Inside Nspire » News

Nspire 4.42 Is Released

Bart — Fri, 15 Jan 2010 16:10:47 +0000

Below you will find the details of our most recent update Version 4.42. This update is now available through your FullAccess Online Website. If you can’t remember how to get to your FullAccess Support website, no worries, just read over the instructions from this past article and you should be ready to go.

Also, remember it is always a good idea to make a backup of your data before installing any kind of update.

Updated in Nspire 4.42

Added a new security name tag to the Scan Console. This option will print two name tags. One tag for the child with additional options for special needs and notes and the second tag, a security tag, for the parents to use when picking up the child. This option includes an option to print a random security number on the tags.
Enhanced the email system to allow blind copy email. When you send email you can specify to send the email as a blind copy to your Nspire user’s email address. This will make sending bulk emails with attachments much faster; however, because everyone will receive the same email you cannot use any tokens in the email.
By popular demand, we have added an option when sending an email to copy the email addresses of the individuals in your reports list to your clipboard. This will let you paste the email addresses into Outlook or another email system.
You can now query Charges and Collection in the Individuals Profile window. There are several new options for find out who has money or owes money right from the View Individuals window.
The Last Present date has been added to the Individual profile window. This will allow you to do some basic querying of attendance in the individuals window. This is our first pass on this and will need to be revisited.
An option has been added to export to exclude duplicate household members. This makes it possible to export household specific information from the Individuals section.
Change the sort order of individuals in the View Attendance Sheet window. Instead of seeing the names in Student/Volunteer order, the list is now in Name order only.
Increased the size of the View Sheet window in Attendance.
A search box has been added to the View Sheet window in Attendance to allow searching for an individual in the window.
Corrected problem pasting HTML code from Microsoft Word into the HTML E-mail editor.
Including the default signature line on HTML E-mail was corrupting the closing HTML tags in the HTML editor.
Added a new token to print the assignable barcode value to your reports. This will allow you to use a 3 of 9 font to print the barcode on your Microsoft Word reports or to export the barcode value.
Changes have been made to make the Inactive flag to consistently exclude people when using the household tokens and other areas of the software. For example, inactive people do not print in the Husband and Wife tokens to prevent deceased individuals from printing on reports and letters.
Right click menu options have been added to the View Attendance window to make it easier to select View Sheet and Print Options.
Fields in the Update Events window would clear under certain circumstances when you edited an event.
Added support for DYMO’s Twin turbo line of printers to the Attenda Plus Scan Console.
Added an A4 formatted pdf manual for international printing.

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Help Haiti Earthquake Victims – We’ll Show you how

Brandon Gross — Thu, 14 Jan 2010 22:37:26 +0000

Most of you have heard by now about the devastating earthquake that hit Haiti on Tuesday. Our hearts and prayers are with the Haitian people during this difficult time. But as a company we believe very much in action.

James tells us,

¹⁵ If a brother or sister is without clothes and lacks daily food, ¹⁶ and one of you says to them, “Go in peace, keep warm, and eat well,” but you don’t give them what the body needs, what good is it? ¹⁷ In the same way faith, if it doesn’t have works, is dead by itself.

(HCSB courtesy www.biblegateway.com)

That’s why we have teamed up with Living Water International and Mercy Water to help the people of Haiti. Watch to following video to learn more:

According to LWI,

“The most urgent need during the coming days and weeks will be water. Homes can take months to re-build, electricity can take weeks to restore, but people can’t last long without water.

Earthquakes destroy water systems. Pipelines break, electrical distribution systems fail, and hand-dug wells–—already questionable water sources–—are rendered useless or become contaminated with cholera, typhoid, and other waterborne diseases.”

“In Haiti, clean water is a terrible problem even at the best of times,” said LWI Executive Director Gary Evans. “After a quake like this, it’s a crisis of epic proportions.”

How you can help:

Get the Word Out - Nspire and our Partners are providing resources to help you raise support for the Haitian people. Feel free to use and distribute these resources to your youth groups, congregations and friends & families. We only ask you do not modify the resources without first requesting permission. You can download the following resources:

- Haiti Awareness Video – Use the following Code Snippet to place the “Help Haiti” video on your website. You can also download the video to show in group settings by clicking here (the download link is on the bottom right of the Vimeo page)

Embed from Vimeo:

Help Haiti Earthquake Victims - We'll Show You How from Brandon Gross on Vimeo.

