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Formation Office Release Notes

11.3A Release

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

PDS Formation Office 11.3A, released for desktop and OnDemand 12-9-25, offers the following enhancements.

New and Improved Features

Email Registration Forms

  • Now, you have more control over which email address(es) the registration form is sent to. When you create an email form, there are new options at the end of the process.

    The Create Email Registration Form process showing options to send a form to the First Family Email, All Family Emails, or the First Email of Head and Spouse

  • You can send the form to one or more email addresses. For example, we have the Van Loon family. They have email addresses listed on the family record, and the head and spouse both have email addresses.

    Family RecordHead's RecordSpouse's Record
    Example of the Van Loon family record showing two email addressesExample of the head's record showing one email addressExample of the spouse's record showing one email address
    • If you select First Family Email, the form will be sent to one email address: the one listed first on the family record, which is jjvanloon@PDSDemo.com in our example.
    • If you select All Family Emails, the form will be sent to two email addresses: both listed on the family record, which are jjvanloon@PDSDemo.com and Jeane.VanLoon@PDSDemo.com. If there were other email addresses listed in the family's Email Address grid, it would be sent to those as well.
    • If you select First Email of Head and Spouse, the form will be sent to two email addresses: the one listed first on the head's record, Jeff.VanLoon@PDSDemo.com, and the one listed first on the spouse's record, Jeane.VanLoon@PDSDemo.com.
Online Registration
  • You no longer have to require families to enter an email address in order to submit an online registration form. If you'd like for families to be able to register without entering an email address, make sure to clear the Required Field checkbox for Family's Email when you create the web form.

    Web registration form field selection grid showing the Family's Email field with the option for Required Field cleared out

ParishSoft eGiving
  • We added an eGiving Transfer Type for ParishSoft. When you process eGiving using this type, it accepts the same file format as Faith Direct. You can use either one of these during the transition from Faith Direct to ParishSoft.
Long-Term Data Backup
  • We removed the restriction on backing up data to the Long-Term backup folder. Now, you don't have to be a security administrator to archive data in that location. However, we do still recommend that this folder be used sparingly, only for your most important backups. To learn more, see The Basics of Backing Up Data.

Corrections

We fixed issues that were reported internally to our team, as well as the following issue that affected some of our customers:
  • When importing family information, the default area code was being added to all phone numbers. Now, the default area code is only assigned to phone numbers that don't have an area code listed in your import file.
    Tip: Select the Advanced Options / Update Existing Information checkbox at the top if you want to add phone numbers to existing family records. Otherwise, phone numbers will only be added to the new families created during this import.
Release Notes
2025
portal
Formation Office

Last updated: December 9, 2025