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03.15.2023 Update [8.9]

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Rod Kyles

Shepherd's Staff 2022 Version (8.9) Service Pack 20230315
Feature

MEMBERSHIP

  • When printing a Church Directory for a subgroup, in some cases it could include household entries for people not in that subgroup.

  • If you edited a household’s primary address from a person within that household, and then you changed the first or second phone numbers for that address, it correctly saved the change.

    • However, if you immediately clicked Save on the person before moving to another person or household, the phone numbers were reverted to what they were before. (Only the first and second phone numbers of the address had this issue; address phone 3 was not affected.)

  • A household count now displays just below the tree on the Household/Person edit window, showing the number of households matching the “Show” filter.
  • The global Labels report now has an Export button, allowing you to send the label information to a spreadsheet for review or use in another program.
  • There is a new photo directory style under the Church Directory for printing a double-sided directory: “Standard A with photo for binding”. The format adjusts the margins and page numbers so that printing front/back fits correctly when bound, and the page number is always on the outside edge of the page.
    • There are two new RPT files involved, M-ChurchDirStandardPhoto2.rpt and M-ChurchDirStandardGroupedPhoto2.rpt. The first file is called when grouping by household; the second file is called when grouping by Ministry Group or Person Assigned. Be sure to verify each of the options.

CONTRIBUTIONS

  • You can now print a contribution statement for envelope 0, “(anonymous)”.
  • The two batch Checklist reports now have an option to hide contributor names. The checklist report itself shows or hides names based on the logged-in user’s access rights. This change allows someone with rights to see giver names to print the checklist for someone who does not have rights.
  • Envelope box labels has a new option under Include that lets you add the words “or Resident” after the giver’s name. This is required by the USPS if you want to take advantage of bulk mailing rates.
  • The “By fund, year” summary grid has a new column for “Offering count”.
    • (The column also appears on the three reports.)
    • This count shows the relative giving activity towards the fund (more activity = more times someone decided to give to the fund).
    • Note: The following RPT files were updated: C-Grid-ByFundYear.rpt, C-Grid-ByFundYearFund.rpt, and C-Grid-ByFundYearYr.rpt.
  • The Funds grid has three new columns for displaying bank account, income account, and FASB 116 account in number-name format, so users can readily sort by account number (instead of just by account name, as it operated before).
    • Important: After running the installer for the 8.9 service pack, run Reset window sizes and settings (located under Utilities) to get the columns to display in the correct order. Those upgrading to version 9.0 do not need to take this additional step.
  • The Who selection under Contribution Statements has a new option, “For one contributor”. Selecting this displays a popup window listing all contributors, allowing you to print a statement for a single giver by name, instead of having to know the envelope number.

Change

MEMBERSHIP

  • you can now minimize the Household/Person Record window, as you can with Contributor Details.
  • The Individuals tab in Membership and the household/person edit window now auto-refresh after accepting changes from Unite.
    • Note that, on the household/person window, the tree will be reset to the first household.

CHURCH360° UNITE SYNC

  • Shepherd’s Staff alternate address information for households and people was not getting recognized by Unite. Furthermore, when you received data from Unite it could potentially overwrite the alternate address data in Shepherd’s Staff with blanks. To prevent this from happening, alternate address information is now ignored if received from Unite during the sync.

GENERAL

  • A problem occurs on networks if the machine hosting the database is turned off/disconnected while Shepherd’s Staff is still running on a workstation, generating an error such as, “<database name> is not a valid path.” To mitigate this, traps have been added to certain places to test that the network path is still accessible. If it is no longer visible to the workstation, a message appears describing the situation, and the program does not attempt to save any data, preventing the errors from occurring.
    • This trap has been added in the following places, all non-modal windows which are more likely to be left open on a given workstation:
      • When Membership closes.
      • When the household/person edit window closes.
      • When Attendance closes.
      • When Contributions closes.
      • When Scheduler closes.
      • When the main form (Shepherd’s Staff Central) closes.

OTHER

  • Preparations made to support the upcoming change to order/invoice length when registering your database with WebTools (allowing more characters).
  • Preparations made to allow setting “is nondeductible” from within batch entry in version 9.0.
  • Preparations made to distinguish between the “donation date” and the “settlement date” in the Vanco import in version 9.0.
  • Preparations made to add a “With non-removed people” filter to the tree on the Household record in version 9.0.

