11.2A Release
If you're part of the Preferred Client Program, you can download the latest desktop version in the Client Portal.
PDS Formation Office 11.2A, released for desktop and OnDemand 11-7-24, offers the following enhancements.
New and Improved Features
- Using the Change Ministries process, you can now choose what to do with old statuses, starting dates, and ending dates for all members. This is helpful if you need to change or remove the information for a long list of records. No more manual entry!
The same options are also available in the Change Talent process.
- When someone gives different amounts for different purposes, you can send them one receipt for their total payment. During the Payment/Donation Entry, make sure to split the payment and select Print Receipt for each one you want to print. Then, when prompted, select Print Receipts for Marked Entries and choose One per Name.
If you prefer to send one receipt per amount, you can still do that. Select One per Amount instead.
- When editing records, you receive messages to confirm your actions and prompt additional changes. For example, when marking a family as inactive, you're asked "Do you want to mark this family and all its members inactive?". Usually, this is helpful to make sure you don't update a record by accident. However, if you're updating many records one-by-one, you may want to skip these messages to save time.
We added an option so you can temporarily turn off these messages and instead provide the "automatic answer". Once selected, you can update your records without having to answer most of the questions. Then, when you exit the program, the option is automatically reset. And the next time you open PDS, all the messages display as usual.
To learn how to set this option and see which actions and messages are affected, check out Disable Messages Temporarily.
- The program that you're importing pledges from may not require an end date. Now, when you import pledge information, the End Date on the Pledge Details tab is no longer required. If you do select a value from your file and the date is blank for a recurring pledge, then the end date is set to the ending date of the fund period. If the frequency is "One-Time", the end date is set to the same value as the start date.
- We added new fields that you can use on the Family listing screen as well as in family reports and selections:
- City State Zip shows the city, state, and ZIP code for the family's "current" address. This field uses the mailing address (or the street address if there is no mailing address on their record), unless it's during the time when the family is at their alternate address.
- Street City State Zip shows the city, state, and ZIP code for the family's street address.
- Mailing City State Zip shows the city, state, and ZIP code for the family's mailing address.
- Alternate City State Zip shows the city, state, and ZIP code for the family's alternate address.
And under the Sac field section, there's a field for each sacrament place's ZIP code; for example, Baptism Place Zip and Confirm Place Zip.
- We noticed that the list of eGiving Types you can choose from was getting long, so we split it up. Now, you can more easily see the options in each list without having to scroll so much!
- In the Clean Up Data process, we added a way to see any unused fund activities and unused fund periods before removing them. In the Financial Information section, click Show List.
There's also a way to set the values you want to map for phones, emails, marital, and sponsor types. Rather than selecting only from the most common values, you can click [Type] Choices, select the ones you want to choose from, and click Apply/OK. If needed, you can always click Reset Defaults to set the choices back to the predefined list (which you can see when you hover over the Reset button).
- For more information about each step of the process, see Clean Up Your Data.
Corrections
- Under certain conditions, the Recent Searches list was showing member names in red text when they were active or in black text when they were inactive.
- An error displayed when deleting or inactivating families based on giving if you had your date format set to YYYY-MM-DD.
- When posting a Faith Direct file for eGiving, the first line was being skipped if it had quotation marks around it. Now, quotation marks do not affect any posted information.
- When adding a new family via online registration, the phone number(s) and email address(es) were not being posted to the family member records. Now, if you've set the Automatically Add Family Phones/Emails to Members option in Initial Setup, family phones and emails are also posted to family member records.
- If you emailed a letter and selected the Email as Plain Text option, special characters (such as ' and á) were not displaying correctly.
- When trying to move fund history entries, the button used to process the move was missing.