Family Positions

Posted on August 8, 2019 by Brian Ford

Each person in eAdventist now has a “Family position” to provide a clearer way for you to record multi-generation families. Just like before, each Family has a Primary Contact and this person’s “Family position” is “Primary”. Now the other people in the Family can be designated as one of the following:

Spouse
Child
Other

You’ll see the “Family position” displayed in a couple of places on the Person page.

To change the “Family position”, click the “Edit Person” button.

For the Primary Contact, this setting defaults to “Primary”.

Just like before, you can select a different Primary Contact by clicking the “Change” button on the “Family” tab.

Multi-generation families

How can you use “Family position” to enter a family that includes grandparents? For example, one that includes:

Father
Mother
2 children
Grandfather
Grandmother

If the father is the Primary Contact, set the “Family position” for each family member like this:

Father – “Primary”
Mother – “Spouse”
2 Children – “Child”
Grandfather – “Other”
Grandmother – “Other”

Where is Family Position used?

The “Family position” is now used to determine spouses in the following parts of eAdventist:

Person Labels – the “One per family – Primary & Spouse” option for “Recipients”
Church Directory (Family)
Pastor Spouses report

Getting started

To give you a head start, we pre-set the Family Position to “Spouse” for families that had 2 married people. We also pre-set it to “Child” for people who are single and 18 years old or less.

You will need to set the Family Position for any others.

That’s it! Now you can use the “Family position” to record a clearer picture of the families that make up your church family.

The eAdventist team

Voting Transfers

Posted on June 27, 2019 by Brian Ford

Our church clerks in North America handled over 31,000 membership transfers in 2018, as members joined new church families. eAdventist takes most of the “paper and postage” out of this process by creating an online clerk community but the vital “people” components still take plenty of time and energy.

If you’re a church clerk, you are (or soon will be) very familiar with the 3 steps your church follows to “vote” on a transfer request:

Church board – recommends that the transfer be granted or accepted
1st reading – printed in the church bulletin and read aloud
2nd reading – printed in the church bulletin, read aloud & voted (following week)

We’ve just added the new Transfers to Vote report that will make your preparation for Step 1 much easier – print it before each church board meeting. Here’s a sample:

Take each item in one’s hand and ask: “Does this spark joy?” – Marie Kondo

We also decluttered the Transfers screen to make room for this new button – Marie Kondo would be so proud. The old “Print Pending” button that conference clerks use for printing transfer mail has been shortened to “Print” and moved into the “Offline & International Transfers” box (top, right corner). This creates paper transfers for the churches that aren’t “online” with eAdventist.

The “Settings” link allows you to choose how many days the “Completed” and “Withdrawn” tabs should include.

Voting on a transfer still takes time – a board meeting and two Sabbaths – but we’ve taken another step to make your work between votes as fast and efficient as possible.

eAdventist team

Tools for Mission Groups

Posted on October 2, 2018 by Brian Ford

Tags are the solution that most conferences have used in eAdventist to keep track of members that are involved in “mission groups” – small groups, house churches or church planting core groups. Today, we’ve added some powerful new features to help you deal with the vitality and fluid nature of these groups even better.

Now you can designate a “mother church” for each mission group. The new “Mission groups” tab show all of the groups that are sponsored by the church.

The next step is to set the “Mission group” for each of the people who are part of the group.

Now that your “Mission groups” are set up, you will be able to use them for creating lists, mailing labels, messaging lists and more.

If you are currently using Tags for your mission groups, we can migrate them to the new “Mission group” field. Let us know if you would like our help with this.

The eAdventist team

Email Lists 2.0

Posted on April 18, 2018 by Brian Ford

We’ve just made some big updates to Email Lists!

New name

They’ve been “Mailing Lists” until now because they included an option to create postal labels for people without email addresses. However, everybody has switched to a better option that’s available in Person Labels, so we removed the “postal” option and updated the name. Not only does this make Email Lists easier to use, it also makes them significantly faster!

Followers

Visitors and members of other churches can now join your list when you add them as Followers. Later this year, we’ll add an option that will allow them to add themselves from your church’s web page.

More file options

You’ve been able to send a variety of file types as attachments in messages but mail provides – like Gmail – block many of them as security risks. To ensure that your messages and files reach your audience, we now save the files on eAdventist and insert links to them in your message. Now you can send file types that are often blocked (e.g. Word, Excel, PowerPoint), knowing that all of your audience will receive them.

Updated editor & layout

The updated toolbar makes it easier to personalize your messages. Click the new “Merge fields” button to insert a placeholder for “First name” or “Last name”. The layout and fonts have been updated to ensure that your messages look their best in any mail software and any device.

