We are excited to announce that the new scheduler is live on all databases! TouchPoint’s Scheduler feature allows you to organize people/teams to easily see who has committed for something.

If you want to create any sort of sign-up opportunity, Scheduler is the Registration Type for you! It isn’t limited to just volunteer opportunities! Check out our overview article for more use case examples.

It starts out with an easy to use check list!

Once you’ve checked all of the boxes, your Scheduler is ready to go!

To get you started, take a look at this intro video and then learn more from the following articles: 

• Scheduler Overview
• Scheduler: General Settings
• Scheduler: Registration Settings
• Scheduler View
• Managing the Scheduler

Thanks to all of the beta testers! We can’t wait to see the variety of ways in which our partner churches use Scheduler to enhance their ministry!

WEBINAR REPLAY (APRIL 28)

Watch Replay 

We have added a very useful new email replacement code which will show any giving made to a specific tax-deductible fund within the chosen date range.

Example:
{fund[1,2,3],01/01/2022-12/31/2022}
What this will display: the total given to either Fund ID 1, 2 or 3 in the calendar year of 2022.
$9,750.00

Notes:

• Any date range can be specified by adjusting the dates. The format of MM/DD/YYYY must be used to pull the proper dates.
• If no gifts have been made to any of the specified funds the replacement code will show $0.00
• The Finance Role is required to use this replacement code

Please see our documentation for this and other email replacement codes we have available. Thank you to The Cathedral of St. Philip in Atlanta for sponsoring this project!

We are excited to release a new navigation menu as part of the latest release.

The new menu is available to be turned on (optionally) by each user. You can toggle this on by clicking on your profile in the upper right corner and selecting “New Navigation (beta)”.

After users have a chance to experience the menu on their own schedule and provide feedback, we plan to turn this menu on for all users and optionally let them toggle back to the old menu for a period (as needed), if they have trouble finding something.

A few highlights of the changes:

• Finance items are all in their own menu area now, which will make finance tools easier to access. This new layout provides space for new reports that are coming for churches using TouchPoint Giving.
• The reports menu has gone away and now each main navigation area has its own reports menu under it. If your church had custom reports in the old menu, you’ll need to use one of the new special content files listed below to organize these reports in the appropriate new menu.

1. ReportsMenuPeople.xml
2. ReportsMenuInvolvements.xml
3. ReportsMenuFinance.xml
4. ReportsMenuAdmin.xml

• We are in the final design and scoping phase of our new Report Builder tool (as promised at last year’s TouchPoint Summit in Austin). This new layout provides space for better linking for some of the new reports that you’ll be able to build using this new tool.
• Many admin tools and functionality were renamed and better organized. We’ve also made a few tools that were previously only available upon special request available in the new menu. 
• Tags are now completely managed from the tag icon in the upper right corner near the search icon. 

We encourage all users to try the new navigation menu and get used to its improved layout. If you have feedback regarding the changes, please submit those to Support. At some point later this year, the new menu will become standard for all users.

Register Now for the Upcoming Webinar

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The next release is scheduled to be deployed on Monday night, April 24. This includes new features, updates to existing features, and updates to features that are still in development or beta.

New Features & Enhancements or Updates to Existing Features

• New Navigation Menu – We are releasing an updated version of our main navigation menu to beta. Each person can optionally turn this on by clicking on your username in the upper right corner and toggling on “New Navigation (beta)”. Watch for a blog post this week with highlights of the changes that you’ll see. 

• New Giving Replacement Code – A new Giving replacement code is now available to show giving to a fund within a specific date range. See the Email Replacement Codes help article for details. 

• Involvement Export – This export, available from the Blue Toolbar, has been enhanced to include several more fields as well as Involvement specific extra values. This allows you to mass update several Involvements at one time. You can read more about how to do this in our documentation. 

• Task & Note Updates
  • Involvement notes can now be deleted
  • By default, you will now see 100 tasks & notes at one time on both the Task & Note Search page and on a person’s Touchpoints tab.
  • The Task/Note Details field can now accept up to 5,000 characters.

• Registrations – The Confirmation Email From option has been increased to allow for more than 6 individuals so more individuals will be able to receive the email notification.

• Mobile App Registrations – The previous “Public View” tab on the Involvement Search page was removed and the “Mobile View” tab was renamed to “Mobile 2.0 View”.  These changes lay the foundation for the next major version of the app that we’ve been referring to as Mobile App 3.0. 