Cosmetic

MEMBERSHIP

  • In the LCMS annual report, question 4 was missing the “total” caption (e.g., did not have “Total gains” or “Total losses” next to the bottom total in each column).
  • In the LCMS annual report, questions 1 and 3 had “as of <date>” at the end of them; this is not needed (it is presupposed that the report is as of the year selected on the Church Info tab.

CHURCH360° UNITE SYNC

  • When sending data to Unite there was no cursor change to a wait cursor/hourglass).

CONTRIBUTIONS

  • Fixed typo in date validation messages / tooltips when adding/editing recurrent offerings. It formerly had “must fall be on day”; now is “must be on day”.
  • The top section of the contributor record reads “Statement preference”; the caption where you set it is “Statement method”. Change “preference” to “method” to make clear what field is being referred to.
  • When the offering batch entry window was maximized, the “Hide contributor names” checkbox was not correctly adjusting position, appearing within the Search textbox.

Fixed

MEMBERSHIP

  •  When using the Mass Update utility, if you had a household (or person) open, and the data was updated, it was not immediately refreshing the Household/Person edit window with the updated information. The window now refreshes after closing Mass Update. Note: The focus returns to the household.
  • In the LCMS annual report, if you calculated the report for a year in which children were baptized, it showed the count correctly. However, if you then ran it for a year in which no children have yet to be baptized, it was still showing the count (and child names) for the year with the baptized children. 
  • In the LCMS annual report, if you calculated the report for a year in which there were baptism issues under the Baptism counts, it showed the count correctly. However, if you then ran it for a year in with no baptism calculation problems, it was still showing the count (and names) for the year with the problems. (In other words, the count and names were not getting reset to 0/blank.)
  • In the LCMS annual report, if you clicked on the information button in a sub-count (such as one of the categories under question 4, “Gains/Losses”), and the sub-count is zero, the following error occurred: “Object reference not set to an instance of an object.” Error 1004. Location: frmR_DenominaionLCMS. Routine: DoSubQuestionInfo_ButtonClicked.
  • In Mass Update, updating “newsletter method” to “(none)” was not clearing the field, but setting it to the word “(none)”, which prevented further Mass Updating of “newsletter method” from working correctly.
    • Note: The existing problem of having “(none)” in the newsletter method is automatically fixed when you start this service pack.
  • In Mass Update, updating “newsletter method” was not correctly updating the “send newsletter” checkbox. For example, if you set the newsletter method to “(none)”, it left the checkbox marked.
    • Note: The existing problem of having no newsletter method, or a newsletter method of “(none)”, but still having the “send newsletter” checkbox marked, is automatically fixed when you start this service pack.

CHURCH360° UNITE SYNC

  • If you cleared a data field via Unite and then received the change and accepted it into Shepherd’s Staff, it was putting a space into that field instead of setting it to null. This could cause odd results in reports and other screens because the space was treated as data to print (whereas a null is ignored).

    • Note: Now, if a field is to be cleared, the word “NULL” appears in the “To this” column. This is somewhat cryptic, but it is necessary for the current design to function correctly.

  • When receiving address data from Unite it was clearing the country in Shepherd’s Staff. The country is not changeable via Unite’s user interface.

  • When receiving address data from Unite, if an address had two lines (such as for an apartment number), the import would overwrite address line 1 with a combination of address lines 1 and 2, and clear address line 1, even if no changes had been made to the address via the Unite user interface. For example, if you had someone living at “1234 Main Street, Apt. 203b” in Shepherd’s Staff, entered as two lines of “1234 Main Street” and “Apt. 203b”, after receiving data from Unite you would end up with “1234 Main Street Apt. 203b” in address line 1, and nothing in address line 2 – even though no one had changed anything via Unite.

    • Note: Be aware that if someone does change the second address line via Unite (e.g., changes the apartment number), then that change will end up in address line 1 in Shepherd’s Staff, and address line 2 will be cleared. The problem we are fixing was this occurring even if no changes were made to the address lines via Unite.

  • If you edit a household address/phone from the Person record instead of the Household record, it was not flagging the people in that household to be sync’d with Unite.

