The Login Screen is the first thing you'll see when you open Shepherd's Staff. This is where you provide Shepherd's Staff with your login credentials: your User ID and Password.
- User ID - This is your username for Shepherd's Staff, assigned by your system administrator. This is not case sensitive, and will automatically appear in all caps.
- Password - This is the password you would enter specific to your UserID. This is also not case sensitive. Your password, by default, will be hidden as you enter it, but, if you press the eye icon to the right of the password field, your password will be revealed as you type it in. Be careful with this feature, and make sure that other people are not around when you press this icon, as this will make your password visible to them.
After typing in your User ID and password, press "Continue" to log in to Shepherd's Staff. If your username and password are correct, you will be taken into the Shepherd's Staff Central screen. If your User ID and password are not correct, you will receive a message letting you know your User ID isn't correct if your User ID doesn't match a User ID in the database, or, your password is not correct if your User ID is found, but your password is incorrect.
At the bottom left corner of the Login Screen, you'll see the church name assigned to this database, as well as the City, State and Zip Code of the church. If you click on this text, this will tell you where on your computer or network the database you are currently connected to is located, as well as when it was last backed up, and when it was last optimized.
If you find that this is the incorrect database, and you need to change which database you're connected to, you can click the "Switch" button. This will then bring you to the "Switch to a different church database" window, where you can select another database to connect to.
There are a variety of other utilities you can access from the Login screen by clicking the "Utilities" option at the top left corner of the window. These utilities include:
- Check for Software Updates
- Optimize this Database
- Switch Church Database
- Restore a Database Backup
- Backup this Database
- Create a Church Database
Note: In order to use the Restore utility, you must first enter your System Administrator User ID and Password in the User ID and Password fields on the Login Screen. You can also restore only your finance information as well.
There are also Advanced utilities available. These include:
- Apply older database updates - This will reapply your database updates to your Shepherd's Staff database. We recommend that this utility be run only if instructed to do so by one of our technicians, and you should make a backup of your data before running this utility.
- View the central error log - This lets you view a text file that shows a log of all the errors that have occurred on your Shepherd's Staff database. A technician may need to look at this for troubleshooting purposes.
- View the INI file - This lets you access the INI, or configuration file for Shepherd's Staff. This is where you can manually adjust where your Shepherd's Staff software is looking for your database, which may be necessary in certain troubleshooting scenarios.