11.2B Release

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

PDS Formation Office 11.2B, released for desktop and OnDemand 12-10-24, offers the following enhancements.

New and Improved Features

Import Student Attendance from a File

You can import student attendance information (like whether they were absent or present for classes) on different dates for a certain year/period. This is useful if you use something other than PDS to mark student attendance.
The import information is matched with your current PDS records using each student's name and birth date. This process does not add new students or classes/sessions. Make sure you have set up the student and class/session records you need before importing. For details and step-by-step instructions, see Import Attendance Information.

Import Emergency Contact Information

When you import member information, you can now include emergency contacts from your file. Once imported, emergency contact information displays in the student's Contacts window, with one tab for each contact. For more on these fields, see Member Import Field Information. For help importing, see Import Member Information.

View/Print Fund Information

There's a new option in the View/Print Fund Information dialog box (when you click View/Print in the Tuition & Fees navigation menu). Now, you can restrict the view to show all funds in one specific year. Select The Following Single Year and choose the year you want to see.
Also, to make it easier to select a Fund Period, you can now type a number into the drop-down list instead of scrolling through the list to find the one you want.

Add Phone Numbers AND Email Addresses

Previously, the Family/Member Phones/Emails process assigned either phone numbers OR email addresses. Now, you can run the process once and add both phone numbers AND email addresses at the same time! For steps, see Assign Family or Member Phones and Emails.

Add Commas Between Cities and States

Are your City/State Names keywords missing the comma? Now, you can quickly add the comma to separate cities and states (or provinces for our Canadian friends) using the Change Addresses process.

Mother's Maiden Name

To accommodate longer maiden names, we increased the size of two fields: Mother in member Sacraments and Mother's Maiden in member Sacraments and Sacramental Registers. You can now enter up to 60 characters.

Improved Data Cleanup

In the Clean Up Data process, we added a way to see any classes/sessions that don't have a grade level specified. If any are found, you can view the list and go into each record to add the appropriate grade levels.
You can also find and view duplicate families found in your program. This only examines active records visible in Formation Office, and does not include archived records or families inactive in both Church and Formation Office. Click Find Duplicate Families to display the number of duplicates, then you can click Show List to view the families. Use the Combine Families process to clean these up.

Improved Messaging

We updated the message that displays when an Index Out of Date error occurs. Now, you're prompted to exit and restart your program rather than run the Fix Data process. We've found that this is typically a quicker solution. If the error displays again, you have the option to repair it.

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

When reprinting a batch report after modifying a batch, the report was not immediately reflecting the changes.
If you modified a batch to add a line then used the Tab key after entering the amount, the new line was being deleted.