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Curtis Harris
F1 Staff
177 posts
Official Fellowship One Post
RoadMap: Streamlining Contact Info
The Project
The world of communication has changed. More and more we see cell phones instead of home phones, texting instead of email, and email instead of physical mail; we must streamline our approach to move forward with many desirable enhancements.
There are a ton of projects we have identified that improve how this information is both collected and leveraged; I will avoid listing them out to avoid any confusion about what this is. This first step is to simplify both the collection and display of what we have and incorporate more consistency across our platforms. To do this we need to make some decisions that affect the information you have today.
Changes include:
- limiting phone types to mobile, home and work
- limiting email types to personal, home and work
- home in both cases translates to a shared value among the entire family
- only one value can exist for each type
- forcing a preference decision when more than one phone number exists
- forcing a preference decision when more than one email address exists
Data Migration / Change
Preferences - since we have not consistently asked for a communication preference, we will create these preferences in the following order
- Phone - If "mobile" exists set it as default, if not then use "home", if not then use "work"
- Email - If "personal" exists set it as default, if not then use "home", if not then use "work"
Duplicate Data Types - since we have allowed the collection of duplicate types in both email and phone, data will need to be removed. When more than one email or phone number exists for a single type (personal, work, home, cell) we will keep the newer one and delete the older ones.
Legacy Data Types - since we have allowed the collection of additional types of email and phone numbers, data will be removed. We are exploring options to ensure that you have ample opportunity/ability to retain this information, but all data associated with the following data types will eventually be erased:
- Phone - Alternate
- Phone - Children
- Phone - CR Safe
- Phone - Emergency
- Phone - Fax
- Phone - Pager
- Phone - Previous
- Phone - School
- Phone - Vacation
- Email - Alternate
- Email - School
Curtis HarrisF1 Staff
177 posts
Comments (39)
I don't want to jump the gun, but I have to ask. Are we getting any closer to Fellowship One supporting text messaging from the portal?
I second Eric's question - more even than streamlining what we have (we don't want to lose data we have worked hard to gather) - we'd like to use this existing data to do just what you mentioned in the intro - communicate in the latest manner: mass texting from our data in Fellowship One. We are newbies so maybe this is right on the horizon...
You could provide a place in email collection called text, we have learned that many major cell phone carriers will allow you text someone via a email address tied to the cell phone. Would love to be able to collect that information. Of course we would have to be able to choose the email you would like to send messages to in the group email function instead of it defaulting to a specific address.
@ Curtis, I see that your example image has phone number validation, will this be one of the improvements you’re making? If it is will it cater for non-US number formats for example here in Australia our mobile numbers are formatted like this 9999-999-999 and landlines like this 99-9999-9999. Also, as you will be deleting the older duplicate fields could you please provide a report that will allow us to generate an excel sheet with all email and phone contact details or even better just users with duplicate data fields? We have users that for example have both their mobile and landline under the mobile field. This is easily fixed, but finding the effected users would be tiresome without report to quickly identify them. We would also love to have text message support too!
This project does not include data masking, so you don't need to worry about the international implication. It also does not include texting, but it draws us closer to that capability.
I would like to take this opportunity to remind everyone that even if texting does become available in F1, it will still require the recipient to opt in; you will never be able to simply grab all 16-18 year old's and text them, they must ask to be included. AND the integration we have with The Table Project (http://tableproject.org/) already provides texting so if this is something you desire I would suggest that you engage these valued partners... it's free by the way.
Curtis-this is great! Thank you and FT for your continued help in making the system more streamlined.
Julie - can you help me understand what data you are concerned with losing. We took a look at the stats and were pretty blown away by how infrequently many of the odd phone and email types were being used AND struggled understanding the value of some of them. I guess I can make an argument for 'Vacation Phone', but how would you use it? Doesn't the saturation of cell phones limit the value of that? I can also make an argument for CR Safe Phone, but was pretty blown away to discover that there are only 100 of these out of 100 million records in the database.
To improve our sofware we need to cut away at things that make it overly complex and limit our feature decisions; this seemed to be a prime target for change.
Oh, you mean streamlining communication information.
When I first read "Streamlining Contact Info" my initial thought was, WOW, we'll be able to email our contact items to Fellowship One instead of having to copy and paste them from Outlook!!!
Thanks for declutering the communication fields but meh...how about getting rid of those pesky global status: Child of Member, Member, Attendee, Event Prospect, Dropped and Inactive Member?
Brian - only you and 2 others would know 'F1 Speak' so inherantly that the term 'contact' wouldn't trigger thoughts of email and phone numbers.
PS - with ya' on the global status'
Thanks, Brian. Love all of the streamlining but am a little concerned about some of our older members. We are in the midwest but have a lot of "snowbirds" who travel for months at a time to Florida in the winter. We have been attempting to get alternative addresses and phone numbers for them when they are away. Now that alternative phone number is being phased out. Suggestions?
