v3.137: Groups & Newsletters, Calendar Mentions, and More Flexible Check-in Labels

With this release, we’re ushering in a new era. This is the first version of ChurchTools that no longer includes the old Groups module. 🎉 The old Groups module has been removed from ChurchTools. Work on the new – and by now standard – Groups module began several years ago, and it was clear to us that we would only switch off the old module once all the necessary features had been migrated. We’ve been looking forward to this day for a long time, and now it’s finally here.

The mention menus in the Markdown editor now also show group content and wiki pages from a category directly. This makes it quicker to find relevant content and mention it in your text without any detours.

You can open the menu in the editor by typing /. The mention menu will open immediately.

The next two items were among the remaining requirements for retiring the old Groups module. With v3.137, we’ve added a new option for group registrations.

Email verification can now be disabled for registrations. This lets you decide whether a participant has to confirm their email address before completing the registration.

But be careful: this change can result in duplicate people in your system because, for example, people may be created directly without checking whether a person record already exists. As Uncle Ben says: With great power comes great responsibility.

Newsletter lists can now be linked directly to a group in the group settings. The member table and group membership details also show the newsletter status of each group member, for example “Opt-in successful” or “Unsubscribed”. This makes it easy to see directly within the group who receives the associated newsletter.

Just like in the old Groups module, a newsletter provider must be configured under System Settings > Integrations to use this feature.

Mail merges and address labels can now be created directly from a member list. For example, filter group members by a specific status and then use exactly that selection for a mail merge or address labels.

If you’re missing a suitable group member field while creating a registration form, you can now create it directly while adding it. You no longer have to leave the settings and create the field somewhere else first.

The group history is a great help when you want to see who did what in a group and when. This version sheds even more light on what’s going on. The icons have been improved so you can see more quickly what happened while scrolling. We’ve also added more filters so you can narrow things down to specific actions. That clears everything up, right?

Filters in group member lists are now organized into group member fields and person fields. This makes it easier to see what type of data a filter refers to and to put together more complex filters in a more targeted way.

For group member fields of the “Yes/No field” type, you can now set a default value when creating the field. This means that new group memberships automatically start with the desired default value.

Saved views in the Groups module can now be edited and deleted directly from the sidebar. This makes it quicker to adjust existing views or remove views you no longer need.

If “Additional people may be registered” is enabled in the registration settings, you’ll now find a link to the registration form on the public page both on the group details page and in the registration dialog. From there, additional people can be registered directly.

For example, if a registration is mentioned in a post, a user can get to the registration form more quickly to register additional people.

Descriptions for events and event tags now support formatted text as well as mentions of people, groups, songs, and wiki pages. The new formatting is also displayed in other calendar views, on the Info Screen, and in change notification emails. This allows important information to be structured directly in the event description and linked to relevant content.

The Check-in module includes a feature for sending labels to a printer during check-in. You can now use person, group, and group membership fields as placeholders on Check-in labels, just as you’ve been able to do in emails for a long time. This lets you customize labels more closely to your use case and, for example, automatically print additional information from a group membership.

Budgets can now be transferred from one cost center to another. This makes it possible to distribute existing budgets more flexibly between different cost centers within financial planning.

Simply select the same account for both the account and contra account in the booking form, and the option to specify two cost centers will appear.

Import many bank statements faster

Importing many bank statements from a ZIP file has been sped up. Especially when importing larger numbers of bank statements, this reduces the waiting time.

More consistent booking forms

The booking forms under “Bookings” and “Bank Statements” have been aligned. This gives you a more consistent experience across both workflows.

In addition to the time zone, admins can now also set the system region in the System Settings. In the future, this setting will be used for regional formatting, among other things.

Manage agendas via the REST API

The REST API has been expanded with endpoints for creating and editing agendas. This allows connected systems to create and modify agendas via the API.

Retrieve permission origins via the API

New REST API endpoints make it possible to see where a person’s permissions come from. GET /api/permissions/origins/global/persons/{personId} and GET /api/permissions/origins/internal/persons/{personId} return the sources of global and group-internal permissions, such as status, person, group role, or group type role. This makes it easier to trace the origin of a permission, particularly when working with integrations or troubleshooting.