<< Click to Display Table of Contents >> Navigation:   New Features Guides > CMD 2014.1 New Features

 

CMD 2014.1 has a number of significant new features and functions, as well as some which has been expanded. Here's the list of major changes:

•Backup/Restore now works to/from any destination on the fly rather than being forced to only Backup to or Restore from a single, designated folder. CMD 2014 contains both the old way and the new way implemented in CMD 2012. See Backup Data or Restore for more information.

•The e-mail option for church directory Formats A,B, and C that was transferred to the Customized Format a couple of years ago, is now available again in Formats A, B, and C.

•A new addition to the end of the Summary statement that can be used at year’s end that displays the specific contributions $250 or more after the summary information. That will save some space since the detail report for the other stuff is not really necessary and takes up too much paper.

•The new Prayer List feature tracks prayer requests that come in to your church.

•You can now search by First Name or Goes By in the Name Search dialog rather than just by  Last Name.

•SnapShot is a brand new feature that can be selected as a startup function item, which gives you a few basic stats about names in your file as a summary so that you can see some basic stats at a glance. You can also access the Prayer List from this dialog so that you can see the current names on your list.

•The Deposit ID sort has been reworked to provide the listing you used to see in CMD 2012 and prior but with a major improvement: it now displays the list without duplicate entries which were caused when items in the same Deposit ID had different dates. The change in 2013 was confusing to some because the list could no longer be sorted by descending date order. Now it is back in descending date order, and we’ve found a way to eliminate the duplicates.

•A new field allows you to determine whether or not a family’s picture should be made visible on the phone-sized app.

•A number of Output Forms in Print Names can now be sent to the clipboard including: Dates Lists, Family Name Only, Individual Name Only, Mailing Labels, Mail-merge, Name, Address, & Phone, Name & Phone, Name & E-Mail. This will make it easier and quicker to drop some of these lists into your word processor or publishing program without having to save the list to a disk file first.

•There is a new button in the Individuals Data area on the Enter/Modify/Delete Names dialogs that, When clicked, will display a summary of the current individual's contributions (if the user is authorized to view contributions data).

•Updated phone-sized apps - one for the staff to use and another for general membership to use, are both standard with CMD 2014.

Fixes and Enhancements in 2014.1a

A few minor issues have appeared that have all been fixed:

•Sometimes a login was forced when you import prior data even if you didn't use a login with the prior file.

•An error message appeared when CMD tried to do an auto backup in some rare circumstances (mostly if you were importing from CMD 2012) when you exited CMD.

•Fixed a couple of minor issues in the Interest File print page.

Improvements and enhancements:

•Optimized the SnapShot feature so that it is practical to use from a remote client. Before it could take 15-20 minutes for SnapShot to complete its scan of your data when it was run from a remote client. Now that same process takes only 10-15 seconds.

•Added a new link to see the currently connected users for use with the Remote Database Server software so that you can determine which computer is using CMD if you need to have someone log off so a backup or restore can be done. It can be seen on the View Configuration dialog on the File Menu.

•Added a new button on the Global Menu Field Changes utility that should be run once if you plan to use SnapShot. It's located in the lower right corner of the dialog, and it's called Clear Orphaned Menu Items. It's purpose is to eliminate any leftover church offices, talents, activities, or User 1/2 items from names that have been deleted from your file. These leftover menu item choices would impact the number of items shown on SnapShot, so they have been eliminated. The Delete Names module has been updated to delete these items when you delete a name so that CMD will keep these items cleared out. You only need to run this utility one time, and CMD will keep your files clean from this point on.

•Many of the routines used on CMD's Utilities Menu have been rewritten to provide faster service when using them on a remote client computer. I will finish a few more for 2014.2, but I have done most of them for 2014.1a.

•A confirmation dialog reminds you when you select the Zip file backup/restore process to make sure you are on a computer that can access this function. See Backup Data for more information.

Advisories:

A few notes about the current state of using CMD:

•Login passwords are case-sensitive when logging into the CMDStaffPhone app, the CMDMemberPhone app, and the CMDStaffTablet app. Case is not considered when logging into CMD itself.

•If you need to update the Church Info items on the Web Server Setup dialog, you must be at the CMD's host computer. You cannot do this from a client and have the results be visible on the phone or tablet apps.

•You can only use the Zip backup or restore function if you are at the computer that hosts CMD's data, either as a stand-alone setup, or if it's the host where CMD is set up using the remote database server software.

There are a number of additional things that will be added to CMD 2014 as we go along.