I can understand the thought on dropping some of the phone numbers. I would like to see you keep the emergency numbers. We had a situation where a member of our congregation was in a car accident, seriously injured and because we did not have an emergency number it took us 3 days to contact family. Ever since we have been collecting emergency numbers. In regards to removing the pesky global status. I am against that unless you come up with a better way. I rely heavly on on those designations when working with membership. Our church is 160 years old and we do our best to keep F1 updated because it is hard to go through 7 books of church history to find all the information on one person. I put all particular information regarding their faith walk in F1.
Pesky global status? This is how we keep our membership organized and categorized! Can't imagine what the alternative would be! I'm with Sharon.
Second the motion on texting! Our pastors want to be able to use the mobile apps (Droid and iPHone) to be able to send a text from that same screen where currently they can send an email.
I also agree with the desire for a texting feature. I work in the youth department and it would be a great help to be able to text our discipleship groups, or volunteer groups.
While we see this as an improvement, we do have information that has been collected over the years. I tried to look at the data to determine how much was out there but was unable to identify a F1 report to do so easily. Will you provide a report so that we can see what data is out there before it is deleted? When do you anticipate getting to that point?
To clarify on the 'pesky global status'... what I mean isn't that we are doing away with status and sub status, but rather FT shouldn't force our definition on you. Today we have dozens of status', global status', that you can not get rid of. Many churches have different terms for membership or don't use the sub status of 'Member by Letter'. The suggestion was to get rid of those defined status' leaving only the ability for you to create the status categories.
Thank you for all your work Curtis, but we are quite nervous about any data being deleted from our database. I have been tasked as the newly appointed lead F1 champion to analyse what will be deleted and I must say this is mammoth task. Please can we have a report to quickly identify the effected users.
All - Joseph Watts (our reporting guru) has suggested the A6000 report. To run it, click the reports link (top right), type A6000 in the search box and open up the only choice presented. Select everything when presented with a filter (you can select everything in a list by clicking the top value, holding the shift key and selecting the bottom value), I selected 'listed' since it forced a choice, but you may want to run the same report again with unlisted as well to get the totals, and I didn't filter on age. I did change the output type to excel as well.
The key to all of this is that you select the communication types you are questioning. If you are wondering how many Children's Phone's you have, select that type and run the report. Run the same report over for the next value in question.
Let me know if that works.
What would be the best practice to use for household visitors? Currently if we have a phone number for a visitor to the household we use "alternate phone". I would think we would change it to be the individual's "home" number, but then would that become a shared value among the entire household?
Christine - the only rule is don't use their number as a household phone, always tie it to the individual, then it's easy... if it's a cell phone, choose mobile, if it is a work choose work, otherwise personal. Same rules apply as they would to anyone, no reason to identify the phone number any differently.
Curtis - That really does not cut down the manual work much, is there a better report?
Ian - I'll ask if a report can be made that simply summarizes the numbers
Ian - I've asked about an additional report, but there is confusion on our side... what is needed to make it less manual? This report will show you everyone with a specific phone type so you can identify issues. I made an assumption that you would prefer to simply get summarized numbers, but can you please clarify.
Thanks.
Curtis, in regards to the report, it would define each profile and the data currently contained that will is being considered for removal, to assist each ministry in determining what information and the value being lose. I believe having a button to allow alternative information may facility the use or not of any information. I would also highly agree with Sharon Burchfield in regards to emergency information. Personally the safety of every single person is critical, and believe it would be best that to events have the ability to have the event "Attendees" list with necessary emergency contact information. This optional report will be great for group leaders to have to just print and take with them on their events of any size.
GS & Ian - Thanks for the feedback re: the report, I'll look into what we can provide; for now the A6000 seems to do a very good job at giving you the information within a specific communication type. I'll keep you posted as the strategy develops.
I will also pass all the rest of the information on to the our Product Management team in an effort to ensure you are not negatively impacted.
Ian - PS, yes we will be adding the ability for your membership to update their email addresses and select a preference.
Does this mean that we will not be able to have more than 3 phone numbers for an individual? What about the person that has two work numbers that need to be tracked? Or the person that winters somewhere different and so has two "home" phones? Or the person that uses google voice in addition to their other lines? Or the child who needs to have an additional emergency contact number? Will we not have a way to track those numbers?
Hi Curtis - Ian as already asked about the data masking for phone numbers, to have this as a feature would be a real bonus. Let me attempt to compare the requirement by explaining the differences between US and Australian phone numbers...
