Something Old, Something New — Assigning Family Attributes

In this article, we’ll review something old, and present something new.

Something old: from the Family/Household query screen, you can do a wholesale change of billing status. For example, suppose you’ve collected a few dozen prospective members during the High Holiday season. And you’ve appropriately entered them into ShalomCloud with a status of “Prospect.” A couple of weeks go by, and several of those prospective contacts have gone ahead and joined the congregation. Via the query, you can use the checkbox on the right, and use the red button to

And now for something new:

Hopefully, you’re acquainted with the idea of family attributes. You’d declare them near the bottom of the Configuration menu. Then, you’d assign them in one of two ways:

  • In the Maintenance -> Add/Update Families screen, or
  • Under Maintenance -> Assign Family (yours might say Household) Attr.

There is now a third way, via Queries – Families, as described in the second paragraph above. But, instead of using the “Change status for checked” button, you select an attribute, and use the new button, “Add attribute to families.”

assign attribute to families

For an animated look at what’s described in this article, feel free to follow this link.

New Selection on Statements

There is now a new selection on statements, namely a “not” attribute.

In our quest to continually provide you with more flexibility, we’ve rolled out quite a few more options for producing periodic statements, over the years. To summarize here, those options have included:

  • Choose your email template when sending statements.
  • Include or suppress payment details.
  • Include or exclude credit balances.
  • Select a subset of categories (e.g., school-only).
  • Include or exclude a recent-payments section.
  • Select statement recipients by family/household attributes.

This is yet another of those incremental improvements. In regard to those attributes — you can now select by households that do NOT have a certain attribute.

Couple of examples where this might prove useful.

  • Your standard is to produce statements by email. However, you have some families who expressly want a paper statement only. In that case, you might set up an attribute, “Surface mail only.” Then, when your embark on your standard statement run, you can select Does not have attribute Surface mail only.
  • Your standard practice is to run statements monthly. In contrast, a few families want this communication quarterly. Accordingly, you’d set up an attribute, such as “Quarterly.” Then in your monthly run, select Does not have attribute Quarterly.

Here’s a video depicting this idea in motion.

Dramatic Speed Improvement When Assigning Member Attributes

You will now notice a dramatic speed improvement when assigning member attributes.

Ensure you are utilizing the powerful feature of assigning attributes (a.k.a. tags, groups) to individuals in your congregation. If you haven’t yet, the following video will give you a concise introduction.

Admittedly, there had been an unwelcome delay when navigating to Maintenance -> Assign Member Attr, especially with a large number of members and attributes. We’re excited to inform you that improvements are now in place to reduce delays and enhance your experience significantly.

You will now see a significant improvement in response time, with the assignment screen displaying 50% to 95% faster.

Also — we’ve included more information on the assign screen.

Before this change, you would see:

  • Last name
  • First name
  • Email
  • And a link to display the member record

Now, you will see

  • Status
  • Last name
  • First name
  • Email
  • Family/Household code
  • And a link to display the member record.

Here’s a video illustrating the before-change and after-change.

Dramatic Speed Improvement When Assigning Member Attributes

Customize Your Member Portal: Show and Hide Buttons

This change gives you more control over which buttons appear in the logged in member portal.

If you’re unfamiliar with the member portal, here is a series of articles about it. In brief, it gives your folks the ability to:

  • Update their own demographic information.
  • Pull a statement.
  • Make payments, both to amounts owed, and as contributions.
  • Set up recurring payments.
  • Search for other members of the congregation.
  • Link directly to your ShalomCloud shopping cart.

This specific change is rather narrow in scope, actually. It gives you finer control over which buttons you show on the member portal. You can

  • Show or hide the button to “Edit my family”
  • Show or hide the button to “See my statement”

Here is a video, showing how to make those changes, from the administrator’s perspective; and, then, what it looks like from the member’s perspective.

Customize Subject Line for Donation Acknowledgements

Background: this article on bulk acknowledgement of contributions.

And this one: bulk acknowledgement of commitments.

The announcement highlights an update regarding the subject lines of email acknowledgements. You now have the flexibility to enter a custom, fit-for-purpose subject line!

