11.1A Release

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

PDS Formation Office 11.1A, released for desktop 10-23-23 and OnDemand 10-26-23, offers the following enhancements.

New and Improved Features

Auto Link Members in Sacramental Register

We improved the way members records are linked with the Sacramental Register. When you add a new record in a register, the program looks for a possible match in your member records. If a match is found, you're prompted to auto link to that record. Or, you can choose to link it to a different member record or another sacramental register entry. If a match is not found, you can still link the record manually using the Link button.

Cash Flow Report

There's a new report that shows the cash flow for a fund, including the total amount due and received for each month as well as the cumulative due and received. You can also see the percentage of payment, which is the cumulative received divided by the cumulative due. And, at the end of the report, it prints the total number of families, along with how many were pledging and paying. In the Reports section, expand Financial Reports > Financial Analysis Reports, then click Cash Flow.

Find Your Way with the Quick Navigator!

Have you ever stared at the Home screen and wondered how to get where you wanted to go? Now, starting from anywhere in the program, you can quickly navigate to the exact window you want!
Click Quick Nav. in the program bar at the very top, and the Quick Navigator displays. From there, just click where you want to go! Use the Find bar at the top to highlight matching results in the Quick Navigator.

All or Any Filtering on Listing Screens

When filtering a column on listing screens, you can now select whether to apply any of your conditions or all of them. Selecting Any of these means that your conditions are not dependent on each other, and an entry will display in the grid if it meets one or more of your conditions. If you select All of these, then an entry must meet all of your conditions in order to display in the grid.
For example, let's say we filter the Age column with two conditions: "Greater than 9" and "Less than 18". If you choose Any of these, then anyone over the age of 9 OR under the age of 18 will display... which is everyone in your data. In this case, to see everyone between these ages, you'd want to choose All of these. That way, only those who are over 9 AND under 18 will display.

Long-Term Backups

You may notice a new option when backing up and restoring your data. Select Back up to the Long-Term Backup folder for the more important backups you want to keep on a long-term basis. When you need to restore data, you can select from the Long-Term Backup internal archive folder. Note that the long-term location should not be used for every backup, only those that are most important.
If there are other users in the program when you try to back up your data, you're now prompted to notify them to save their work and exit so you can complete the backup. See Notify and Dismiss Other Users to learn how that feature works.

Abundant Transactions in a New Fund Period

Let's say you're importing transactions from Abundant, and a family doesn't have the appropriate fund period set up. Instead of adding the transaction to the family's latest fund period, a new fund period is now created using the fund setup information. Then, the transaction is added to that new (correct) fund period.

We fixed issues that were reported internally to our team, as well as the following issues that affected some of our customers:

If you searched using partial information and selected a record in a different area (such as a student record when you were in the Families window), the record was not displaying. This also happened if you selected a record in a different area from the list of recent searches.
If a family submitted a registration form without a Head or Spouse entered, the process could not match the family and was not displaying the information at the bottom of the window. Now, it displays the information so you can match the family manually.
When clearing the Catechist checkbox for a member or personnel, their name was displaying as a blank entry in the list of catechists. Now, when you clear the checkbox or try to delete a catechist record, the program checks if the individual is in the list of catechists for any classes/sessions. If so, you're prompted to remove that catechist from the schedule before the Catechist checkbox can be cleared or the record can be deleted.