US: aaa-bbb-cccc
AU landline: (0a) bbbb cccc
AU mobile: 04bb ccc ccc
As you can see both numbers are 10 digits, with the obvious difference being the split between the area code and the subscribers number. The fact that AU numbers have 8 digits for the subscribers number means that there can be a lot more numbers per area, which is a requirement as generally the 2-digit area code (0a) will reference one or more entire states ( NSW+ACT=02, VIC+TAS=03, mobile=04, QLD=07, SA+WA+NT=08). That being the case most Australian generally only give 8-digits (bbbb cccc) unless specifically asked. Also, unlike the US where most people will write their number with all 10 digits with dashed, there is a gread deal of inconsistancy when Aussie write their phone number.
As we begin to allow our community to update their own details it creates a situate where data will be store in different formats, which then creates an addition administrative load on Ian and our other F1 champs in order to redress these inconsistancies. Therefore it would be a high value -add to have the ability to require that members of our community input their phone numbers in a consistant an uniform format.
Neil - agreed on the high value; this is the 2nd most requested enhancement throughout all time! Any ideas on how to handle masking that is outside your country? Let's say a church is on the US/Canada border, the majority of their congregation live in the US, but 20% live in Canada... how do we allow them to apply a different mask?
Curtis - I was of the understaning that US and Canada used the same 10-digit phone number format. Is that not the case? So I'm not sure that scenario really presents an issue.
Where I can see it being an issue (for ourselves included) is where somebody is on international assignment where the numbering format varies greatly. If F1 was aware of the number formats globally it could use the appropaite format based on the selected indivual's country, this could either be done from the address or country-code could become manetory for all phone numbers (or country-code could be required if the address country doesn't match the church's).
Anyway, food for thought as F1 becomes more internationalised
Did you say when this change was going to take place? Also, during the checkin process, when the last 4 digits of the phone number is used, does it matter which phone number is used? In other words, will F1 look for a match among any of the possible numbers that might be in a record (and not just the number marked as "Preferred")?
Joyce - we don't have a timeline for the release of this yet and are still collecting feedback; changes to check-in will be considered, but again, nothing has been established.
Enough all ready from you worry -warts. I think it is wonderful that there will be simple choices to make. I believe most people are moving to only using mobile phones for all their communications, why do we really need a "work" number or some of those other categories, if a person can answer their cell they will, if not they will get back with you. As for "snow-birds" and additional addresses, the only hindrance is yearend statements, and if they have not properly forwarded their mail for that time frame, it is not our problem. I have worked close with the Accounting department in my church, and we have very few that miss the statements, trust me snow-birds will call if they need a second one sent to them. And as for "previous" numbers, very little need for those, since they will be eventually reassigned to someone else, what is the point of keeping them? I am getting off the my soap box now....sorry Curtis, I get a little wordy...
Regarding the "pesky global status" -we would LOVE to be able to assign our own status names!!!!! Where do I "vote" for that change?!?!? We do use Emergency Phone to record a contact number other than a parent. If by chance a parent is not available during an emergency, we want to have an alternate number to call. Will this still be available to record in the database somehow?
I'm glad to see that there will be a global cleaning of duplicate email addresses. Since long ago past issues of needing an email to be repeated in the child's information as well as the parent and the household field in order to send an email to a child (before you could pull "parents of"), we now have tons of member accts with duplicate email addresses. It has kept us from pulling the trigger on releasing groups 2.0 because we don't want all the work of having to merge everyone due to "duplicated" records as they create new accounts. Looking forward to a release date! And I'm glad to see some streamlining of contact information. This looks outstanding from our end! Nice release F1!
Hey guys, I've searched the website to find a target date for text messaging to be available...is there one? Can it be used now? Just want to make sure before going to textmart. Thank you!! Kim
Kim - there is no timeline for the integration of texting; we reccomend using The Table Project (free), but there are many other fantastic solutions out there. Would love to know what enticed you to go with textmart.
Hi Curtis, I agree with Neil on the data masking (spot on Neil). You and I briefly discussed my concerns on this subject last summer at the Maryland road show. Most of our phone numbers in F1 are dashed, but I am seeing a lot of "New to Website" on-line registrants entering phone numbers without the dashes. Also, many are entering address information in all lower case. I know the computer doesn't care, but we are still printing paper directories and a mix of upper/lower case street and city names, etc., will not look very good to the human eye (nor will address labels). Therefore, why would I want to enable the Groups 2.0 Profile Editor (a tool to help us to keep data current), only to create additional back office work to assure format consistency? I’m currently testing Table Project. The profile syncing approach looks good on the surface and hopefully it will not add to our data masking issues. You stated that data masking is the 2nd most requested enhancement… – I would like to clearly understand why hasn’t been implemented. Regarding Neil’s country code trigger to determine the appropriate format, I think that shows some promise and encourage you to investigate.
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