Pulse 1.1 gets released

Over the last few weeks I've been working hard on a number of tasks. The major ones: an update to the pulse, support raising, and building technical infrastructure. I've also spent time renewing my vision (along with all Campus for Christ staff) and managing interns.

I'll try to update this blog with details on the major tasks in the next few days. For now, I'll talk about the new pulse update. We've been working on it for a while. The two main features are 1 - emailing within the pulse and 2 - a restructuring the campus teams that make the pulse easier to browse for our staff.

Our staff can now use the pulse to email people in their Bible study group, or any subset of the directory returned from a search. We installed a library that runs tasks in the background so that the web page would still load as the emails get sent out. We used this feature to send 1500 emails (took about 15 minutes) to anyone who inputted their schedule last term, asking them to update their schedule again. This email feature was probably our #1 most-requested feature and it should save our staff a lot of time.

The second change is that we've grouped campuses by staff teams. For example, Toronto Metro has Ryerson, U of T, and York. One of the first things I noticed after this change is the directory page lists about 50-400 people (depending on the size of the c4c group at that campus) -- small enough for a single page. It really gives a sense of your specific campus and keeps it from being overwhelming. Stats now have much more meaning to the staff as it's for their specific campus.

Here's a video explaining ministry teams.

Here's the full changelog

There's a number of smaller changes as well, like a timetable last updated timestamp. That's a pretty simple thing to program but added a lot of value for staff and students.

Overall this pulse update is specifically made to be not too big as to overwhelm with the changes, but contain a number of really useful additions, which came from requests and overall driven by front-line needs. We really hope and are confident it's going to help our staff be more effective in building a movement.