What would you like to know more about?

Platform - October 2024

We have several enhancements across the Platform plus schema changes SPoCs will want to be aware of.

star icon indicating a featured enhancement Unsubscribe Snippets

  • If you've been using publications for unsubscriptions, you know that the default Unsubscribe link is always added to the bottom of your messages. To adjust the position or text of the link, SendGrid provided two Group Unsubscribe Substitution tags: <%asm_group_unsubscribe_url%> for changing the position only, and <%asm_group_unsubscribe_raw_url%> for changing the position and text.
  • Now, to make it easier, we have snippets for that! Instead of copying and pasting the code every time, you can insert a snippet in your publication. There are two available:
    • Insert Publication Unsubscribe link if you're sending a message from a publication.
    • Insert Global Unsubscribe link if you're sending a message without using a publication.
  • To customize the link wording, you can edit the snippets under Communications > Communication Snippets.
  • For more details, check out Use Publications for Unsubscriptions, which includes best practices and an FAQ.

Contributions (Formerly Stewardship)

In the August release notes and a September email update, we let you know about a change we're making for new customers. In non-Catholic instances, the term "Stewardship" will be replaced by "Contributions" to better align with the tasks you complete in this section.

Note: If you are using a Catholic instance, the term "Contributions" is already used, so you don't need to make any changes.

We will not force this change to your system, but you should consider updating the page section for consistency. We are updating this language in our Help Center and training materials, and will use this term in community posts and other resources.

For clarity when using these resources, we encourage you to update your system to use this language. First, talk to your IT SPoC about making this change. Then, if you decide to change it, here's how:

  1. Go to System Setup > Page Sections.
  2. Locate and open the Stewardship page section.
  3. Click Edit Record.
  4. Change the Page Section from "Stewardship" to "Contributions".
  5. Click Save.

To see your change immediately, use the Refresh Cache button in the About dialog box. Otherwise, changes will be applied within 24 hours. For more information on page sections, see the Help Center articles on System Setup Section and Pages.

Field Management

  • Fixed an issue where all Field Management groups were sorting alphabetically instead of placing the "General" group at the top.

Sacraments

  • The Date Received and Date Received Accuracy fields are now optional to accommodate historical records where dates are not known. However, to maintain accurate record keeping, we recommend setting Date Received Accuracy to Unknown for sacraments without dates.

Search

  • *From the Idea Board*: When searching for names that have accented characters, you can include or exclude those characters and see all matching results. For example, if you enter "Lopez", records for "López" also display, and vice versa.

Schema

  • We updated the data type of the Last Name and Nickname fields to be nvarchar instead of varchar. This allows for better handling of special characters.
  • Fixed an issue where the IP Address field for background checks could not accommodate some IP addresses.
  • We're working on a way for you to forecast recurring giving! To prepare for that, we added fields to the Scheduled Donations table, created a new table for Scheduled Donation Distributions, and shifted Program_ID and Pledge_ID from Scheduled Donations to the new table.
  • In the Donation Distributions table, we hid the _Vendor_Pledge_Code field that is no longer needed.
  • To prepare for future integrations, we made adjustments to the Account Information table.

User Interface

  • Fixed an issue where vertical scroll bars were not displaying in grid layout for Firefox browsers.

Views

  • Are your active contacts really "active"? Find out using the new Active Status vs. Activity view on the Contacts page! This view is available for those in the SPoC Views user group. It shows the most recent activity date for your active Contact records.
  • You can see who was unsubscribed from a publication via SendGrid's group unsubscription. Go to the publication, click the Subscribers tab, and select the Unsubscribed view. You can also add your own views with the Updated By and Updated On Behalf Of fields.
  • We updated the Major Donors Past 2 Weeks view to exclude the default contact Donor record as defined in the COMMON, defaultDonorID configuration setting.