Platform - Released June 24-25, 2024
We developed a way to capture alternate email addresses for personnel and implemented many suggested improvements from the Idea Board.
Personnel Email Addresses
- Some personnel may have different email addresses based on the different roles they serve. For example, a priest may serve in two parishes as well as a diocesan role, all of which have a different email address associated. Now, you can set up alternate email addresses for personnel! This way, you can send emails to staff members at their relevant email address.
- There's a new page under Lookup Values called Alternate Email Types. Here, you can set up the different types of email addresses that personnel may have. For example, "Church", "Diocese", "Preschool", and so on. Add as many types as you need, but be aware that these apply across all personnel – so avoid getting too specific, like "Pastor's Office" or "Jill's Group".
- After you set up email types, you can add alternate email addresses for your personnel. Go to .
- Once alternate emails are in place, you can send messages to different email addresses. When drafting your email in the New Message Tool, there's a new drop-down list for Send to. (This only displays if you've set up alternate email types.) Select the alternate email type(s) you want to send your message to. For example, if you're sending an email about the upcoming preschool field trip, you could select the type you set up for Preschool.
- Recipients who have an email address associated with the selected type will receive the message at that address. Recipients who do not have an email address of that type will receive the message at the email address listed on their Contact record.
Important: This enhancement is only for emails to your personnel who have more than one work email address. We are exploring future enhancements to allow a user to have multiple email addresses (such as work and personal) associated with a single contact. For now, please use this feature for personnel only, and do not store multiple email addresses for non-staff users.
Authentication
- We added a field for Last Token Request on Authentication Log records. When a user logs in, a new record is created as usual. If that user selected Keep me logged in on this device, then each time they access the Platform after that, the Last Token Request field will be updated with the date and time. This way, you can monitor who is accessing MinistryPlatform, even when they choose to stay logged in.
- In March, we provided the ability to add CSS to your authentication screens by adding a file to your Domain record. But sometimes, the CSS remained on the login screen after the file had been removed. Now, your local browser cache updates to reflect any changes right away.
Event Series
- *From the Idea Board*: When creating a recurring schedule, you can now clear specific dates so they aren't included in the series. After you set the recurrence pattern, just click the dates you don't want to include!
Image Upload
- Do you attach high resolution images for things like signage and slideshows? Now, when you upload files, there's a Resize option for XX-Large: 1920px longest side, which is considered "Full HD". Selecting this option for very large files can improve your system performance. However, if you want to keep the full resolution, there's also an option for Do Not Resize.
Messages
- *From the Idea Board*: Have you ever worked for a while to make your message perfect, then mistakenly closed out of the New Message tool? We've alleviated that frustration! Now, if there's anything in the subject, body, or attachments, a warning displays if you close the tool or click the X before saving your changes.
- If you're sending an email or text from the New Message tool and one or more recipients don't have an email address or mobile phone number listed, you'll now be notified of that number of recipients when you try to send it. You have the option to go back and review your recipients or go ahead and send the message to everyone else.
- We updated the Message Curfew warning to include the time frame (Message Curfew Start Time and End Time) when users are allowed to send messages.
- Fixed an issue where the Send to Parents recipient list was being counted towards the Exceed Messaging Quota. Now, as long as a user's initial selection is below their quota, they can send messages to parents without triggering the Send With Approval process.
User Interface
- If you've ever lost track of a dialog box while moving it around your screen, you're in luck! Now, the entire box stays in view instead of falling off the edge of your screen. Note that this is only for Platform dialog boxes; Tools and Reports open in new browser windows.
- When you're in Grid layout and you click Reset Grid Defaults from the Actions menu, you'll now see each column's width restored to its default size.
Views
- *From the Idea Board*: We removed the requirement for a filter clause when creating a new view. If you create a view but don't add any filters, the clause "1=1" is added automatically when you save. That way, you don't get a warning message when you just want to see a different set of columns.
- The Sacraments Completed view on the Dioceses or Districts page now includes a breakdown of each sacrament. So you'll see how many baptisms, marriages, and so on have been completed at each diocese/district.
- In the last release, we introduced a way to automatically create and update pledges based on donations. Now, in Catholic instances, there are two fix views to help you identify which donations may not have been updated by the routine due to an issue. That way, you can review and update them as needed.
- Fix: No Pledge Assigned checks for reasons that a pledge could not be assigned, such as donations older than 90 days, donations before the first installment date, inactive pledges, programs missing a pledge campaign, and more.
- Fix: No Pledge Created checks for reasons that a pledge could not be created, such as pledge campaigns that do not have Auto Create Pledges set, donors set to the default contact, donors with Always Pledge Credit assigned, and more.
Additional Improvements
- *From the Idea Board*: We fixed the error that was related to the character limit for Record Insights templates.
- The Audit Log now records the name of an impersonating user when they complete a User Task.
- Fixed an issue where users who required multi-factor authentication (MFA) were prompted for a code every time they logged in, even after selecting the Register this device for 30 days option.
- Fixed an error that displayed when users tried to complete multiple assigned tasks associated with filtered pages.
- Fixed an issue where the API Client was not always redirecting to the designated location in the Post Logout Redirect URIs field.
- Fixed an issue in our retry process for webhooks, which resulted in some unexpected calls. To help with this, we are invalidating webhooks that are older than one day.
Coming Soon
- Admins may notice a new page called Secure Configuration Settings under the Administration section. This is part of an enhancement we're working on that will store sensitive data using encryption. Watch for more on this in a future release!
- We plan to hide the old User Email field from the User record since it is no longer needed. In the unlikely event that you're using this field, we recommend moving or removing it before the next Platform release.
- Looking for an update on the List-Unsubscribe requirement for emails? Check out the latest post in the MinistryPlatform Community for more information.