It’s not a required field, by the way. If you leave it blank, the emails will have the subject line as “Donation”.

Here’s a brief (3 minutes, 14 seconds) video showing the new subject line field in action.

Not one, not all, but a selection– the shopping cart

Now available with the ShalomCloud shopping cart — grouping of items.

Until now, there were two styles of links or buttons that you could put onto your web site, or into email. You could provide a link to all available items; or you could provide a link to a single item.

We now offer the ability to create group codes, and then to assign items to a group code. For example, you might have several items related to a forthcoming Shabbat dinner. Adult member, child member, Adult non-member, child non-member. Or, perhaps, adult chicken, adult vegetarian option, child chicken, child vegetarian option. You can now create a group, call it Shabbat, and attach that group to all of those variations.

When you create a group, the “Show” screen provides the link that will display all items in the group, and no others.

Group code defined

Group code in action

Here’s a video that shows the above feature in action.

Convenience — Copy High Holiday Honors from a Prior Year

If you’ve used our Aliyot/Honors capability in a previous year, you can now copy those records into the current year.

If you’re unfamiliar with the ShalomCloud Aliyot capability, best to set up some time with us. We can go through the entire round trip, including:

  • Setting up the honors
  • Offering, or nominating, persons for each honor.
  • How to follow-up, either for those who have not responded.
  • How to send reminders for accepted honors.

In contrast, this announcement pertains to cases where you have a set of prior honors, and wish to get started on the new year.

It’s simply a matter of choosing a service (Erev Rosh Hashanah, Kol Nidre, et al.), using the “copy” link, and designating the date and time of the respective service.

Also — if you wish to copy the honorees from a prior year, there is a button for that, too. Or, if you want to start fresh, you can copy the honors themselves, but leave the honorees open.

Here’s a video that runs through this new process.

Copy high holiday honors

Now Available — Add/Change/Delete Purchase History

Until this change, the ShalomCloud shopping cart purchase history relied solely on purchases made online. You had no way to change those records. So, if someone accidentally signed up twice, or signed up and later informed you that they could not attend, you had no way to update that data. Your record counts would be off, and the funds collected (or to be collected), would be off.

Another situation: if someone wanted to make a purchase, or register for an event, but would prefer not to use the online shopping cart, you had no way to indicate that. Perhaps they mailed in a check for a Shabbat dinner, for example, and you wanted to add that reservation to the purchase history.

This change allows you to accommodate those situations. You can delete a purchase; and you can manually insert a purchase.

One major caveat, though — any financial ramifications would have to be handled separately, via the normal financial transaction screens.

Here’s a video that demonstrates some basic use cases.

More control, more variety — choose your email template for statements

If you send monthly/quarterly statements by email, this may interest you.

Prior to now, you needed an email template, specifically named “send_statement_link.” Now, you’ll see a drop-down box, that lets you choose your email template for statements.

choose your email template for statements

This may be useful in a couple of circumstances, such as:

If you want to distinguish the statement email by monthly vs quarterly, or

If you send category-specific statements by email, and you want the content to be relevant to that category.

In the drop-down box — instead of showing all your email templates, the program will show only your email templates that contain the word “statement“. Doesn’t have to start with statement. So, “Monthly Statement,” or “Religious School Statement,” or “Membership Statement” will all appear in that drop-down box.

If you’re interested in some of the previous developments in regard to statements, feel free to peruse these articles:

Choosing specific categories

Suppress detail on statements

Including a link in the email, that will log the person into the member portal.

New Option to Suppress Detail on Statements

The ShalomCloud statements, by default, show amounts charged, amounts credited, the balance, AND the individual payments that sum to the amounts credited.

If you (or your audience), find that listing the individual payments are clutter, or are confusing, you now have the option to suppress that detail. Here’s a before-and-after snippet:

Default, in effect today:

And, then, if you wish to choose this new option:

If you prefer the second format, here’s how to make that change:

  • Go to Home -> Declare synagogue options
  • Scroll down, until you see an option to Suppress detail on statements
  • Select the radio button, Suppress detail
  • Submit

It’s hopefully a “set-and-forget” option, rather than a choice you’d need to make every statement run.

Here’s a video showing the above in action.