While the majority of our development efforts have been focused on building out the new Mobile Preview, we've still been paying attention to fixing bugs and improving experiences in our current software too. Our neighbors to the north will be the recipient of some of these new experiences, as we've put effort into making our Giving Statements compliant with Canadian tax laws. All these changes are coming the evening of Wednesday, May 17.
Canadian Giving Statements
We've made a few changes to our Giving Statements so Canadian churches can generate giving statements that are compliant with CRA tax laws.
Unique Receipt Numbers
Each giving statement must have its own unique serial number. When you run a batch of giving statements, that batch will be given a UNIX timecode representing the date and time the batch was run. Following that timecode, we will list the giver's individual ID. This receipt number will display in the upper right corner below the date.
Upload an Authorized Signature Image
Each giving statement must include the signature of an individual who has been authorized to sign official donation receipts for your church. We now include the image of that signature on your giving statements, right below your custom Giving Statement Message. You can upload this signature image by going to Settings > Campus > Financial tab > Giving Statement Signature. Note: This image must be a JPEG 50 x 200 pixels.
Note: While we have done our due diligence to understand the CRA tax laws to inform these improvements, this information is provided with the understanding that Church Community Builder is not rendering legal, accounting, or other professional advice or service. Professional advice on specific issues should be sought from an accountant, lawyer, or other professional.
Maintenance
API
- API users can now have a password up to 72 characters long.
Calendar
- Our .ics feeds now work well with Office 365 again.
Check-In
- The Check-in Status report is no longer showing up blank when there should be results. This problem occurred when people had been checked into an event through the Check-In system, and then someone else was marked as 'Attended' for that event through somewhere else in the system.
- We have added more potentially-offensive letter combinations to the Check-In security code blacklist.
- Searching for a name at a Manned Check-In station will now look at legal name as well as first and last name.
- When adding a new family through Check-In, if you answer 'YES' to the 'Any Allergies?' question, you will be required to put something in the Allergies field.
Communication
- We are no longer sending an email confirming you updated your mobile carrier if you hadn't, in fact, updated your carrier information. This was happening if you had no carrier information and were editing your communication settings from a logged out state. Though maybe this happy accident is a good motivator for you to go in and enter your carrier information so you can get text messages through the system.
Events & Attendance
- Last-minute events? No problem! We are now checking for new events in the system 4 times a day (at 12am, 6am, 12pm, and 6pm). This means if you add an event on the day it's happening, your group leader is more likely to get that attendance reminder 1 hour before the event. Previously, we were only checking for new events the night before, so events added the same day were not triggering those attendance reminders.
- When viewing the guest list from an event preview page, you will see the correct headcount, but you will no longer see the names of inactive people who have RSVPd for the event. However, if you have appropriate privileges, you will see those names listed when you view the Guest List tab from the Event Detail page.
- You can once again email the event organizer of an event you've been invited to, even if that event hasn't been published to the Public calendar. Before, if you tried to email the event organizer from a logged out state, you were getting a frustrating "You do not have permissions..." error.
- Links included in an event description now open in a new tab or window, rather than directing you away from the event you were viewing.
- You can now unpublish an event after you've published it. Well, honestly, you always could do that, but it wasn't very obvious that you could. Now, once you've published an event to a specific calendar, you'll see a 'Remove from calendar' link if you want to unpublish it.
Financial
- Some churches do not have a financial merchant set up for two-way integration, but they do record contributions for their givers through our system. In those scenarios, if a giver went to their 'Give' page, they would first see a screen that said, "Online Giving is not currently enabled." This was confusing and misleading, especially if a church had online giving through a one-way integration. Instead, in this scenario, we are now hiding the give tab that displayed this message, and we are instead taking givers right to their 'Schedules/History' tab so they can see the history of their contributions.
- We fixed an issue where some givers were not receiving email receipts for their repeating gifts.
Forms
- For you busy forms admins managing a lot of forms, this one's for you! We've added a new 'back to forms' link at the top of every form detail page, so you can easily get back to the forms list to manage another form.
- A form was breaking if it had automation to a repeating event and all occurrences of that event were converted to single events. Now, forms in that scenario will automate to the last single event from that event schedule.
Groups
- Group Leaders without necessary permissions can no longer use the 'Send Email' link to communicate with unlisted people in their groups.
Mobile Preview
- All of the old Mobile Login pages now correctly redirect to the new Mobile Preview. So if you had bookmarked a page in that old Mobile Login, you'll be taken to the new and improved Mobile Preview.
Needs
- When someone accepts a need item and then refreshes the page, we were updating the database so it looked like the whole need had been edited, not just the item being taken. We fixed that.
- The email to inform people of a need now respects line breaks.
- You couldn't duplicate a need if it had an apostrophe in the title. We fixed that so we are no longer discriminating against contractions.
- Need coordinators are no longer getting erroneous emails telling them everyone had been removed from their items when they hadn't. This Chicken Little scenario was happening when an unassigned need item was deleted.
Process Queues
- When viewing someone's group involvement through a Process Queue, we now use the same terminology that we use when viewing their group involvement on their profile. Ahhh. Consistency.
- People who have permissions to see all mail merges in the database can once again add any mail merge to queue automation. Before, they were not seeing the whole mail merge list.
- If you are the MA, a Full/Limited Read people admin, or have Child Work Approved status, you can now correctly see children in your process queue.
- Inactive profiles are no longer being listed in queue notification emails going out to queue managers. This should remove the confusion of not being able to find those people in the queue list.
Rooms & Resources
- The Room Availability Grid now correctly shows only the room usage on the date you picked. Before, if you changed dates, the grid was still showing room usage for your old date too, making it look like there were a lot of room conflicts when there weren't. We are back to being conflict avoiders (at least when it comes to Rooms & Resources).
Schedules
- If you add a new service time to a campus, we will default all volunteers to be available for that service time. However, we will no longer inadvertently make your volunteers available for all service times.
- When viewing the Grid, if you choose to 'View More Weeks', we'll be sure to check the current weeks you've been viewing by default, so you can easily add or remove just a few weeks from your current view.
- We've fixed a dropdown at the bottom of the Serving Preferences modal so it no longer opens off the screen.
- When accessing your Schedule Details on your phone, we are now always taking you to the responsive Logged Out page. Before, we were checking to see if you were logged in and then taking you to the logged in page, but the Logged Out page is a better experience on your phone, so we're keeping you there.
Searches & Reports
- When exporting a custom report, the file will now match the name you gave the report, rather than having a generic 'Custom Report' file name.
- When using the 'Allergies - Confirmed no Allergies' column in a custom report, the column will now list Yes/No (as opposed to t/f or 1/-).
- When searching for people by name and then hovering over them, we are no longer listing their spouse's name if that spouse is deceased.
Hot Fixes
Sometimes we become aware of issues in the software that are so important, they can’t wait for the next scheduled software release to be fixed. We call those ‘Hot Fixes’. Here is a list of all of those Hot Fixes that have already been resolved since the last release.
Financial
- (April 12) We quickly corrected an issue where, in some cases, repeating gifts from PushPay were showing up in our software at 30x the actual given amount. The correct amount of money was processed and removed from the giver's bank account. This issue only affected what was being reported in our software.