Audiences

• *Schema change* You may have seen the new Platform feature called Audiences that was released last December. Soon, you will be able to use that feature alongside PocketPlatform's in-app announcements. That way, you can choose who sees certain announcements! For example, the app can show the upcoming Women's Retreat announcement only to those whose gender is set to Female.
• To prepare for that, we added a field for "Audience ID" to Announcement records in the Platform. Before you can do anything with this field, our team must migrate your announcement recipe to the admin panel. After that, you can start using this feature. SPoCs, be on the lookout for an email with more details on when it's ready for your church to use!

Event Payments

• Fixed an issue where records associated with $0 invoices (for free events) were being marked as Abandoned and canceled. Now, these will be marked as "Paid in Full", and the associated Event Participant record will be updated to "Registered".

Self Check-In

• Self check-in is now available in V2, and it's better than ever! You can allow users to check themselves into an event. And if they're the head of household, they can check in family members, too. This is useful for large events where manually marking attendance could be difficult.
• If this sounds like something you'd like, contact Support to get the "self-checkin" recipe. Once you have that recipe, you can enable self check-in for an event by editing the Event record and setting Allow Self Checkin to Yes. In the app, you can include a way to check-in using the dashboard recipe. There, they can select who's attending and click Check In. They'll see a confirmation, and the Event Participant records are then created in the Platform.
  
  

  

Giving

• If you don't have an integration with one of our giving vendors, you're able to link out to your vendor's website. Now, you can display a screen with custom text (such as instructions or additional information) before the user is sent out of the app. You can include a title, text, and a Give button.
  
  

  

• We've expanded our integration with OnlineGiving.org. Now, you can link to their website from more screens in your app. And, user authentication is passed to their site, so users don't have to log in again! To do this, make sure to add "(onlineGiving)" directly in front of the URL that you are currently using. For example, "(onlineGiving)https://ministryplatform.com".
  

Phone Screens

• Has a congregant ever expressed frustration when they were watching a sermon and their phone screen went black, right when it was getting good? Most devices turn off the screen after a period of inactivity, but now, we can control that! Devices will "stay awake" (meaning they will not lock or go to sleep) when playing a video or audio file from the Media Player in full screen, and when reviewing the Sermon Notes and Reading Plan Day screens.

Events

• Recently, we added additional information on the Event Detail screen, including the Building/Room information. Now, you can determine whether that info displays in PocketPlatform. On the Event record in the Platform, when you set Show Building Room Info to Yes, it displays in the app. Otherwise, you can set it to No to hide the label and information.
• When multiple groups are associated with an event and they have the same building/room, that info only shows once instead of being duplicated for each group.
• The Read More button is now available in V2! On the Event record, you can enter a Read More URL to show a button on the Event Detail screen. When an app user clicks the button, the link opens in their device browser. This is helpful if you have a page on your church website that provides more details about the event.
• To help app users complete the registration payment process, we added information about what will happen when they register. The default message is "When you register, your device browser will open our third-party payment website. Complete your registration payment there, then we'll bring you back to the app." If needed, you can contact Support to customize this message in your app.
• Fixed an issue in Android where the Event Details screen was sometimes difficult to read based on the data connected to the Event record.
• Fixed an issue where neither the photo nor the name of the selected individual displayed on the registration summary, making it difficult to see who was being registered.

Contact Lookup

• Fixed an issue in Android where the user was sometimes unable to initiate a text, phone call, or email using the buttons in the Contact Lookup.

Login

• Fixed a display issue when a user sent an access code as a text message but the confirmation message listed an email address instead of the phone number.

Sermon Notes

• Fixed issues where sermon notes were not always saving and the device keyboard was covering the Save button.