Stafftool Blog

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 You could simply delete the people who are no longer active, but the whole point of a system like Stafftool is that you want to be in constant communication with people who are already going to your church, but also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!