Church Director Product Blog

I’ve had quite a few of you ask me what is coming up for the next major release of Church Director. Here is a sneak preview of the new look and feel:

As you can tell, there is a new site theme that we think makes it look even better! The navigation bar has also been remodeled, with often-used features readily available.

In addition, the table listings have been cleaned up and the links converted to buttons to make them easier to find. Some tables also have filters on the upper-right corner, allowing you to switch between active and previously deleted items (think of the recycle bin on Windows or OS X).

Here is one more sneak preview:

Within each area, you are automatically taken to the most commonly needed function (in this example, your team member list) but other options are just a click away (e.g. Job Roles from the Manage My Team section).

There is more room on a screen now as well, using our new navigation tool bars. Combined with a wider screen layout to match your monitor size (1024×768 and above are common now), this release will make a huge improvement in how you use Church Director!

More previews coming soon…

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Church Director is now live at our new hosting site. It did take longer than we hoped, but not as long as we planned. Thanks to all of our customers for their patience and we pray it did not cause any issues. If you happen to see an issue, please let us know by using the Feedback link at the top of any of the pages.

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Church Director will be migrating to a new hosting site to provide better responsiveness and availability on Sunday Sept 9th, 2007. Expect outages between 3pm CDT and midnight CDT while we transfer the website over. We will do our best to limit the downtime as we perform the transfer, but we have tried to select a time frame that would have minimal impact. If you have any questions or concerns, please feel free to contact us using our feedback form.

Thanks to all our customers for the continued growth that has required this move!

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Given Church Director’s recent growth, I’ll be moving Church Director to a proper hosting site within the next one or two weeks. This should provide a performance boost with page displays, as well as provide better reliability. I’ll send another notification once the time window is established for the switch, but it should not impact anyone as it will be done after hours and will not take long.

In the mean time, I want to provide a sincere thanks to everyone who is helping us complete the beta testing. Your feedback has been invaluable and will help shape Church Director’s future!

Want an invite? You can use the beta sign-up form for to request an invitation to Church Director.

Technorati Tags: volunteer scheduling, church management, Slicehost

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Rapid Scheduling must now be activated before it will start performing the nightly auto scheduling. From any screen within the Rapid Scheduling area of your team planner, you will see a new yellow Status window:

After clicking the Activate Rapid Scheduling link, it will turn to green to indicate that it will begin mightly automatic scheduling:

Note: All planners using the Rapid Scheduling feature will need to activate their Rapid Scheduling module, as they are all currently deactivated.
Finally, there is a new Preview Calendar for the Rapid Scheduling module to visualize the weeks that your groups will be assigned events:

Enjoy!

Technorati Tags: volunteer scheduling, automatic scheduling, volunteer calendar

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One of the recent requests is a better method of getting started using Church Director for volunteer scheduling. Previously, we had a popup window that would appear after the planner is created. Now, there is a Getting Started Guide that is shown when going to the team planner after it is created, or whenever selected from your planner list within the accounts area. Here is a thumbnail of what the new screen looks like:

The screen provides an introduction on how each feature can be used. Further information is available from the Quickstart Guide, still available from the Team Calendar screen. There is also a checkbox at the bottom that can be used to disable this new Getting Started screen:

Finally, welcome to the latest round of beta testers. If you want to signup for a Church Director account, fill out the signup form and we’ll get you into the next round of beta testing.

Technorati Tags: volunteer scheduling, church scheduling, volunteer management, church leadership

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One of the biggest requests we’ve had for Church Director is to support reoccurring assignments. Rather than create a very complicated setup, we’ve opted to keep it simple (like the rest of the application) through a new feature called “Rapid Scheduling”. Here is how it works:

As a planner admin, click the “Rapid Scheduling” link on your planner:

Next, Church Director will ask you a single question: how do you want to start Rapid Scheduling?

You will then be able to view the groups that were created, and if you click the “Members” link, you can add your team members to the group:

Finally, your Rapid Scheduling groups list will show you the coverage percentage for each group:

After setting up groups and group members, Church Director will check every night for new assignments and schedule them up to one month in the future. Assignees will receive the same notification email they usually would, but without any more work from you! This should be a great timesaver for larger teams, such as children’s ministries, and teams that have set schedules, such as small groups.

If you try out the new feature, drop us a note using the Feedback link at the top of any page and let us know how you like it!

Technorati Tags: volunteer scheduling, rapid scheduling, children’s ministry, small groups, church director

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I’ve been notified by my hosting service that there will be a planned outage starting on Saturday night, February 24th, at 11:15PM PST. It will be restored sometime around 4AM PST Sunday morning. Those that need to access Church Director during this time will need to make plans to obtain order-of-service reports and other needs prior to or after this outage timeframe. My apologies for any inconvenience this may cause.

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Church Director is focused on bridging the gap between the volunteer and the church. We know that volunteers are the cornerstone of the local church - they evangelize and make things happen. Our mission is to ensure that the volunteers in your church are cared for by providing tools and process to improve the care and feeding of your volunteers. Our first tool is focused on managing the assignment and scheduling for your church services and special events to reduce misunderstandings and make your church experience even better for your visitors and members.

This blog is focused on communicating with you, our current and future customers. We will post here regularly, keeping you informed of new features and the best ways to utilize our application. So, subscribe using your favorite feed reader or by adding yourself to our email notification list.

Thanks for your interest in Church Director!

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