Embed from Youtube:

- Facebook, Myspace & Website Banners – Use the following code snippets to place the following banners on your websites and social networks:

728 x 90

468 x 60

200 x 200

125 x 125

- Blogs & Twitter – Put your social networking skills into action. We encourage you to blog, tweet and update your status’ to raise support for Haiti. If you are a youth minister, this is a great way for your kids to help out. Feel free to use any of the links above in your posts. You can also link directly to the Living Water International donation page with this link : http://www.water.cc/initiatives/haiti/

Most of all help us raise support for Haiti by donating and encouraging others to do the same.

At Nspire, we have chosen water as a way to help because it is the most basic and essential of human needs. Water is something most of us never have to worry about going without and with the Haiti people already having a terrible problem accessing clean water… An earthquake just makes finding clean water all the more difficult.

But it doesn’t have to be that way… We can make a difference. Our donations, no matter how small or large to us, mean life to the people of Haiti. Help us make a difference… today.

Together we can reach out with the love of Christ to the people of Haiti… thank you for being a part of making a difference.

You can Donate to the Haiti Relief Fund by clicking below

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Strike a Pose… We need your Photo!

Brandon Gross — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 16:59:01 +0000

Want to be in the new upcoming Youth Assistant website? Are you a Youth Worker?

If you answered Yes, then strike your best pose and tell us how you use Youth Assistant. Then send your photo and quote to strikeapose@nspiresoftware.com . We will select the best poses and use them on the new Youth Assistant website… So Be Creative!

Here are a few guidelines for the photos:

1. Make it easy on Brandon (our graphic designer) and take the picture in front of a blank or solid background (AKA wall, green screen, solid… anything)

2. If possibly give us a full body shot (basically we want to see your entire body in the shot)… Otherwise waist up will work.

3. Forget About that old formal shot you have hanging above the dinning room table… Congregational directory day photos are right out

4. HAVE FUN! Be Creative.

If you have questions you can also send them to strikeapose@nspiresoftware.com

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New Office Hours

Brandon Gross — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 06:00:40 +0000

We have been making a lot of changes at Nspire over the last month. A couple of those changes have been in our address and office hours.

Our new office hours have been designed around the times the average church organization is available to contact us. The most notable change in our business hours occurs on Mondays. Starting July 6th our offices will open at 1:00pm instead of 8:00am (CST). During this time our staff will be coming together to share ideas and continue to create the best experience available for our customers.

We have many development plans to be implemented over the few quarters and we are excited about what the next few months hold; we believe our customers will be as well.

As always, our commitment to our customers and FullAccess Support Members is unwavering. We appreciate your support and feel privileged to be a part of the ministry God has placed each of you into.

If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact us by calling 1-888-297-6495 or submitting your request through our online contact form at www.nspiresoftware.com/contact

Please take note of our new office hours and address below:

Office Hours:

Monday: 1:00pm – 5:00pm CST
Tuesday thru Friday: 8:00am – 5:00pm (closed 12pm – 1pm) CST

*Please be sure your business office is notified of this change.

New Address:

Nspire Software, LLC
#264
2020 Fieldstone Pkwy, Suite 900
Franklin, TN 37069

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Resource Store Now Available in Version 4.41!

Brandon Gross — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 06:00:26 +0000

We have been excited to bring you this release since the beginning of this year. Our friends over at Simply Youth Ministry have made their resources available for you to access directly from Nspire, Youth Assistant and Children’s Assistant software.

In version 4.41 you will see a new icon in the left menu called “Store”. Simply click on this icon to access the Simply Youth Ministry Resource store. Here you will find the latest and greatest from Simply Youth Ministry.

Now for all our customers who are not youth ministers, don’t worry. We will be adding new resources in the coming months that will meet a wide range of your ministry needs.

As always, if you have any questions call us at 1-888-297-6495 or email us through our contact form at www.nspiresoftware.com/contact

If you are into twitter you can also shoot us a tweet: @nspiresoftware or go to our direct twitter page at www.twitter.com/nspiresoftware

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Assignable Barcodes Just Released! Watch the Video

Brandon Gross — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 20:16:06 +0000

Take a look at how you can now assign your own bar-codes for tracking attendance.

