30 days.
There is a new option to hide the download counters on your audio and video if you would rather not show them.
Small things, but they add up. We know how much time churches spend keeping their records straight, so we will keep working on the jobs that take longer than they should.
If anything here would help your church and you are not sure where to find it, email us at support@hubb.church, and we will point you to it.
Adam