Posted by Do you like it as much as I do when the April sun comes out between the clouds on those snowy rainy days? April is just delighting us again with its vivid side. In contrast to April, we at ChurchTools remain steady and have continued to work on our current tasks. Therefore, this version also comes with less new features. But today I would like to give you a little insight into what we are currently working on.
We address email issues, other check-in fields, and provide two sneak peeks at upcoming changes: the new Sync module and a redesign of our Wiki.
Group registration: Persons with the same email address
For a group registration it is possible to set that family members may also be registered by a person. We have adjusted this option slightly. As of version 3.72, all stored email addresses are now checked to see if there are other people with this person’s email address. If yes, then these persons are also displayed for registration.
This allows the following use case to be realized: I enter my email address with my parents as a secondary email and now I can also register my parents for church services, for example. The parents still have their own email address and can use it to log into ChurchTools.
Regularly check of email settings
The fact that emails do not reach the recipient can have very many different causes. One problem that we observe more often is that a sender address is chosen that does not work well with our email server. We now check this case regularly in the cron job and if ChurchTools finds any discrepancy, the admin will get an error message on the start page.
Group fields and other fields at check-in
This version also brings an improvement in the check-in module. Surely it has happened to you that a person has appeared at the check-in, who has not previously registered or was part of the group. The person at the check-in can then simply add the person to the group. The disadvantage: The group fields or further fields for new persons were not displayed. This meant that you had to go back to the Persons & Groups module again. Now no more!
With version 3.72, the group fields (if any) are now displayed and when creating a new person, there are also the other fields that are already displayed when creating new persons in the Persons & Groups module.
ChurchTools Sync
We are working on a new ChurchTools Sync. Gerrit has already announced it in the blog. Therefore, I do not want to repeat everything again here. Only this much: The ChurchTools Sync module will provide a possibility to synchronize certain external systems with ChurchTools. But also a synchronization between two ChurchTools installations is made possible therewith.
We have been working on this for some time and it will continue to accompany us for a few more months. We see great potential in it to get rid of old baggage and to offer you new opportunities.
To make sure that everything remains transparent, we have built in a history that documents the last executions, and a sync log lets you keep track of the changes.
New outfit for the wiki
Often, many small things have to happen before something can shine in new glamor. This is also the case with the wiki. Our developers have been working steadily in the background over the last few versions to provide ChurchTools with a fresh new wiki.
You will soon be able to use the new wiki as well. But this is not just a redesign! We have built in a better search that can also search across all categories. With the new wiki, we will rely in future on the well-proven markdown format. For links in the body text, a distinction is made between whether it is an external link or its own page in the wiki. And in order to keep the overview, we have adapted and extended the table of contents (On this page).
In the first step, the new wiki will primarily be a redesign. The changes mentioned above come with it as a free package, so to speak. However, we are already actively planning further functions and taking them into account in the conception.
Further changes
If this is not enough for you, you will find all changes of this and earlier versions in our Changelog.
We hope you like the new version as much as we do. As always, you may leave praise and criticize in our forum.