• Building Check-In Enhancements/Changes
  
  • Building Check-In Notes are now visible and editable on a person’s Registration tab.
  • Origin for new records is set to Visit
  • Added a setting for Entry Point under the Building tab in Check-In profile to set Entry Points for new records
  • Changes made to a record in Check-In will show in the change log on a person’s System > Changes tab

• Check-In – If a person has previously answered “N/A”, “None” or “No” for the Allergies question in a registration which is recorded on their record, this will no longer be seen as an Allergy when printing Check-In labels. 

• Background Checks and Volunteer Classes
  
  • Two new Search Builder conditions were created for reporting on Volunteer Classes taken that are not part of an integration with Ministry Safe or Protect My Ministry. They are named Volunteer Class Status Code and Volunteer Class Taken Months Ago.

• A new role named BackgroundCheckRun has been created to allow a person with the role to run a new background check and to be able to view the “Background Check / Credit Checks” section. However, they will not be able to view the actual background report. 

• Engagement Score Settings
  
  • Two new settings are added under Administration > Settings > Features in the Status Flags section.

• Engagement Chart Y Label controls the label of the Y axis in the engagement graph on a people record.

• Engagement Chart Y Value controls the maximum value of the Y axis in the engagement graph on a people record. 

• New Python Calls – there are several new python functions for Task & Notes. You can read more about how to extend the functionality of your instance of TouchPoint by using python here.

Documentation and/or blog posts will be released soon that contain more information about these updates!

Beta Features or Things That are Coming Soon

• Volunteer Scheduler – After this release we plan to do some final testing and then release this tool to all churches. Thank you for our beta testers for your feedback and help testing.
  • There is a new setting that will allow you to see a person’s commitment status on the Scheduler tab in the Involvement.
  • A person’s People ID will now be shown next to his/her name when searching to add to a timeslot. This will help ensure that you choose the correct person.
  • Request More People behavior change – If a time slot has small groups, that feature will not be available. If a time slot does not have small groups, it will. For Involvements with small groups, you will need to edit the time slot to increase the number of people needed.
  • Several small bug fixes

• Mobile 3.0 – These features will only be visible to users that have Mobile 3.0 enabled on their instance of TouchPoint.
  • The Blue Toolbar has a new option for messages and notifications.
  • There is a Posts tab for people and Involvements that are set as a “Ministry to Follow”.
  • All the Mobile App Settings have been re-organized.
  • Plus several other updates

How Churches Can Make Easter an Experience for Their Guests

Easter is an important holiday for Christians around the world. Churches can use this opportunity to make a lasting impression on Easter guests. Here are some tips to help you create a memorable experience for your Easter guests.

1. Online Connect Cards
Direct guests to a website to fill out an online connect card. This card can be as simple as a basic form. To make it easier for guests to get to your online connect card using their smartphone, put a QR code on the screen. This will help to gather the contact information of your guests and follow up with them after Easter. Learn more about TouchPoint forms here.

2. Leverage Your Church App
If you have a church app, direct people to download it and fill out a connect card in your app. This will make it easier for guests to connect with your church, stay up-to-date with upcoming events, and access resources. TouchPoint’s bi-directional mobile app makes it easy for church staff, lay leaders, and churchgoers to access and update information, anytime and anywhere.

3. Engage the Children
Children are an integral part of any church community. Here are some ways to engage them:

• Whatever kind of event you do, make sure parents know about it before they leave for church on Easter. Encourage your regulars to use Pre Check-In to free up the kiosks for the guests.
  
• Hand out small flyers or informational cards to parents as they pick up their children and let them know you hope to see them at upcoming events. Send an email or text after Easter as follow-up and a friendly way to stay connected.
  
• Provide activities or special programs for children during the Easter service. And welcome them with a Check-In screen customized for Easter Sunday!

These efforts will help to engage the whole family and create a memorable experience for everyone.

4. Plug Them into Small Groups

If you can get holiday guests to take the small step of joining a group, their likelihood of sticking around increases. Here are some ways to plug guests into small groups:

• Offer a Sunday school class, a stay-at-home moms’ group, or a weekday Bible study.
• Connect people with others in the church.
• When your team makes follow-up calls to invite guests back to church after Easter, invite them into a small group. TouchPoint’s Small Group Finder can help advertise your church’s groups (whether they meet on campus or off) and provide an easy way for people to register.

