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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We’ve been busy working on some recent upgrades for the website. In fact, we’ve experienced so much great response that we had to add a new server to our hosting plan already! While the previous setup was adequate, this new setup gives us some great flexibility and plenty of room to grow. Here is a quick summary of what is new on the website:

1. Auto Scheduler fixes - we found some small bugs with the Auto Scheduler, so we had it turned off the last week or so (no one was using it at the time). Those are now fixed and auto scheduling should work as expected now
2. Church admins may now access any of the church planners for management purposes or for changing a team planner’s leader (in case a new leader has been appointed)
3. We’ve added a Frequently Asked Questions page to answer some common questions we’ve been asked
4. Fixed the ‘my church’ link at the top to appear on all pages for faster navigation
5. We now show the minimum and preferred job role coverage metrics on the assignment screen (upper-left corner of each job role box)
6. Notification emails may now have a customized from email address and message (optional)

As always, thanks to everyone currently participating in the closed beta program! If you aren’t part of the closed beta program, signup today and get early access to Church Director!

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During the rollout to the new hosting service, we updated Church Director with some new features:

• Self-assignments are automatically set to ‘confirmed’ status and no email is sent regarding the assignment
• Assignment reminders for cancelled events or inactive planners are no longer sent
• Setting the From Address and Subject line, along with adding an additional message, is now available during the send notifications step. There is a button to optionally preview the list of email recipients, as was the default behavior previously
• The name of the team member that made the assignment is shown on the “My Assignments” screen, to aid in knowing who to contact.

As always, feel free to contact us if you have any questions or feedback regarding these changes.

Technorati Tags: Church Director, Volunteer Scheduling, Volunteer Management

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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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We’ve recently made some updates to the reporting section of Church Director:

• Access reports without leaving your team planner, being forced to navigate back when you are done
• Your team is automatically set as the default team for report filters
• Reports should generate faster and without slow page refreshes
• Printer-friendly reports will launch to a new window to prevent you from getting lost or being unable to navigate back
• CSV format has been removed (no one found them interesting, and neither did we)

There is also a new Team Coverage Report available from the event planning pop-up if you have created at least one assignment:

This report is a printer-friendly version of the information shown in this popup and is useful for you, fellow lay leaders, and your staff to view prior to a service or event:

We hope you’ll find the reporting features friendlier to use and even more useful than before. If you have any suggestions, please drop us a note using the feedback link at the top of any Church Director page.

Technorati Tags: volunteer scheduling, church reporting, volunteer coverage

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As a web application matures, it is often necessary to update the user interface to deal with the addition of new features. Since we added Rapid Scheduling, we noticed that some of the menus were getting a bit crowded. Knowing what is on tap, we wanted to revise the user interface a bit to make it easier to move around.

So, all major areas within the site now have a thin navigation bar with provide the content of where you are and what tools are available to you. If you are within a tool that has several options, the right-hand menu is still there. Here is a screenshot of what the new user interface looks like:

We hope this makes it easier to navigate around and find what you want quicker. Let us know what you think!

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

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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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No, this isn’t an April Fools joke. In fact, this feature has been in the works for some time but hasn’t made it into production until now. Every planner now has a custom RSS feed that allows leaders and team members to track planner activity through their favorite feed reader. It is simple to get started:

Just click on the “Subscribe to Team Alerts” link from the menu on your planner. You will be given information about how to subscribe, in case you are new to RSS or feed readers. I’ve been trying out Blerts and they seem to be a nice Windows-based desktop feed reader. Here is a screenshot of what Blerts looks like when new Team Alerts are available for your planner:

Blerts also provides an option for viewing a summary of recent alerts:

Click on the image above to view an example of what kind of alerts you can receive. Of course, you can use any feed reader you like to keep track of your Team Alerts. I use Bloglines (click to see what it looks like).
Also, we are taking signups for our next round of beta testers. If you want to see if Church Director may be a fit for your church, fill out the (very short) beta test application form today!

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

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