Benefits of Assignable Barcodes:

1. No hassle about lost key tags or id cards since you can simply assign a new one
2. You can have key tags and id cards printed in bulk
3. Increase speed of registering new individuals

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Backing up before you hear the “click of death”

Brandon Gross — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 15:46:55 +0000

Hard drives… we all use them every day and we all expect them to just work. But, as I recently have been reminded of, they can fail… sometimes more than once.

In the last three weeks I’ve gone through 3 hard drives. It all started when I heard “the click of death”. I had just upgraded my laptop hard drive to a new 500GB drive, since the previous drive was showing signs of imminent failure.

I was so excited I went out and purchased a couple precision multi tools to get the job done. I even purchase some kind of precision tool that looks like the equivalent of a miniature ice pick with a handle… why? I don’t know, but you never know when you might need a precision ice pick tool; I might have to fend off some hard drive demon or computer bug. Being the boy scout I am I had to live up to the motto of “be prepared”.

With the help of my precision tools and the assurance of my precision wanna be ice pick I was able to tackle the task of replacing my hard drive and installing the greatest operating system known to man… OS X Leopard.

Then it happened. I heard it as clear as day… it was the “click of death”.

Now the click of death is the tale-tell sign that your new hard drive is about to kick the bucket. It happens when your computer tries to write to the hard drive (example: saving a document) but then freezes and you can hear a faint but repetitive click. Sometimes it only lasts for a minute and then goes away, other times it clicks until you have no choice other than to force the computer to shut down and hope it starts again.

Being the geek I am I knew what was about to happen. So I quickly had a replacement drive shipped to me, backed up my clicking drive one last time and installed the new one. Problem solved. At least I thought so.

It wasn’t but about a week after installing my 2nd drive that it crashed completely. No clicking, no faint coughs, fever… nothing… it just skipped all that and went straight to the “kicking the bucket” part of it’s life cycle. Maybe it was afraid I would go and buy more tools and try to “fix” it and it just couldn’t bear the thought of going through all that. I guess I’ll never know.

Moving on, I ordered my 3rd replacement drive and going through all the same processes as before I reinstalled all my information from a backup I had made earlier. I’m happy to say that I’m using that very drive now to type this blog post. Hopefully it will stick around.

What can you learn from my hard drive saga? Backing up needs to be a habit. Most people would think they could easily get a few years out of a new hard drive before experiencing any problems. In my case, I only got a few days each time. The point, 100% of all hard drives will fail at some point… it’s just a matter of when.

So what can you do?

Start backing up. I recommend a 2 stage backup plan.

1. Backup to an external hard drive or server drive on the network. (This drive should be off-site or remotely backed up)

2. Use an Online Backup solution that implements daily backups with version control for files.

If you are looking for a good Online Backup tool I recommend taking a look at our Nspire Online Backup (NOB) software. You will get the best security in the business, version controlled backups, error prevention monitoring, and much more. You can sign up or learn more by going to www.nspiresoftware.com/onlinebackup

We offer plans for just backing up your Nspire Software product up to backing up your entire computer. Check it out. Let us know if you have questions 1-888-297-6495

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New Small Ministry Pricing Available!

Brandon Gross — Wed, 27 May 2009 15:27:45 +0000

Times are tough and that means budgets are tight. We have talked to countless ministries over the past few months who tell us about their budget cuts, staff layoffs, salary reductions, and the pressures they face in this tough economic time.

The economy has in some form affected almost all of us. Unfortunately some more than others. It is in times like these that the church body is looked to more than ever for assistance and help to those who are in need.

We have been talking around the office about what we can do to help relieve some of the pressure ministries are facing so they can put more effort into effectively meeting the needs of the people in their communities. We specialize in management software. We know the importance of keeping accurate information on those the church body ministers to. But we also understand in an economy like this affording quality management software may be a great desire but not something that is possible in the middle of all the budget cuts surrounding ministries.

We see the opportunities surrounding the church body in this economic situation. The large portion of church congregations in the US are under 100 in size. The opportunities for small ministries to expand their influence and meet needs in their communities are abundant but managing the information and correspondence done can be difficult without software designed for this task. Yet, at the same time affording software that is more than $1,000, or even less than $500, can be a strain on small ministries. So where does this leave these ministries? The need for quality management software is there but the resources to afford it may not be.

We want to help.

Starting immediately we will be offering special discounted pricing for small ministries. We want to make ministry management software available to any ministry that shows a need for it. Pricing will be based on the current ministry size among other conditions. To see if your ministry qualifies please call 1-888-297-6495 to talk with one of our representatives.

