Hide inactive individuals from Fast Data Entry?

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pbumc
Posts: 77
Joined: Sat Mar 10, 2007 4:28 pm
Location: San Diego, CA

Hide inactive individuals from Fast Data Entry?

Post by pbumc »

Hi,

Our church has been using PowerChurch for 10+ years (currently ver. 11.55). There are more people in the database who no longer attend than those that do.

I know I can adjust the list of expected attenders by adding or removing people from the respective Activity.

The question comes when we have a new or semi-new person. We don't want them in the Activity yet because we don't want them to appear on a Consecutive Absentee list. (New visitors shouldn't get the "We've missed you" call right away!) So when doing attendance Fast Data Entry, we're on the big Add Attenders dialog, hunting through hundreds of people we haven't seen in years to try to figure out if the new(ish) person has been added to the database yet.

So the question is, how can we filter the Add Attenders list? I can't find a a master "inactive" checkbox for an Individual that would suppress them from all displays unless specifically including Inactive records. If I could only include a subset of Personal Statuses in Add Attenders, that would work too.

A related question: is there a "best practices" book on how to manage new folks? I'm thinking we need a trigger after someone shows up three or four times that we move them off "Visitor - New" status to "Visitor - Regular" and add them to the Activity.

Thanks for your advice,
Mark Berry

NeilZ
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Re: Hide inactive individuals from Fast Data Entry?

Post by NeilZ »

pbumc wrote:Hi,

Our church has been using PowerChurch for 10+ years (currently ver. 11.55). There are more people in the database who no longer attend than those that do.

I know I can adjust the list of expected attenders by adding or removing people from the respective Activity.

The question comes when we have a new or semi-new person. We don't want them in the Activity yet because we don't want them to appear on a Consecutive Absentee list. (New visitors shouldn't get the "We've missed you" call right away!) So when doing attendance Fast Data Entry, we're on the big Add Attenders dialog, hunting through hundreds of people we haven't seen in years to try to figure out if the new(ish) person has been added to the database yet.
You shouldn't have to 'hunt' through the list, just enter the last name in the block and click on next. The system will then present a list of everyone with that last name, along with addresses. That should narrow down your 'lookup'.

That said you should think about purging the system if you have people who attended once then never again in 2 (or some other time period) years.
So the question is, how can we filter the Add Attenders list? I can't find a a master "inactive" checkbox for an Individual that would suppress them from all displays unless specifically including Inactive records. If I could only include a subset of Personal Statuses in Add Attenders, that would work too.
There is no way to filter other than removing those who are no longer attending.
A related question: is there a "best practices" book on how to manage new folks? I'm thinking we need a trigger after someone shows up three or four times that we move them off "Visitor - New" status to "Visitor - Regular" and add them to the Activity.

Thanks for your advice,
No Best Practices .. usually its up to the local church on how to maintain their lists. For instance, we don't have any distinctions between a new visitor or regular, they're just visitors. If they start attending on a consistent basis, we'll move them to 'Friend of Congregation', and then issue them a regular box of envelopes (if they want them).
Neil Zampella

Using PC+ since 1999.

pbumc
Posts: 77
Joined: Sat Mar 10, 2007 4:28 pm
Location: San Diego, CA

Re: Hide inactive individuals from Fast Data Entry?

Post by pbumc »

Thanks Neil.
You shouldn't have to 'hunt' through the list, just enter the last name in the block and click on next. The system will then present a list of everyone with that last name, along with addresses. That should narrow down your 'lookup'.
There is no "block" or Next button in the Add Attenders dialog BUT typing the last name does in fact scroll to the matching item in the list, so that "hidden" search function may save us some time.

Sounds like your "Friend of Congregation" corresponds to our "Visitor - Regular". That's what we use until they become a Member.

What is your procedure for identifying Visitors who are ready to become "Friend of Congregation"? Do you use a PowerChurch report, or is more just a matter of noticing, hey I've seen them around a lot, let's move them over? I found that I can run a Visitors report for a specific Sunday and it will show recent attendance, so I can get an idea of who is showing up often if I run that every week. What I don't see is a Visitor report for a date range, e.g. "show me everyone who has been here more than x times in the last y weeks"--even if they weren't there on a specific Sunday.
Mark Berry

NeilZ
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Joined: Wed Oct 08, 2003 1:20 am
Location: Dexter NM
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Re: Hide inactive individuals from Fast Data Entry?

