Announcing two new features for yahrzeit emails.

First — until now, the recipient of the reminders saw only the email address of the sender. So, for example, if you logged in as admin@yourtemple.org, that’s all the recipient saw. Now, the name associated with that user will appear, alongside the email. Thus, for example, assuming that Adam Adams is the administrator, the email will come from Adam Adams <admin@yourtemple.org>.

Second change — until now, the subject of those yahrzeit emails was always the single word Yahrzeits. If you’re content with that, you need do nothing. If, however, you want something more descriptive as your subject line, you can go to Home => Declare synagogue options. Scroll near the bottom, where you’ll find a field labeled Subject for yahrzeit reminders. Whatever you enter there (after touching the submit button), becomes the subject line for emailed yahrzeit reminders.

To see a brief video demonstrating the above, feel free to access this link.

This is purely an incremental change, and one of modest scope. Nonetheless, it’s something that a few of our customers and prospects have suggested.

Let’s say that you want to see the Yahrzeits related to a person or a family. Heretofore, there were basically two way:

Way I: Go to Queries -> Yahrzeits. Enter any part of the member’s last name, and optionally any part of the member’s first name. Check a few boxes in the list of fields to appear, and search. You’ll see a screen with all the Yahrzeits observed by the member whose name you entered, alongside with other observers of those Yahrzeits.

Way II: Go to Maintenance -> Yahrzeit Relationships. In the search box toward the left side of the screen, enter the last name of the member in question. ShalomCloud displays the corresponding Yahrzeits. Take note that the link to the far left on the Yahrzeit name, jumps into maintenance on the deceased. And that the link on the right jumps into maintenance on the relationship. For example, from there you could change the notification to N (no notification).

And now, we have Way III:

Go to Maintenance -> Add /Update Families. Enter a portion of the family code. Then, use the Edit link on the right to drill into the details for that family. First you’ll see the household information; after that, the individual members of that household. Immediately below the last member of the household, you’ll see the new section, showing all the Yahrzeits for any member of the household. That, too, has a link that allows you to jump into editing any one of those Yahrzeits.

This accompanying video runs through all three techniques.

Let’s say you’ve done a Yahrzeit query, typically by week or by month. Unless your congregation observes completely by Hebrew date, or completely by Gregorian date, you’ll see that the screen has two different lists. The first list comprises Yahrzeits that fall within the Hebrew date range; the second, Yahrzeits that fall within the Gregorian date range.

And then, the point of this article — between the Hebrew section and the Gregorian section is the button to create a combination Bimah list. So named, because it combines the two styles of observance. That has existed for some time. What is new, then?

A check-box to include all Yahrzeits with a plaque, regardless of any other selection criteria.

A check-box to exclude Yahrzeits for whom there is either no observer, or only observers with a notification flag of N (No notification).

One last wrinkle — on the combo bimah list, we’ve put an asterisk next to those who have a plaque.

Directly from the Yahrzeit query screen, you may now print envelopes for Yahrzeit notifications.

The envelopes come out in alphabetical order, one per person. As is the case for printing envelopes from the family query, you may choose to print your synagogue’s return address on the upper left of the envelope, or leave that area blank.

For more background on various aspects of Yahrzeits, please visit this link.

For a video specifically on printing envelopes for Yahrzeit notifications, please visit this link.

This enhancement includes the ability to do a yahrzeit query by attribute.

To review — you can assign attributes (a.k.a. “tags”) to individuals. For example, you may wish to assign an attribute of “Snail Mail Only,” or “Send yahrzeit notifications by surface mail” to some congregants who have expressed that preference. Until now, there was no way to distinguish observers by tag.

Now, you can do so. In the Yahrzeit query, you’ll see a new selection called “Member attribute.”

That way, you can obtain one comprehensive list of observers. Or, you can obtain a list according to the way you’ve tagged individuals.

There is one more small enhancement along with this one. If you use the Combo Bimah List export, you’ll see the observer’s cell phone on that spreadsheet.

To see these features in action, please enjoy this short (3m, 30s) video.

Diving a bit deeper — most often, the Yahrzeit query is by a range of dates — the forthcoming week, or the forthcoming month. It’s more versatile than that. You can also query by the name of the deceased; by the name of an observer; and you can also pull a list of people who have passed away in the past year .

We have a couple of yahrzeit enhancements that may be quite useful, depending on your situation.

yahrzeit enhancements 1: Date range change

Until now, when you keyed a date range to pull yahrzeit lists, that range had to be entirely in the future. If you entered a date in the past, the system assumed you meant next year. With this enhancement, you may enter dates up until 10 days ago. For example, if you’re pulling a yahrzeit list on Friday, 11/13/2020, you may enter Saturday, 11/7/2020 through Friday, 11/13/2020. Another example — suppose it’s the 3rd of a month, and you meant to pull the entire month three days ago, but somehow missed doing it. Now it works to pull from the 1st through end of month.

yahrzeit enhancements 2: Export bimah list

After running the query, if you’ll scroll to roughly the middle of the page, you’ll find a light blue button entitled “Create Combo Bimah List.” That is not new — it presents a nicely formatted page, combining the yahrzeits with the observers by Hebrew date, along with the observers by Gregorian date.

New, though, is a button to the right of the the light blue button. This is an indigo button

that makes the same data available in a spreadsheet.

The spreadsheet has a few features not available on the web page:

• the name of the yahrzeit appears with the first and last names in separate columns, and then again with the first and last names combined into one column.
• if there is a plaque, the plaque location occupies a column
• the first and last names of the observer, and the relationship of the deceased to the observer, appears in separate columns; and then combined into one column.

Here’s a video demonstrating these two new Yahrzeit enhancements.

If in your congregation, it is common for one person to receive multiple Yahrzeit reminder letters in the same period, you can now use the tabular format. In this format, the Yahrzeits appear in neat columns, in the middle of the page. In contrast, in the traditional format, the Yahrzeits were in-line with the rest of the text.

There is one thing you should be aware of, though. The tabular format is fixed–it has the name of the deceased, relationship to the living person, and Hebrew and Gregorian dates. There is no flexibility to include or exclude fields in that table.

With the Yahrzeit letters tabular format, you still do control the rest of the text of the letter–the areas above and below the table are free-form.

Here’s a video (3:51) showing how this works.