One question that we hear often is:

Do we add member data in directly or do I have my members signup?

Most customers love the current implementation where members signup and manage their own information. Others want complete control and even want to add members manually and start communicating. So the question is: Who owns the data?

Can a system be designed that can be both a membership management system and a self-serve member communication tool? We think so. And we’re taking steps now to be the best of both worlds.

Organization administrators can now manually add person records in their organization’s management console. What this means is that you can now accurately reflect all the people in your organization. You can enter the profile information and upload their picture.

The next step will be to merge any offline person records with a real account should that person create a MemberHub profile. We’ll be speaking with existing customers to gather feedback on how this should work.

If you’re an administrator, check out the New Person button and let us know what you think!

I had a great conversation this morning with Tony Dye. Tony is a jack-of-all-trades kind of guy. He spends a lot of his time consulting business and churches on technology and his passion for finding new tools is inspiring. It’s evident when you speak with him, visit his blog or do anything Church IT RoundTable related. This morning Tony mentioned that back in the day, everyone was so excited for “software” because it was going to make our lives so much easier. So, has it? That’s the question that Tony is still asking today.

Has software made our lives easier? Has the quality of life been improved with software or has it added complexity to our lives? Now I know that there are so many factors to consider here. Like age group, industry, and type just to name a few, but I’m asking a more rhetorical question. While software and devices such as the iPhone have revolutionized the way we live our lives, there still seem to be so many people that fight day-in and day-out with software. One of the funniest (albeit very crude) articles I’ve ever read was a post on The Onion which was a fictitious counterpoint argument between a bubbly staff receptionist and her computer. Let’s just say that the computer had some pretty ugly things to say about the receptionist.

But what’s the deal? Especially in the church world. Is it just me, or does it seem like a lot of folks feel as if they are constantly battling their software and making their lives more difficult. What do you think?

[I don't know who to give credit to for that image. It's from the movie Office Space.]

One of the more pesky navigation issues in MemberHub has been that users were required to go back to their Dashboard to switch into another group’s hub. This is cumbersome and for some of our power users has become rather slow too (we’re going to speed up the load time for the Dashboard). It’s been recommended multiple times to allow a user to simply switch the context of which group they’re in.

So we added a simple drop-down list in the Hub Navigation where you can easily switch between hubs. The hubs are even grouped by Organization like on Your Dashboard.

We hope this saves you some time!

I love well-designed software; that abides in usability standards and generally helps users. Or perhaps I should say that I can’t stand poorly designed, unusable software. You know the software I’m talking about. The one where you do the same action every time you use it, but it takes you 5 minutes to find it each time (and you always swear you’ll write it down so next time you don’t have to remember). There is so much software that is all about features. Basically the product and everything about it is just a list of things the software can do. 

This seems to be especially prevalent in church management software. Some of the older systems are so big and full of features (that you rarely ever use or need) and your church is forced to pay for training because no one can figure out how to use it! The worst part about it is that many people think software and computers in general are just tough and time consuming. Many people just deal with unsatisfactory software and even computers because they don’t know better software exists. 

MemberHub is easy-to-use. It’s the simple and affordable alternative. We want to take the 37 Signals approach to software…less is more. We have strived to make MemberHub a beautiful application that’s not only easy to use, but enjoyable. We know we have more features to add, but you can always count on MemberHub to be simple, well designed and just what you need. 

Feel free to drop us a line and tell us what you’d like to see soon in MemberHub. 

By the way, you know software is well designed if you don’t find yourself getting frustrated when you use it. You shouldn’t have to think to use software. Just like you don’t think when you pick up a shovel to dig a hole. The tool is made to dig holes.