Add photos and images to your message and resize them, if necessary. To ensure that your message is not blocked, each image file is stored on eAdventist and your message contains a link to it.

Here are some articles to help you get started:

Starting an Email List

Creating a Message

We’re on YouTube (finally)

Posted on March 16, 2018 by Brian Ford

A lot of people have asked if there are any videos for learning eAdventist. One resourceful conference created a set of 6 several years ago, but eAdventist has changed a lot since then. Our team has wanted to help fill this need for quite a while, to supplement the vast array of articles in eAdventist’s knowledge base. Everything finally came together and our first eAdventist video is available on our shiny, new “eAdventist” YouTube channel.

The “Finding Duplicates” video is mainly for conference clerks, since the Duplicate Search feature isn’t included in “Church Clerk” or “Pastor” roles – it has limited value for a single church. Not to worry, though. You’re welcome to watch it, if you want, and we’ll be adding other videos for Church Clerks and Pastors soon. The description of each video will let you know which group/s it’s intended for.

If you’re a visual learner, or just like watching YouTube, the eAdventist channel is finally here. Grab some popcorn.

Reclaimed: Welcome Back (Updated)

Posted on January 22, 2018 by Brian Ford

NOTE: In April 2017, we added a new “Reclaimed” option to eAdventist, as requested by @GCArchives. However, the NAD Secretaries Council discovered that “Reclaimed” would not be counted as membership increase, so this process has been updated to ensure that your membership is reflected accurately.

tl;dr – The only change is that you add these members by “Baptism” instead of “Reclaimed”. eAdventist can still identify these members because of the “Start Reclaim” entry.

Below is the updated version of the article we published in April.

It’s a great day when a former member decides to rejoin the church family. When someone who has been “Removed” from membership decides to rejoin, click the “Change Status” button and choose “Start Reclaim”.

The person’s “Status” will be changed to “Nonmember”. If the person is rejoining a different church, you can the use “Change” button (next to the Church) to move them to the appropriate church.

The History and Statistics screens will now show this initial change.

Next, click the “Change Status” button and choose “Baptism”.

This will change the person’s “Status” to “Member” and will indicate that they rejoined “by Baptism”.

Both the History and Statistics screens will now show these 2 steps. Any “Reclaimed” entered between April and December of 2017 will look like the entries circled in red.

Naturally, eAdventist allows you to undo “Start Reclaim” and “Baptism” statistics in case you ever need to correct a mistaken entry.

The “Reclaimed” column that was added to eAdventist’s statistical reports has been taken out. Any “Reclaimed” entered between April and December of 2017 will be counted in the “Baptism” column.

Let us know if you have any other questions about these changes. You can find more information about “Reclaiming” in this knowledge base article.

Look what else you got!

Posted on January 4, 2018 by Brian Ford

We added a bunch of new things to eAdventist in December but wanted to keep them wrapped until we were sure they were “keepers”. They all are, so you can go ahead and open them now!

1. Duplicate alert

You’ve always had the Duplicate Search, but now eAdventist checks for other families with the same address every time you open a Person’s record. Any duplicates are displayed as an alert, so you can decide whether they need fixing or not.

2. Grab a nonmember

eAdventist has made transfers so easy that it feels inconvenient having to ask other clerks for nonmember children to be moved. Now you’ll see a “grab” icon that lets you move them yourself. Easy peasy!

3. Transfers – icons & help

The Transfers page packs a lot of information, so we’ve introduced some new icons.

When you hover over an icon, your cursor will change to a “?”. That means you can click on the icon for help.

: Green “light”

: Yellow “light”

: Comments

: Offsystem

: Offline

: Printing

4. Email address warning

If eAdventist sends an email message to you that “bounces”, it won’t send any further messages until the problem is fixed. If this happens to your account, eAdventist will show a warning when you sign in.

To see the error message, click on “more information”.

5. Multi-select for Occupations

Need to let your medical professionals know about a mission trip? Or let your construction pros know about a service opportunity? The “Occupation” field in Person Labels now lets you select multiple occupations. It also searches the list as you type.

6. Include images in Mailing List messages

Add photos, graphs or banners to the messages you send with Mailing Lists. An article with more information on this coming soon.

7. Hi-res photos for Organizations

When you add a photo of your church or school, eAdventist now saves it in 2 sizes – “original” (up to 1024×768) and “thumbnail” (160×120).

8. Community forum

Ever wanted to ask other clerks or pastors a question? Or share a great idea with them? Now you can in the new Community forum – community.eadventist.net. It’s connected to your eAdventist account, so you use the same email and password to sign in. You can download the Discourse app from the App Store or Google Play Store to access the Community from your phone or tablet. More information about the Community coming soon.

Happy New Year from our team!

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