Back to Customer Support Home
Curtis Harris
F1 Staff
177 posts
MORE Product Enhancements? Already?!? Yes!
Enhancements are coming quickly as we embrace our ability to release small changes often. While this release has dozens of improvements, I want to point out 3 that rise to the top:
- Add Person to Group - we have made it easier to add a person to a small group and immediately take attendance on them.
- Limit Church Directory - only want church members to be able to use the online directory, now you can!
- Privacy Policy Control - now you can use a pre-built privacy policy, for your congregational InFellowship site, or write your own.
To see these enhancements, and how they work, click on the video below.
Merry Christmas!
Curtis HarrisF1 Staff
177 posts
Comments (26)
Haven't we always had the ability to add people to a group through the portal? Or did I miss something?
Good morning Katie! :)
The enhancement that we released provides the ability to post attendance for an individual that was placed on the roster the same day that you added them. Prior to the enhancement, you couldn't post attendance for the newly added member until the next day or next meeting.
To elaborate... if you had an 8am meeting and a new person came. They wanted to join and you added them that same day. You can now post attendance for this person on that same day for the 8am meeting. Prior to this release, yes, they were on the roster, but you couldn't post attendance for them.
These are GREAT enhancements. Thank you!!
What I still don't like is that ANYONE with weblink rights is able to turn on/off Profile Editor, Infellowship Groups and Church Directory. We have a number of people with Weblink access. We want them to be able to create forms and add registrations but we do not want them to have access to this area.
Please restrict this access and add it as a right that can be turned on/off in the Admin Tab.
Thanks Debbie for the feedback. We'll be including this request in a future enhancement.
Thanks, Mark!
We have 100+ portal users and the number is growing. Many of them have weblink access and this became an issue one time when someone turned on Profile Editor (& Church Directory). We aren't using Profile Editor yet because the address isn't verified at the time the change is made. Our Executive Team will have to weigh in as far as when/if we will use Church Directory.
#1 above says - "we have made it easier to add a person to a small group and immediately take attendance on them". I don't see where it's easier for home group leaders to add someone to their group.
tthompson, we solved the emphasis on the second part of the sentence... "we have made it easier to add a person to a small group and immediately take attendance on them". The great news is that I got to see the UX design for the first part of the sentence which allow it easier for home group leaders to add someone to their group. I'm very excited for this enhancement as I know several churches have requested it.
These are great enhancements. Thank you. One question, when will we be able to back post attendance for people added to the group after it has met? I often do not find out until 1 to 3 days later that someone attended a meeting and needs to be added to the group and we can not post attendance for them.
Hi, I'm loving the ability to choose who can use the church directory. Great. Does that also apply to seeing who's in a group? i.e. if I've turned OFF Attendees ability to view the church directory, will they still be able to see the group members of a group they're in? Also, why can't we specify by Sub-Status? Why introduce functionality that only goes half way?
I, too, find that I often have to post attendance on someone who was not in the group because I didn't know they attended that group. So, I add them and then try to post prior attendances and the program won't let me. Also, if I change the dates or recurrences for a group meeting, how do I post attendance for a date that wasn't on the original schedule. The drop-down box does not have the date I need to post. One more question: How do I turn OFF the email feature where F1 automatically emails Group leaders reminding them to take attendance? And can I do it group by group or do all groups have to either have email on or off?
I agree with Helen, I would like to see the functionality in regards to posting attendance to be more flexible. If there was an additional option in the drop down for entering attendance for a specified date, this would be very helpful.
I'm on board with Theresa, Helen and Anthony-- need to be able to post attendance for a meeting PRIOR to someone joining a group. For one, thing, we have a class that requires 6 of 8 classes be attended- need to mark them as ABSENT from any that happened before they joined so they can make them up later.
I'm having problems posting back attendance for small groups under my span of care. It looks like I should have the ability to do this, but when I click on attendance under a specfic small group, it gives me an error message. Is this a glitch that is being worked on, or is it possible I've missed something in the settings for the span of care to set this up?
Is it possible for Group leaders who aren't admins to add group members in the portal?
