When a congregant passes away, there are a number of tasks to take care of. Until now, we provided a list of those actions, which you had to perform one by one.
With this enhancement, we have streamlined that process and automated quite a few steps. Where the steps do require manual input, we’ve gathered those inputs into fewer screens than you had to visit in the past.
The manual steps are:
- Update the formal name, informal name, and informal label of the family
- Possibly changing the billing status, especially if the one who passed away was the last survivor of the family
The automated steps — those that ShalomCloud performs without your intervention are:
- Sets the “deceased” flag for the member.
- Erases the email address (to avoid inadvertently sending an email from ShalomCloud).
- Erases the cell phone (to avoid inadvertently sending a text message from ShalomCloud).
- Changes the role-within-family to “Deceased.”
- For all Yahrzeit notifications that the newly deceased was receiving, sets the notification flag to “N”. This avoids the embarrassing possibility of sending Yahrzeit reminders.
- Tags the Yahrzeit as a former member. Thus, you can query Yahrzeits for former members who passed away during a given time period.
After performing these actions, both manual and automated, the system then provides you with a link to all the Yahrzeits currently observed by the person who passed away. This gives you the opportunity to declare other reminders, thus keeping alive the lineage.
To see this process in action, please peruse this video, illustrating the process to follow when a congregant passes away.
