We've got more great updates for your new favorite people management app! If you're interested in hearing about each of these features as they are released, follow PCOPeople on Twitter or Facebook. Otherwise, here's what's new:
Custom Fields in Reports
After you've created a List, you can print a report from that List. Until now, these reports could contain any of the data from our built-in fields, but it couldn't include any of your Custom Fields. We've updated our Reporting functionality in many ways, most notably allowing you to access any of your custom fields and tabs.
Warning: 1 technical paragraph ahead. :) You can now loop through all tabs for your organization or any person. When you loop through a person's tabs, it excludes tabs (and fields) with no data in them. You can also access any specific tab or field directly without looping through them by using a special 'slug' for that field. Slugs are just the name of your field with all special characters removed and all spaces converted to underscores. "Mom's maiden name?" would be moms_maiden_name. We also put labels next to each tag in our left sidebar to show you what kind of data (string, array, number) is in that field, and fixed a glitch that made it hard to save a report with errors in it. Tech talk over.
We know that most people don't want to have to edit code to make reports. Unfortunately, the data is just complicated, and there's not an easy way around it. So along with this feature we have an....
Updated "Everything Report"
Our new default report, the "Everything Report" has been completely revamped. We've updated most of the styles so that it's just better for most people without making any edits. It now includes user pictures, Household information with pictures, and custom fields for each user. We've made the page breaks smarter and we've added quite a bit of logic in the report to add content and style content differently based on other data, like showing school info for children only, and anniversaries for married people only.
We also made it much simpler for anyone to make their own custom report based on this report and easily make changes. The new customization section at the top of the report has instructions that show you how to change the data included in the report. Sometimes it's as simple as changing true to false, and other times you type in the names of your exact content, but either way, the instructions can help even a novice user make their own report.
Sorting by Last Name
There's not much to say about this one. We split the single "Name" column into two columns, "First Name" and "Last Name" and made the headers clickable for quick sorting. We'll remember your sorting preference on the people page and even in your List results, so you should be able to set it and forget it.
Unanswered Checkboxes & Dates
When creating Lists, you set up conditions that filter information from PCO Apps or your custom fields. Until now you could find people who had filled out certain checkboxes, or who had dates set, but you couldn't find people who just didn't have anything entered. Now when choosing any date or checkbox field, you can choose to find people who have that field "Unanswered."
Section Headers in Condition Filters
When setting up the filters in your List conditions, the number of options you had when choosing the People app was getting a little long. This was especially bad if you have a large amount of custom fields, since all fields were shown in a single dropdown box. Plus, if your custom fields were grouped in a section header, you couldn't see that section header when creating those conditions.
We've now split that single dropdown into 2 dropdowns. The first contains generic person data and a list of all tabs for a person. Then after choosing a tab, you'll get a second box where you can choose just the options for that tab, and see any section headers.
Custom Tabs in Playlists
A small but important bug fix was that after clicking someone in a List and entering Playlist Mode, if you clicked on a custom tab, you'd be thrown out of Playlist Mode and could no longer quickly advance between users. We've fixed that, so you can go between people and see their custom tab information quickly.
More to Come
We hope you're liking all the updates. We've got so many great things in store for PCO People, and we're really excited to continue to offer you more and more for the great low price of free!
On a personal note, I’ve loved being the product manager for PCO People. However, as the Co-Founder of Planning Center Online and the Product Manager for PCO Services, Music Stand and Projector, I’ve probably been split in too many directions. It’s become clear that the best thing for all our apps is to have more focused attention.
I'm proud to announce that Daniel Murphy will be taking over as the Product Manager for Planning Center People. Daniel has done an amazing job managing PCO Registrations, and is very excited to also lead the great team building PCO People. So now when you read our next update post, you'll know why it's from him. :)
To keep up with all the latest news for PCO People, follow PCOPeople on Facebook or Twitter. For the latest news on all our apps, including Services, Check-Ins, Resources, & Registrations, follow the general PlanningCenter account on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram.