To update a Contact's last name it is recommended to launch the Add/Edit Family Tool and update the Contact's Last Name as well as the Household Name when appropriate. It is important to note that changing the Household Name in the Add/Edit Family tool does not change the Last Name fields of any Contacts in the Household; rather, these fields need to be updated individually. 

Q2: What is the best way to handle children who attend church with their grandparents?
If both the parents and the grandparents attend your church, you could have the child in their parent's Household, but have the grandparent's Household indicated in the child's Other Households sub-page of the child's Contact record. If the parents have never attended the church and do not have a Household in your system, then you could have the child in the grandparent's Household.

 

There is a very good chance your Default Contact record was accidentally edited to be someone's actual record. You need to return the record in question to Default Contact ASAP, as the system relies on this record for many functions. You can make the changes manually by following and "reverse engineering" the details you see in the Audit Log; you'll need to manually restore the settings in the Contact, Household, Participant, Donor and User records, as well as those records' sub-page data. To ensure this problem doesn't arise in the future, make sure your users know to never edit Default Contact, and that they are trained to Assign Participants and Assign Donors when they see Default Contact.

 

Q4: We added someone who has a Contact Status of Inactive to a Group as an active/current participant. Why hasn't their Contact Status changed from Inactive to Active?
The Contact Status does not automatically update unless you have done custom work to create a routine that would assess and update their field (same with Participant Status) or subscribe to cloud services and have enabled Contact Status Management. To change this field, simply open the Contact record > click Edit > change to the desired Contact Status > click Save. If inactivating, the Inactivate Tool is strongly recommend.

 

Q5: We have many active adults without email addresses on file. Do you have any suggestions for connecting with them?
You could reach out to them via a call list. For example, create a view of active records without emails, run the Selected Call List report, have a volunteer or staff call and add any gathered info into the Platform, send an email thanking them for providing their email including a link to the Portal.

Or you could reach out to them via a postcard/letter. For example, create a view of active records without emails, run the Selected Labels report, email a postcard/letter to them asking for them to provide their email, have a volunteer or staff call and add any gathered info into the Platform, send an email thanking them for providing their email including a link to the Portal.

 

Q6: I created a "fake" record to test with. What is the best way to remove it?
Start on the Contacts page. Select the "fake" record and your Contact record. Change your selection to "Current/Unsaved Selection" to ensure that only your record and the "fake" record are selected. Then launch the "Combine contacts tool. Ensure that your record is selected to "Keep" and the fake record to "merge." Click "Merge."

 

Q7: Many of our staff members have their personal emails in MinistryPlatform, is there a place for us to put their work email in their account?
It is best practice for all staff to use their work email address on their Contact record. This ensures that any messages they send out through MinistryPlatform will be sent from their work email addresses. 

 

Q8: How do I print mailing labels?
Make a selection on the Contacts page. Click reports and then the "Selected Labels" report. That will create one label per person selected. If there are multiple members of a Household selected and you would like only one label to print per Household, use the "Selected Labels - 1 Per Family" report.