New dedicated visits section
Today we're really excited to announce a number of significant improvements to the office-bearer visit tracking feature in Church Social.
New "Visits" section
Visit reports have been moved out of the "Reports" section into a new, dedicated "Visits" area of the app. If you're an office-bearer, you'll now see a "Visits" link in the main menu, making visits easier than ever to access.
The primary motivation for this change was to limit access to visit reports to office-bearers only. Previously, because these reports lived in the "Reports" section, administrators, statisticians, and report managers could view them. While this was generally fine, we heard from a number of churches that they'd prefer visits remain confidential and visible only to office-bearers.
This new section also introduces a visit week view, showing all visits scheduled at your church for the current week. Unlike the main calendar, which only displays your own visits, this page allows you to see all visits being made within your congregation.
Visit reasons
Visits can now be categorized by reason, such as "Home visit," "Spiritual care," or "Diaconal". This makes it easier to distinguish between different types of visits and supports more detailed reporting.
A new visit "Reasons" page provides a summary of how many visits have occurred for each reason.
In addition, visits are color-coded on the weekly visit view, making it easier to visually identify the different types of visits happening that week.
Improved privacy controls
We've introduced new per-visit privacy settings that let you fine-tune who can see a visit and its notes, providing greater confidentiality when needed.
When creating or editing a visit, you can now select from the following three privacy settings:
Default: Notes are visible to office-bearers according to your church’s visit note visibility settings. For most visits, this is the right option, as it allows other office-bearers to see that the visit occurred and also gives certain office-bearers the ability to read the visit notes — such as future elders who have that family within their care.
Restricted: Notes are only visible to the office-bearers who made the visit. This is useful when the visit notes contain sensitive information and you want to hand-pick who is ever able to see those notes. Other office-bearers can still see that the visit occurred.
Private: The entire visit is visible only to the office-bearers who made the visit and is completely hidden from everyone else. This is for very sensitive situations, where you don't even want other office-bearers to be aware that the visit occurred. These visits are marked with a privacy icon in the app.
In addition, you can grant specific office-bearers explicit access to a visit and its notes, regardless of the selected privacy level.
Member visit reminders
Members now receive an email reminder on the day of their scheduled visit, similar to how office-bearers are notified. These visits also appear in the member’s calendar.
The only exception is visits marked as "Private" — they will not appear in the calendar, nor will email reminders be sent, as they are only visible to the office-bearers who made the visit.