Post by NeilZ »

pbumc wrote:Thanks Neil.
You shouldn't have to 'hunt' through the list, just enter the last name in the block and click on next. The system will then present a list of everyone with that last name, along with addresses. That should narrow down your 'lookup'.
There is no "block" or Next button in the Add Attenders dialog BUT typing the last name does in fact scroll to the matching item in the list, so that "hidden" search function may save us some time.
I had thought you were talking about the ADD a New Family, since it sounded like you also were getting duplicate Family Mailing List and Personal Profile entries. But yes, the Add Person does a lookup in the same way that the Fast Data Entry windows does a lookup.
Sounds like your "Friend of Congregation" corresponds to our "Visitor - Regular". That's what we use until they become a Member.

What is your procedure for identifying Visitors who are ready to become "Friend of Congregation"? Do you use a PowerChurch report, or is more just a matter of noticing, hey I've seen them around a lot, let's move them over? I found that I can run a Visitors report for a specific Sunday and it will show recent attendance, so I can get an idea of who is showing up often if I run that every week. What I don't see is a Visitor report for a date range, e.g. "show me everyone who has been here more than x times in the last y weeks"--even if they weren't there on a specific Sunday.
We use a Powerchurch Attendance Report, the Visitor Report which gives a complete list of people's dates of attendance. If it looks like they have been frequent attenders over a three month period, we'll move them to Friend of Congregation, especially if they also show evidence of contributions during that time.

I'll also use the Summary of Personal Attendance report which will give you and idea of how many times they attended, etc.
Neil Zampella

Using PC+ since 1999.

pbumc
Posts: 77
Joined: Sat Mar 10, 2007 4:28 pm
Location: San Diego, CA

Re: Hide inactive individuals from Fast Data Entry?

Post by pbumc »

Powerchurch Attendance Report, the Visitor Report
Yes, that's the one I was referring to. As best I can tell, that only lists people who were there on one specific date. So I can run it for 7/21 with Personal Status = "Visitor - New" and I'll see only the people who attended this past Sunday. It does show a nice list of dates for those who were there on 7/21. But if they missed last Sunday, they won't be on the report at all.

Yes, I think Summary of Personal Attendance with a date range of the last 2-3 months and a minimum attendance of 50% might be closest to what I had in mind.
Mark Berry

NeilZ
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Joined: Wed Oct 08, 2003 1:20 am
Location: Dexter NM
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Re: Hide inactive individuals from Fast Data Entry?

Post by NeilZ »

pbumc wrote:
Powerchurch Attendance Report, the Visitor Report
Yes, that's the one I was referring to. As best I can tell, that only lists people who were there on one specific date. So I can run it for 7/21 with Personal Status = "Visitor - New" and I'll see only the people who attended this past Sunday. It does show a nice list of dates for those who were there on 7/21. But if they missed last Sunday, they won't be on the report at all.

Well I guess if I get motivated, I could test the Custom Reports option!
Note, I use two different reports: this one I set for a range: Summary of Personal Attendance.
That gives me some data which I then use on the Visitor report filtering.
Neil Zampella

Using PC+ since 1999.

pbumc
Posts: 77
Joined: Sat Mar 10, 2007 4:28 pm
Location: San Diego, CA

Re: Hide inactive individuals from Fast Data Entry?

Post by pbumc »

Okay, I've been playing with the "Summary of Personal Attendance". It's not working quite as I'd expected.

I ran it for a two-month date range (5/22 - 7/23), asking for individuals in "Visitor - New" status who have been present more than 50% of the time.

One couple shows 100% Present, but they only attended once, on 5/26. They are not yet in the Worship Activity, so their absences are not counted.

Many others show 50% Present because they came on 7/14, got added to the Worship Activity (which I'm thinking they should not have been), then missed on 7/21.

So the percentage is not based on the actual number of times the Activity has been recorded; it's based on each person's attendance since being added to the Activity. That's also useful in general, but not so much with trying to track new people. I guess we can still run it with percentage 0% to 100%, just to use as a list of people in the status and identify whether they've attended in that time period.
Mark Berry

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