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11.0H Release

If you're part of the Preferred Client Program, you can download the latest desktop version in the Client Portal.

PDS Church Office 11.0H, released for desktop 9-18-23 and OnDemand 9-19-23, offers the following enhancements.

New and Improved Features

Funeral Place in the Sacramental Register
  • We recently added Funeral Place to the Memorial window, and that information is stored in the member's sacrament tab under the General Remarks. Now, the funeral place information (along with the Plot and Funeral Home) displays in the Death Register and is printed in the Death Register report.

Improved Matching in Online Registration
  • The following improvements were made for processing online registration forms:
    • In addition to name and address, a family's phone numbers and email addresses are used to match them to a form.
    • Both head and spouse types are checked for a match, no matter which type they were entered as on the form.
    • Names with apostrophes are matched even if the record doesn't include it, and vice versa. For example, D'Souza is matched with Dsouza.
    • First names entered on the form with both first and middle names now match separate first and middle names on records. For example, Mary Sue is matched with Mary{Sue}.
    • Similarly, first names entered on records with both first and middle names now match only first names entered on the form. For example, Steven Johnson is matched with Johnson,Steven Mark.
Review Your Selections
  • Report selections can be intimidating. Maybe you've tried adding complex additional selections in the past, but for some reason, certain records that you expected to display were not included in your report. Now, you can review your selections to find out why!

  • In the Selection window, click Review Selections. There are a lot of ways to view the information and get the answers you're looking for, so be sure to check out the help topic Review Report Matches to learn about all the options.

    Review Selections button opening the Review Matches dialog box, which shows the list of records that will be printed

Ms. & Mr. Titles
  • When a female member is the head of household, the title format now works the same as when a male is the head. In the Family Name dialog box, the head title automatically updates if you enter Mrs. or Ms. and the spouse has Mr. or Dr.. Likewise, reports show the appropriate format as Ms. & Mr., Mrs. & Mr., Mr. & Ms., Ms. & Dr., or Mrs. & Dr..

    Family Name dialog box showing the title as MS./M with the female head of household and male spouse

  • You can select whether to show the Head First Name Only (the way it has always worked) or Both Head and Spouse First Names. To change these, click the gear icon black gear with hole in the middle on the family record, and select Family Name Options.

    Family Name Options showing the option for Both Head and Spouse First Names selected and the Family Name dialog box showing Ms. & Mr. Mary & John Baxter

Improved Data Cleanup
  • We expanded the Clean Up Data process with more options for data efficiency! The first window, which is brand new, displays all the numbers of families and members in your program(s). This ensures you have all the correct numbers before cleaning up your records.

  • Now, you can clean up duplicate sacrament places as part of this process. (This is the same as the duplicate place cleanup under Sacrament Setup.) You can also print a worksheet for this section, which is helpful if you have a lot of places to review, and you can combine sacrament places with the information you selected, which takes effect immediately.

  • On the Phone Type List, you can see how many and which phone numbers have an invalid format. For example, it shows phone numbers that have missing or extra parentheses and other characters that don't belong. You can correct these by clicking Fix Invalid Phones.

  • There's a new window at the end where you can choose how to map your Sacrament Sponsor Types.

Corrections

We fixed issues that were reported internally to our team, as well as the following issue that affected some of our customers:
  • When cleaning up your data, if you assigned member phones then updated phone types right after that, the list of phone types was being removed.