Also, if you know a small ministry who could benefit from one of our software products but just does not have the resources to pay retail price, please have them contact us to discuss how we can help them.

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New live online training classes now available

Brandon Gross — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 14:30:49 +0000

We are excited about the release of our new live online training events. Live online training is a great way to polish your skills on Nspire, Youth Assistant or Children’s Assistant. Not to mention we allow you to train your entire staff for the price of only ONE ticket for the training event you choose.

Now we are sure you have plenty of questions. To help, we have included a list of FAQ’s below:

1. How much do training events cost?

Each training event has it’s own cost which is based on the length of the event. A ticket for a training event can range from $175.00 to $250.00 (not including a small processing fee). One ticket CAN be used for an unlimited number of attendees for the date and time of the training event ticket purchased.

We also offer a FREE Orientation training event that is scheduled for each Monday morning 8:30am to 9:15am CST.

To see the cost for each event ticket, click on the “Register Now” link. This will open a registration window that shows the ticket price and the registration fee for the event. The registration fee is a small amount added to the ticket price to cover the cost to process each ticket. To sign up for training go to http://www.nspiresoftware.com/training

2. How many people from my church can attend a training with ONE ticket?

Each ticket seat is good for 1 workstation and phone connection to the conferencing center. Now we know you are already thinking:

“Is there a way we can use one ticket for more than one user?”

The answer is “YES”, you can use one ticket for an unlimited number of simultaneous users, in a single training event, who access the training from 1 workstation. A good example would be you and 5 or 10 other software users who gather around a single computer with a speaker phone to watch the training.

A ticket is good only for the scheduled date and time the ticket was purchased for.

3. Is there a limit to the number of tickets sold for each event date?

Yes, in order to maximize the effectiveness of our training events we limit the number of tickets sold per event to 15. Which means there will be no more than 15 churches in any one training event.

4. How does live training work and what are the requirements to attend an event?

Live online training is a service that offers software training through the use of a web conferencing center. You will need a computer with a high speed internet connection as well as a phone connection. Before your training event you will be emailed the conferencing center phone number and a web link. The web link will take you to the online conferencing center, which will allow you to view the trainers computer screen on your computer, on the day of the event.

On the day of training you will simply click the web link from your email and call the conferencing center phone number. Keep in mind if you have multiple individuals using the same computer you will need a speaker phone to ensure everyone can participate.

Once you are logged in you will be able to view the trainers computer screen and software. At that time the trainer will give the class any instructions necessary and then proceed with the training.

5. Will I be able to ask questions during a live online training?

Yes, even though the phone lines will be muted (only person anyone will hear talking will be the trainer), you will be able to ask questions during the event using a chat client in the conferencing center. Periodically throughout the training the trainer will do their best to answer everyone’s questions that relate to the material covered in the event. There will also be a Question and Answer time at the end of each training to review material covered.

On the training website you will find a link to view the topics covered for each training event. The trainer will follow this list closely to ensure that all attendees receive a well rounded training experience.

If you have questions or needs outside or above the topics covered in a training event, you might want to consider purchasing Customized Online Training just for your church. Customized online training runs $150 per hour, has no limit on the number of attendees from one church, and is customized around your specific needs and questions.

To learn more about Customized Online Training or to reserve a time call 1-888-297-6495 or email training@tcshome.com

6. Can I use a dial-up internet connection to attend a training event?

No, dial-up internet connections are not supported for live online training. An alternative would be to find an individual in the church with a high speed internet connection and access the conferencing center from there.

7. How do I sign up?

Go to http://www.nspiresoftware.com/training and click on “Register Now” for the training event you would like to attend. From there you will be able to choose from the available training dates and purchase your ticket.

If you have any questions that were not answered here about training, please feel free to contact us at 1-888-297-6495

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Train your entire staff for the price of one ticket

Brandon Gross — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 14:29:21 +0000

After reading the title of this article you are probably wondering what one ticket really does get you in regards to online live training.

Does it really allow you to train more than one person with one ticket?

A ticket is good only for the scheduled date and time the ticket was purchased for.

Please refer to http://www.nspiresoftware.com/training for a full list of training events and their scheduled dates and times. You can also purchase your tickets from the training page by clicking on the “Register Now” link. From here you can choose the date and time you would like training.

To learn more about Live Online Training you can click here.

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