Summary of new features and fixes in CMD 2011.2
eDirectory
eDirectory 2011 is now finished and ready for download and use with CMD 2011 data files.
There are a few important eDirectory enhancements to note:
•You can now elect to export birth and anniversary dates (month and day only)
•You can now elect to include or exclude e-mail, cell, work, fax, and other phones separately for adults and dependents. All phone and e-mail confidentiality fields marked in individuals names and families are respected in the eDirectory data file.
Both the above new export options are selected on the Print Control page of the Print Names dialog when you select eDirectory as the Output Form.
Remember, eDirectory is a free program which you can distribute to your members who want to have an electronic version of the church directory on the hope or laptop computers (PC computers only).
Church Directory Options Enhancements and Changes
There are a number of important changes and enhancements for church directory printing:
•Wrap Adult Text Lines. We added new feature to wrap text on adults lines in the new Customized format implemented in CMD 2011. I had already fixed that issue with dependents in 2011.1, and now 2011.2 adds it for adults. If the fix works well in Customized (I'll be interested in your feedback), then I'll add it to other church directory forms. This was needed because the additional information you can now add to the directory by using the Customized format could put the text length of the adults information beyond the width of the columns you defined. CMD now wraps this information to take up two lines if necessary.
•Include Address Option in Customized. Also added to Customized in 2011.2 is a new check box which says Include Address. If you do not wish to print the address information but do want the names and phone number of a family, just uncheck this box on the Customized Setup dialog and the address will be omitted when the directory is printed.
•Additional fields added to Church Directory ASCII Export Option. Gender, Cell and work phones, e-mails, and baptism dates have been added to the ASCII Export Church Directory Format.
•5.5 x 8.5 Form improvements: Increased the possible dependents to 10, up from 4 in 2011.1. Also added a feature which will make the family members line fit the space available rather than truncating family members. This is the line that lists all family members which is located just below the Family Name and just above the horizontal lines above the picture. We cannot do a wrap there because the elements below it are placed in specific points on the page, so the only option here was to cause the font size to shrink to fit all the text in the space allotted for it.
Contributions
In addition to a few minor internal adjustments, there is one new form that has been added to the Statements page:
•Simple Summary Listing. One statement form has been renamed and this new one added. The old form was called All Donations Summary for Report Period. In 2011.2, this form now presents a very simple form: Name and Total Amount Given. That's it. It's a very efficient way to view all your names' giving as a simple total for any report period that you define. The old form is still retained unchanged, however, but now goes under the name All Donations Detail for Report Period. This form shows the giving of each name broken down into the accounts to which they've given during the report period.
CMD Main Menu Changes
A couple of minor but useful changes:
•If you right-click the Print Contributions Statements icon on the speed bar, you'll get a menu of all the print functions for contributions. You can get the same items by clicking the Contributions menu, but there are also many other choices there. This function lets you see just the print-related choices for contributions. You can see the icon I'm referring to below:
•New Video Training Menu. Since many of our users don't realize that there are a number of narrated training videos available, I've decided to add Video Training as a new menu choice on CMD's main menu. You can select from a number of categories and then see the videos available for each category. These are especially helpful for users just getting started with CMD, but are also useful for CMD veterans when they need to use a feature they've not worked with in awhile. Some of the videos need to be updated with the CMD's updated look and new features/fields added, and we'll be redoing those a little at a time as we get time. In the meantime, they are still quite useful. Especially note the two additions for Enter/Modify/Delete Names. There are new videos there for entering family and individuals information.
Bug Fixes
There were several important bug fixes in 2011.2. I'm not going to categorize them, but I will list the major ones we've fixed:
•The Offices Rap Sheet option on the Offices Reports Output Form in Print Names would not print if your selection included a church office, talent, or activity.
•In Church Office Terms, the Offices History or Interests lists would not display if you just finished printing an Offices Rap Sheet.
•Also in Church Office Terms, the column adjustments should stick now when changing the size of the columns in Offices or Offices History.
•General Access users could not add new names to CMD due to some permissions that I missed adding when I put together the new data files format. To fix this issue in your data file, have a CMD Administrative user log in, go to Preferences | User Administration, and click the button that says Fix General Access Permissions. After clicking this button, General Access users will be able to add new users.
•The Age displayed in Enter/Modify/Delete Names did not erase when you clicked the + button on the navigation bar to enter a new family. It was left over from the name displayed prior to trying to add a new family.
•Right-clicking directly on the Family Name field label in Enter/Modify/Delete Names is used to move a family to/from the Interest File. generated an error. That's been fixed.
There were several additional small bugs that were fixed. If you notice an error still in the program, please let me know. I'm already thinking about 2011.3...