  • When receiving data from Unite it was not recognizing any changes made on the Unite side to home phone, cell phone, or work phone.
  • When receiving data from Unite it was putting the first name into the preferred name in Shepherd’s Staff. This is due to a difference between how Unite and Shepherd’s Staff handle preferred names. Shepherd’s Staff appends preferred names if filled in. Example: “Smith, Robert (Rob)”. However, this problem was causing names in Shepherd’s Staff to appear like this after accepting changes: “Smith, Robert (Robert)”.
  • You had to click the Close button twice to get the sync window to close.
  • When sending data and the connection failed (such as due to the subdomain not being entered correctly), the following error would occur: “Object reference not set to an instance of an object.” Error: 613. Location: frmU_UniteSync. Routine: SendDataToUnite. (It now passes through and displays the actual connection problem message, with the likely cause/solution.)
  • Note: Shepherd’s Staff has three address lines. Unite only supports the first two lines; address line 3 is not processed during the sync with Unite.

CONTRIBUTIONS

  • On the Behavior analysis report, the heading read “Who: Who” instead of the option you had selected in the Who choice list.
  • On the Giving Ranges analysis report, the heading read “Who: Who” instead of the option you had selected in the Who choice list.

ATTENDANCE

  • Under “Other Reports”, the "Sort/group by" selection was not saving with a user-defined report for the following reports:
    • Attendance Behavior
    • Attendance by Event

CONTRIBUTIONS

  • For one customer’s database, when sorting the Contributor grid by name and printing the grid report default, it was not consistently sorting the names in the report. It would start out fine, but then it would periodically put some names out of order later in the report.
  • When generating recurrent offerings for a semi-monthly frequency, and the first date falls on or after the 14th of the month, the resulting offering batch is dated in the current month instead of the next month.
    • The system considers days 1 – 13 to be the first part of the month, and days 14 – 28 to be the second part of the month, so when you put in a first date on days 14 – 28, it did not know to increment the month.
  • On the Contributor record, if you go to the last contributor at the bottom of the tree, and then click the “next” button at the bottom of the window, you received the following error: “Specified argument was out of the range of valid values.” Error: -2146233086; Location: frmC_ContributorDetails; Routine: btnFormNextContributor_Click. The button is now disabled when on the last contributor in the tree.
  • Inactive or removed non-joint envelopes were showing as Active in the Contributors grid (and in other places that used the “Active envelope” filter in the Who choice list). Places affected include:
    • Contributors grid
    • Behavior, Top givers, Giving patterns and Giving ranges tools.
    • Reports
    • Important: After installing the 8.9 service pack, please run “Reapply query changes” from under the login Utilities to apply this fix. (Those upgrading to version 9.0 will not need to take this extra step.)
  • Under “Other Reports”, the "Sort/group by" selection was not saving with a user-defined report for the following reports:
    • Contribution statements
    • Envelope box labels
    • Envelope box export
    • Envelope reference
    • Giving by household/giver/fund
    • Pledge progress
    • Pledge mail merge
  • If you floated the Contributions window and then tried to add or edit a batch, you received the following error: “Object reference not set to an instance of an object.”
  • If you floated the Contributions window and then tried to view a contributor from the Contributors grid, you received the following error: “Object reference not set to an instance of an object.”

GENERAL 

  • In some places in the program, you would get the following message when setting the sort order from the print preview window: “The sorting already exists.” Routine: SetReportSortOrder.
    • This only occurred with certain reports that allow you to change the sorting via a “sort by” drop list in the lower left of the print preview window. An example: The Anniversaries grid in Membership; print the Contact List report; a drop list titled “Sort by” appears in the lower left of the preview window; change the sort to “Name, type”; the message “The sorting already exists” appeared. The warning was unnecessary and is now suppressed.
  • If there were backslashes in a report title (such as a date like "12/31/2022"), when you exported from the Print Preview window it included those backslashes as part of the filename, which Windows does not allow. It now changes the "/" to "-" (backslash to a hyphen).

SCHEDULER

  • Under “Other Reports”, certain options were not being saved in a user-defined report:
    • Calendar: The “Person/contact”, “Room”, “Room type”, “Room location”, and “Month” settings.
    • Events: The “Sort by”, “Room”, “Inventory”, and “Contact” settings.
    • Inventory: The “Status”, “Room”, “Room type”, and “Room location” settings.
    • Room usage: The “Room type” setting.
    • Route details: The “Sort contacts by” setting.
  • Under “Other Reports”, if you saved an Events report, when you selected the saved report from under "My reports" the "Events between" date range was disabled.

SUBGROUPS

  • If you created a dynamic subgroup for Individual touchpoints completed “Today”, it was excluding the touchpoints completed on today’s date.
    • To apply this fix you must run “Reapply query changes” from under the login Utilities, and then you should edit and resave the affected subgroup to rebuild the criteria.

 

 

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