Stafftool Blog

Your Church In Your Pocket

One of the things I’m most proud of with Stafftool is the iPhone version. I’ve even had a beta tester say he may end up using it more than the normal web interface. As an iPhone user, I’m always really happy to find a version of a tool that I already use that works really well on it, so I naturally wanted to provide one myself with Stafftool. A few of my favorite web apps are the iPhone versions of NewsGator, Twitter, and Facebook. I use the NewsGator and Twitter sites all the time, and even though I’m not a huge Facebook user, like the tester said I probably use the mobile version of it more than the normal site.

I always knew I wanted to do a mobile version of Stafftool and the iPhone was a perfect first step - nice big screen, standards compliant browser with great CSS and Javascript support, and good integration with other services such as the phone and Google Maps. In this post I’m going to go over the features and benefits of the iPhone version, and in a future post I’ll go over how I did it.

So my main goal with the iPhone version was to provide as much of the app that would make sense in a mobile setting, while keeping it lean and nice to use. I concentrated almost solely on information retrieval, with the only data creation at this time being notes on people. This may expand in the future, but it’s a good starting point and covers probably 80% of what people will be using it for - getting church information they need while on the road. Let’s take a look at the features.

(Oh yeah, all the screen shots are taken on iPhoney for the Mac.)

Dashboard

Just like on the normal interface, the iPhone Dashboard gives you a listing of your most recently received messages and upcoming events, albeit less of each.

This makes it really easy to quickly get any recent messages or see what events are going on at a glance. Along the top there are tabs for People, Events and Messages in addition to the Dashboard.

People

Here you have access to your entire database of people right from your iPhone without cluttering your everyday phone book with the entirety of your congregation.

This is perfect for when you’re out and about, away form your computer but you have to look up someone’s information that isn’t in your normal phone book. You can scroll through any of the people and tap on any row to view that person’s information.

Here you can see that the full suite of information is available, and that if you click any of the blue buttons, they’ll trigger integration with the iPhone’s built in apps - phone numbers will ask you if you want to dial the number, emails will start an email addressed to them, and clicking their address will map it in the Google Maps app where you can the proceed to route directions to it. You can also view, as well as create notes.

And, to make getting to people easier, there’s the last name letter rolodex style filtering. However, since the iPhone is a touch screen, and lots of us have less than nimble fingers, you don’t have to actually hit the tiny letter to go to it. Instead, clicking up on the letter bar will instead bring up a big fat finger-friendly version for easy clicking.

Events

Events lets you retrieve all the information you need to for everything going on at the church, just like the normal web app. If your iPhone is vertical, you’ll see all the events in the list view.

Click on any of the events and you can see all the event’s information.

And for a bit of pure iPhone magic, when you rotate your iPhone sideways, the list view will automatically turn into a calendar view.

And here’s a blurry video showing it in action:

You really have to try that one out :)

Messages

Messages lets you retrieve all the messages you’ve received, letting you stay in the loop away from your computer. The main page lists them all:

And clicking on a message lets you read it.

The Future

So as you can see, the iPhone version is already super useful and is actually really fun to use. However, I’m not completely finished with it yet, so it’ll continue to get even better. Some things I have in mind are real time searching of people for even easier lookup, and replying to messages. And, I’m sure there are some other things that you all will give me as you use it!

In celebration of the official launch of Stafftool and the iPhone version, there will be a special promotion where we give away an iPhone or two so be sure to be on the lookout for that, more information is coming soon!