Thanks for the new options! In addition to David Moore's request to allow church directory by sub-status codes.... also, please allow us to choose the particular codes we want. We have created additional codes that we would want to have access to the church directory.
Mark Lindsley, Business Analyst, Product Mgmt said on 12.16.11 tthompson, we solved the emphasis on the second part of the sentence... "we have made it easier to add a person to a small group and immediately take attendance on them". The great news is that I got to see the UX design for the first part of the sentence which allow it easier for home group leaders to add someone to their group. I'm very excited for this enhancement as I know several churches have requested it. I have a question on the previous comment that you made. Am I understanding you right that eventually that groups leaders will be about to add members to their group. Being able to post attendance immediately on the day that we add the person to the group is great, if we are able to add them on the same day that they attended for the 1st time, but I have to echo the other churches. Typically we do not know the same time that they had a new person join their group, because most of groups meet in the evening. We have add a problem with many new group member that clicking on the link to join the group, or not completely finishing the process so they never get added to the group. Thank you!
Basically this system is unusable from a real world practical stand point. We have just launched a hugh Dave Ramsey emphasis and have nearly 500 people going through FPU. Our home group leaders can not add people to their group easily. By the time we add them they can not post attendance for them for a past date. Unlike this video suggests I am not going to give our hundreds of group leaders my cell phone number to call 24X7. You can't even edit the joined date, which by the way allowing the joined date to be edited by a portal user would be a quick fix. We used this FPU event to launch the new Groups 2.0. Even if attendance was useable we can not report on it from the reporting system Other than the fact that it looks nice, it has caused everyone frustration on my staff and our group leaders. We have waited for 3 years for new small group manager and it is very disappointing that simple practical functions are not working and there is not even a "Time Line" in Mark Lindsley words for them. I think we have to consider a different small groups system such as Chruch Teams until there is a fully developed small groups solution in F1. We will continue to watch and hope for the day that is a useable solution.
In the old small groups module you had the ability to add custom questions to the attendance to get feedback from the group, ask what they are studying, etc., is that coming soon?
We've been planning on making a big push to get everyone into the directory online beginning last Sunday. We setup staffed kiosks to help walk people through the process of getting into the directory. However, we encountered some snags. First, with the new limits on who can view the directory, if someone had not previously had an online account, they can't see the directory until their status is changed which our helpers on Sundays are not equipped to do. There is no option to allow New From Website to see/join the directory either. A person adding an account can not see the directory until their status has been changed. This was a big discouragement to our people on Sunday and I doubt many of them will remember to opt in once their status is changed. Second, while we've communicated what the directory is, the majority of our people already think they are in their when they are really just in the database. If the directory is now limited to only those statuses that we allow, can we add people to the directory from the admin side? Our people think they're in there already even though just 28 are. (which is a tiny percentage!) Can we either open it up so that everyone who creates an account can get in OR can we keep it limited and add people to the directory ourselves?
Jeff Cox - the ability for a leader to add a member to a group through InFellowship is coming in the next 4-6 weeks. It will be a setting you can turn off or on.
Megan - in the next few months we will be releasing the ability for a group leader to add notes to the group, member, or event; this may resolve your issue, but if not we are still looking at how we can replace the 'defined question' feature in Groups 1.0.
Matthew - sorry about the snags you have experienced. The decision to not allow 'new from website' was simply based on our need to demonstrate a high level of security with other peoples information. If you identify a 'bad guy' who is mis-using the directory, you can remove their ability by simply giving them a status that you don't allow in; if we allowed 'new from web' to be OK, the bad guy could simply create a new account and circumvent the security.
Matthew - to address your struggle with adoption, I would suggest running a campaign. Go find everyone with a membership status using query builder and send them a group email; thank them for their membership and suggest to them that they update their privacy settings to be included in the church directory. You can even give them a direct link to their privacy settings in the email (link can be found at: WebLink > InFellowship > Links).
Thanks for the improvements...when are you going to add the online giving portions to the InFellowship portal. Without it, it's basically just an online church directory for us.
Leave A Comment