• Welcome to the Ministry Tracker group! This is your home for all things Ministry Tracker, which recently joined Faithlife, the creators of Logos Bible Software. Here you’ll get special offers, announcements about new features, and most of all, customer support. You can connect with our customer service team to get real-time help or suggest new features for Ministry Tracker. You can also interact with other users to share tips and tricks. Follow this group to so you don’t miss out, and be sure to return with any questions. We’re glad you’re here.

  • Welcome to the group! I'm so excited to have the Ministry Tracker team joining Faithlife, and we're excited to start making Ministry Tracker even better. If you've got a 'Top 3' list of things you'd like to see added (or changed) in Ministry Tracker, I'd love to hear it!

  • Family Overview (then click active families to see all) it does NOT show the "head of household" it seems like it is not showing the male - or the primary contact ?

    2.  — Edited

      , If you go to Families > Overview, it will only display "New Families" and does not provide an overview of all the families in your database. If you click on the number of Active families in the top right, you will get a list of all families that have been entered. Thank you for pointing out the difficulties you were experiencing in seeing the Primary Contacts. There was a character value that was causing a bug where none of the Husbands or Fathers were displaying in that overview. Our head developer has just pushed a fix out for you, so it should be displaying correctly now. If you don't see a "PC" tag by a person, it will mean there is no primary contact for that family. Would you like to plan a time to have a phone call to go over how Families and Groups are working?

    3. Would you like to plan a time to have a phone call to go over how Families and Groups are working? - Yes! would Wednesday, May 22 at 10:30 am be a possibility ? if not that time, maybe 2:00 pm (we're central time here)

    4. , 2pm central would work better for me. But if another time ends up working better for you, I have open availability from 11:30am Central on tomorrow.

  • is the cell carrier field necessary and if yes, why?

    1.  — Edited

      If you are not using ProTXT, then the cell carrier is needed if you want to send text messages to your congregation. With ProTXT we do the carrier lookup for you in the national database. But that database costs money, so you have the choice to pay for the service as part of your ProTXT plan or gather the information on your own. The carrier field is ignored if you are on the ProTXT plan. You may find other fields that are not applicable to your church or ministry, but you can safely ignore anything that you don't plan to use.

  •  — Edited

    question about i accidentally set up an "area" and i need it to be a group ? or how do we place members who NEED care as opposed to the care givers group Associated can i delete this area ? and start again ? Areas: Congregational Care: Person Username: — Default Home Tab: Dashboard Shared Account: No also we already have some labels in there for staff and volunteer ( i need to re-set that up correctly ) NOT under congregational care ... thanks

    2. Congregational Care is set up as an "area" however, i don't think i need that - a few of my users are linked to that ? what options do i have ?

    3. so actually all of my people are considered a person in that area and then some users are staff or admin - all are located in the congregational care "area" Associated Areas: Congregational Care: Person

    4. , by default, every organization in Ministry Tracker has at least one area, so that's normal! If you didn't have an area, you wouldn't have a place to store any information or people. So whenever you see "Associated Areas: Congregational Care", that's entirely normal!

  • I'm sure once I know the answer to this it will seem very simple, but we haven't been able to figure this out. We need to add and delete people from a couple groups. How do we go about this?

    2. Please send instruction to books@hpcuu.org. That other email isn't good right now. Also, I tried what you said and it told me I couldn't do it because it is a smart group. The names mostly have the little lock icon in the 2nd from the right column. I also need to add names, not just delete.

    3. ahh that would make sense the people you are trying to remove meet the specific criteria that was set for that group. You will need to edit their profiles so they no longer meet the criteria for them to be removed. Go ahead and send support@faithlife.com an email with the name of the group as well as your ministrytracker subdomain and they will be able to help determine if you need to alter the smart group criteria to get the results you want.

    4. just so you know Ministry Tracker supports two types of groups. Regular groups are groups that you manually create by moving people into or out of the group. They're what you'd typically think of when thinking about a group. However, Ministry Tracker has an amazing technology called Smart Groups that allows you to spend less time moving people around. With Smart Groups you set up some criteria for group membership and then our system will put anyone that matches that criteria into (or take out of) that group automatically. Smart groups are a huge time saver! However, if someone matches your smart group criteria but you don't want them in that group, you will need to either: 1) change the criteria for that smart group, or 2) change that person record so they no longer meet the criteria.

  • Question - why is it adding random photos from Smart Assistant ? i would like to turn that off ?

    1. smart assistant uses the email address associated with an account to connect social media accounts to an individual record. You can click the gear icon in smart assistant to make changes to a record or you can turn it off entirely in that same menu. There is also an option to submit a report to the search partner if the data is incorrect.

  • A few adjustments have been made to the public calendars. There's now an option for a church-wide calendar that includes events from all areas of your ministry if you have multiple areas. You can still view area specific calendars but now you have the option of church-wide. We also included the word "Share" next to the world icon on the drop down menu so it's a bit more clear. Find these calendar links on the Events -> Calendar in your Ministry Tracker.

    1. Is there a way to put a button on our church website to allow a direct link to an event we have in ministry tracker? For example, our Music Pastor is having a music camp this summer for 1st-5th graders & is wanting people to be able to pay online (obviously they can do this in the event), but he is wondering if it were possible to put a button on his music page on our church website that will take them to the event without them having to navigate through a lot of web pages to get there. I noticed a URL in the Configure Events section, but it is the same URL in every event. Do the events not have their own special URL for each individual event?

      2. While we're talking about events, I have noticed that when an event is in multiple areas it shows up multiple times on my calendar. Is there any way to distinguish between which instance of the event is for which area?

      3. It should only show up once. We’ll get that addressed. An event in multiple areas is still the same event so it should only appear one time.

      4. Good news on more fronts. Events in multiple areas only show up once. Thanks for letting us know. In addition, we have added a church-wide public calendar option so you can share your entire calendar for all areas or just one area at a time.

    2. How do polls work? I can create a poll, but I do not see a way to send it to anyone.

      1.  — Edited

        Hello ! You are correct, the polls aren't sent directly to people, rather people send a keyword that you've chosen, along with an answer, to your Ministry Tracker ProTXT number to answer and engage it. The results can be viewed either live or at a later time in the same area you've created it. So you will have to preface the people you want to participate, either with a prior email or text message, or perhaps in person with a live audience. Let me know if you have any further questions or need help setting anything up!

      2. Just echoing Justin's response. Polls are meant to be a "real-time" activity. Something where your members can participate during a service for example, so you would display your proTXT number and the instructions and have people vote in real-time. Once you have created your poll, use the ellipsis menu and select View Results or View Live Results to open up the pop-up window that displays your question and how to participate. You can drag this pop-up window to your projector's display window so your participants can see the instructions and results in real-time (with the LIVE results window)

    3. What if a member has more than one email

      1. feel free to store the additional emails in the notes fields or make a custom field for additional email. But use the built-in email field for their preferred email as that's the one that our communications tools will use when sending messages to the individual.

    4. does each person need to be in a Family

      1. Nope. Families are only useful because they allow you have one place for the shared address and phone number when multiple people live together (e.g. a family). If people are single or not living in a family unit there's no reason to create a family for them.

      2. Thank you!