5. Invite Them to Serve

Inviting guests to serve in the church is a great way to create a sense of belonging and purpose. Here are some ways to invite guests to serve:

• Encourage your volunteers to invite guests to join the team they serve on.
• Personalize the invitation.
• Include opportunities to get involved in your email newsletters.

These efforts will create a strong sense of community and belonging that will keep people coming back to your church for years to come. Do you know about TouchPoint’s Volunteer Scheduler? This is a great tool for inviting people to serve and managing your volunteers. Volunteers can even request and fulfill substitutes without staff involvement!

FAQs

How can churches follow up with Easter guests?
Churches can follow up with Easter guests in several ways, including:

• Sending a personalized email or letter thanking them for attending. With TouchPoint’s Process Builder, it’s easy to synchronize follow-ups among the various ministries to ensure all first-time guests feel welcomed.
  
• Inviting them to upcoming events or small groups. After connecting with guests or regulars on Sunday, record Notes of that meaningful interaction and schedule Tasks for the appropriate ministry leaders to keep the churchgoers engaged.
  
• Offering resources or services that may be of interest. Does your pastor offer times to grab coffee with new guests? Configure Reply Words for easily indicating their interest in a coffee connect.

How can churches make children feel welcome on Easter?
Churches can make children feel welcome on Easter by:

• Providing activities or special programs for children during the Easter service.
• Handing out small flyers or informational cards to parents as they pick up their children and letting them know about upcoming events.
• Creating a welcoming environment that encourages families to connect with others in the church.

How can churches encourage Easter guests to serve?
Churches can encourage Easter guests to serve by:

• Inviting them to join a ministry or team.
• Personalizing the invitation.
• Providing opportunities to get involved in your email newsletters.

We are releasing several updates related to Check-In tonight! See below for all the details.

Layout Changes
We made the meeting name and time slightly bigger so that it is easier to read. Also, now if a user clicks anywhere on the line, it will check the box, making it easier for often distracted parents checking in their children.

Testing Mode
If you are wanting to test what Check-In will look like on a different day of the week, we’ve adjusted testing mode to show the testing date on all screens in the upper right corner. This makes it super clear when you’re testing. Remember, this can now be toggled on/off in the profile settings, and you no longer need to log out and back in to Check-In. All it takes is a simple refresh of the browser.

Add Family Form
There are several situations, based on a church’s custom configurations, that we found prevented this form from working in all cases. Thanks to the feedback from our partner churches, we believe we’ve addressed all these cases so that you can now limit and/or require the necessary fields while not impacting the ability to quickly add new families. Thank you for your patience as we worked though these complex settings.

Recommended Involvements
Recommended Involvements is an unmanned process for handling load balancing and overflow scenarios. Also, the long-lost sheep or spotty attender who has been dropped from rolls will have an option for Check-In without needing an attendant to use “Visit” or “Join”.

In this release we added a few new options for setting up recommendations, updated the layout to make it easier to manage groupings, and updated the back-end logic to catch a few scenarios where a meeting should be recommended but was not. You can now choose whether to show the flag and using our translations special content file, you can name the flag something else if you prefer.
Find out more about Recommended Involvements in this article.

Building Check-in Updates
If you haven’t tried the new Building Check-In, now is the time! In this release, we added some enhancements to the attendant dashboard and removed some UI elements that are not needed for building mode. To find out more about the new Building Check-In, take a look at a recent blog post as well as the documentation.

Register Today!

Check Scan v1.0.2 is now available! This updated version has been converted to a .NET application and no longer requires Java. For this reason, the installer will not upgrade previous versions. If you have a version prior to v1.0.0 installed, you can uninstall it after installing this new version.

To download this update, click here. For additional information, please see the Scanning Checks to Import Data and Images help article.

We deployed an update to the TouchPoint Check-In Print Server (version 1.2.1) that removes the requirement for Oracle 32-bit Java 1.8. The installer includes OpenJDK Java 19 and it will install along with the print server software.

This should update automatically and require no user input. The print server checks for an update every 24 hours from the time you last installed it. If you are running it as a Windows service, you can verify that it updated by launching the configuration window and looking at the version number in the title bar. If you manually launch the print server (instead of running as a Windows service), you will need to close the TouchPoint Check-In Print Server window and re-open it to display the new version, if you leave it open all the time.

We recommend checking your kiosks to make sure they are printing properly.

NOTE: Version 1.1.4 should continue to function, but we highly recommend updating to this new version as soon as possible.

See the Print Server for Check-In help article for more information.

Register Today!