Stafftool Blog

Metrics Update

The response to the new dashboard metrics has been great, people seem really excited about being able to get a glimpse of how things are going so easily. And since people are so excited about it, I’ve already gotten a lot of good feedback and bug reports. I just pushed out an update that includes some tweaks and fixes based on this feedback:

• The chart now spans the last 6 months rather than 4. 6 months ended up fitting pretty well and is a more natural amount of time. This means if you input the last 4 months today to fill up the chart, there’s a bit more to do :)
• The chart is now two line graphs, rather than a combination line/bar chart. The connected dots make it a bit easier to follow the trends. Also, the attendance graph is now filled to give it some more weight.
• Some entries at the beginning and ends of the time ranges were being left off, which shouldn’t happen anymore.
• Events that had been deleted still had their attendance numbers showing up on the graph, which should no longer happen.
• You can now click on the dots to go to a listing of all the records for both attendance and contributions. The contributions page is the normal tab, but the attendances page is new. This was added to make it easier to track down any attendance entries that needed to be deleted. This page is pretty bare bones for now, but will be fleshed out as time goes on.
• The metrics header now includes (Beta) since its still in such active development

Here’s a screenshot of how the chart is looking after this update:

There is still plenty to do with this feature, and I’m hoping you’ll keep on providing feedback for making it even better. Let me know what you think!

Dashboard Metrics Launched!

Attendance and Contribution metrics are now available on your dashboard for a quick look at how things are going on a weekly basis. At a glance you’ll be able to see if things are trending up or down, what happened this week, what you averaged last month, and what you’ve averaged this year. For a video overview, check it out on Vimeo.

So get tracking, and let me know what you think! I’m sure things will evolve a bit as it starts getting more widely used, so your feedback will be important.

And, if you feel so compelled, be sure to tweet, facebook, email, etc. your friends about it :)

People Archiving & Non-Destructive Deletion, Newsfeed, and Easier Support

This is a pretty exciting update.

Archiving and Non-Destructive Deletion

First, let’s start with archiving and non-destructive deletion. Up until now, whenever you deleted a person from your database, there’s always that little bit of hesitation. Yes, there is a popup that let’s you cancel out of the deletion if you clicked by mistake, but once you click yes, that person is gone forever. This is pretty standard behavior in database type apps, but it causes a bit of anxiety that shouldn’t really be there. And with apps like Gmail offering an undo link when you delete a message from your inbox, you can see there’s a better way.

Aside from deletion being so, well, permanent, another common issue that users have run into is that since people frequently come and go from a church, the database can get a bit messy with active and inactive people mixed together in the main listing. You could simply delete the people who are no longer active, but the whole point of a system like Stafftool is that you want to be in constant communication with people who are already going to your church, but also with those who used to that you’d like to return, and those who are new but not quite committed. Some workarounds involving tags and Smart Groups have been serviceable - tagging non-regulars with “inactive” and creating s Smart Group excluding people tagged with “inactive” - but they’re still workarounds. Finally, besides the inconvenience of this all, these inactive people still count against your quota, even though they’re not active members of your congregation.

So, to help with all these issues I set about re-engineering how the deletion of people works. While it previously just deleted the record from the database altogether, it now gets marked in the database as “deleted” or “archived.” I’ll spare you the boring programming details and just say that people no longer get permanently deleted from the database.

Now when you click a delete button, you get this new dialog:

Clicking the delete record button will delete the person, but will also give you the option to restore the person by clicking the “Restore” button that appears afterward:

If you click the archive record button, the person will no longer show up in your main database or searches and won’t count against your quota, but will be accessible when you click the new View Archived People button:

You can restore people back into the main database by clicking the restore button:

At this time, this only applies to people. Eventually, it will be applied to the other types of records, but in the meantime for everything else, deleting is still deleting.

Newsfeed

Everyone is familiar with the concept of a newsfeed now since Facebook made them ubiquitous. While the newsfeed I’m introducing here isn’t about what people are doing or thinking, it’s going to be extremely helpful to keep an eye on when new records are created, updated, deleted and archived in your Stafftool. Now, every time a record is created or changes (with the exception of Contributions at this time), an entry is created in your newsfeed like so:

Now you’ll know who’s doing what and when.

Easier Support

Now when you click on the Feedback & Support link that’s at the top of every page, you’ll be presented with a new support form right inside your Stafftool:

Your email address will be pre-filled, so all you’ll need to do is fill out the issue and subject and send it off, which will then create a support ticket.

That’s all for now, enjoy and let me know what you think!

New Feature - Easy Reply Links In Emailed Messages

This is a quick little feature, but I think it’ll have a big impact for some folks (like my church at MBCC). Up till now, when you receive an emailed message in your email client of choice, there’s been no easy way to reply to the message. At this time Stafftool doesn’t have the ability to accept incoming email, so if you reply to the message by email, it only goes to the person who sent the message, but not the rest of the group. To reply to the rest of the group, you would go to your Stafftool account, view the message and click the reply button. Easy enough, but not very convenient.

So, while I plan on adding the ability to simply reply via normal email sometime in the future, I decided to add something that would be *almost* as easy in the meantime.

Now at the bottom of any message sent to a group that is marked as having a message board, like so:

will have a button link at the bottom of the email like:

Keep in mind, though, that messages sent to smart groups won’t have this link, nor will messages sent to groups where the message board option is not selected.

Then, all the recipient has to do is click that link to open up Stafftool with the reply form all ready to go so they can send off their response. Even if they’re not logged in at the time, they’ll be logged in by clicking on that link. Convenient and easy.

That’s all there is to it, hopefully this will help spark some conversation among your groups!

Coming Soon - Archiving and Non-destructive Deletion

Something that users have asked for here and there is the ability to archive people… people who they don’t want to necessarily delete forever for historical purposes or the occasional lookup, but would rather not appear in their main people listing. For example, people who have moved to different cities or churches, are away at school, or are deceased. People have been working around this with tagging and smart groups, creating rules such as “people who are not tagged with inactive” or “people who are not tagged with out of town.” While this works just fine, it’s still a workaround that is an extra step, and it still leaves all these people in the main listing, in search results, and count against your quota.

So I’ve been thinking about this problem and it got me thinking about other things, mainly how deleting people from your account can be a somewhat stressful act. When you go to delete a person, there’s always that slight hesitation… up till now I’ve tried to make it a bit less jarring by making sure a confirmation comes up that lets you back out of the deletion, but once you click “ok” that person is gone forever. That’s so… permanent.

So I’ve been working on a revamped system for handling the management of people. Soon, the existing confirmation will be replaced with one that will let you choose to either delete, archive or cancel.

Clicking the delete and archive buttons will do just that - delete or archive the person. Cancel will of course close the dialog with no effect. Here’s where things get interesting… clicking either the delete or archive buttons will do its thing, but then present a new Restore button.

Clicking that button will do just that - restore the person back into your main database. You’ll be able to view all the people who you’ve archived, as well as those who have been deleted so you can always restore them back to the main listing, but they won’t show up in your main listings and smart groups. Much more peace of mind.

There are still some details to work through with this new functionality, but it’s progressing very well, and hopefully it’ll be able to go live soon!

Pledges Now Live!

Just a quick post… pledges went live early last week along with a few other enhancements to the contributions section, just haven’t been able to post about it yet. I’m hoping to do a quick little screencast going over the new stuff soon though, so stay tuned!