The People Database & Profile Management

Whether you subscribe to Nucleus People + Messages or not, the People database is at the heart of our platform. At the end of the day, it's all about people taking next steps; having people's lives changed. So what good would it be if we couldn't help you manage and organize that information? 😉

In this guide, we'll cover the following topics. Click on any one to jump ahead.

Unified People Database (And Profiles) For Your Church

First, it’s important to note that your Nucleus works off of a centralized people database, specific to your church, where your people records are stored. This means that whatever changes or updates happen (either from an admin editing something, a person updating their primary contact info, or them completing a Flow with contact information), everything gets added and updated in one place, making it nice and easy to keep records up to date.

There are many areas of Nucleus where you can see segments of your main people database. (More on that in a minute.)

But if you want to see, sort, and filter everything together in your people database, a master list of all your people and profiles is available in Nucleus People + Messages. It also has the significant added benefit of starting email campaigns and sending messages to people in your church.

Where To Find Your People Lists

People records are created automatically whenever someone completes a Flow. Whether that is requesting access to the Prayer Wall, giving tithes and offerings, or taking next steps, anytime someone enters their contact information in a Flow, a new People record is created.

So where can you view these People records? In short: everywhere.

Each area of your church's Nucleus Dashboard can display its own list of People records based on who has made submissions to that particular product or category. For instance, Flows as a product has its main list of People, but also when managing each individual Flow, you can see a list of People who have completed that specific Flow.

And in the same way, only People who have made a submission to a certain product will appear in that product. For example, if someone has made a donation, their People record will appear in Giving, but if they haven't submitted a prayer request, they will not appear in Prayer People list. But anytime you want to see all of your People records together in one place (regardless of which products they have submitted to), you can easily find your full list of People under People + Messages.

Manage Your Database (Search, Filter & Sort)

Now that you know where to find People records, let's look at how you can filter and manage these records.

Let's use the People list in Prayer as our example. Once in Nucleus Prayer, select Manage, then hit People.

Here, you'll see a list of all of the People who have submitted through your Prayer Flow - either submitting a prayer request, or requesting access to the Prayer Wall.

There are a couple ways to easily find what you're looking for. The first is to use the search bar to search for a specific person. To do this, you would simply click into the search bar and type in the name of the person you're looking for.

Another option for larger search parameters is to use the Filters. The available Filters will allow you to quickly search for people who fit a set of parameters such as sex, age, and marital status. To apply Filters, click the Filters button (located beside the search bar), choose the Filters you want to use, then scroll to the bottom of the filter options and click Apply. 

You can also filter your People list by the date their People profile was created or last updated by using the date picker. This is the button labelled Dated next to the Filters button. You can choose from pre-selected date ranges, such as this week, month, or year; or choose a custom date range by clicking on the dates on the calendar (or by typing them into the start and end date boxes). Remember to click Apply to have your selections take effect.

The Columns button allows you to choose which information is displayed when viewing your People list. Click the switch on each item to toggle them on/off. Additionally, click and drag the hamburger icons up/down. This will rearrange the columns, so that from top to bottom, the columns appear left to right. (As always, scroll down and click the Apply button once you're satisfied with your changes.)

And finally you can download People lists as .csv files by clicking the Download button. When you choose to download, you can choose to either download all of the available columns of data (even those you don't currently have selected as visible under Columns), or choose to only download the columns you have selected. These files can be viewed as really basic spreadsheets, or opened using a spreadsheet software like Numbers or Excel.

Keep Profiles Up To Date

Now that you know where to view People records, let's go over the admin capabilities available to help you manage a person's data.

Generally we recommend allowing people from your church to create their own accounts, and even keep their own personal contact information up to date themselves; however, there may be times when, as an admin, you need to update or add information to someone's profile.

To do this, find the person in your People lis and click the View Profile button beside their entry. This will take you to their profile where you can see the information they've entered for themselves, as well as any information other admins have entered for them. This could include their name, email address, phone number, along with other common contact details.

To edit or add information, click the Add or Edit button beside the profile section you would like to change.

For instance, to add an Email Address to this profile, click the Add button in the Contact Information section. Then click the Add New button and follow the prompts, selecting what kind of an email address it is and typing the address into the field. Remember to click the Save Changes button whenever you're done adding information to ensure it is saved to the profile before leaving the page.

Once you, as an admin, have edited or added information to a People profile, this information will show up for you and other admin team members across your Nucleus Dashboard anywhere that person appears in People lists; however, admin edits will not appear inside the person's personal My Nucleus account. For a person to update the information they see inside their account, they would need to login and update it themselves.

Admin changes are more like profile notes and will appear only to themselves and other people with admin access to their church's Nucleus Dashboard. This is because Nucleus allows for the best of both worlds.

1. People can keep their profile updated and any new info they share via a Flow, etc. is automatically copied into the church’s version of the profile, updating previously saved info by the person, or adding brand new info that wasn't previously there.

2. Information or notes the admin adds don’t sync back to the person so admins can keep their view the way they like it without deleting or removing something from a person’s personal account without their permission, or accidentally revealing internal notes.

Manually Create A Person Record

As mentioned previously, we generally recommend that you allow church members to create their own accounts; however, there are two Nucleus products that also allow you as an administrator to manually create a People profile: Nucleus People + Messages, and Nucleus Giving (to help with tracking offline donations).

To create a manual person record in Nucleus People + Messages, click the Add Offline Person button.

Then follow the prompts to enter the person's name and information. (Don't forget to click Save New Person!)

To create a manual person record in Nucleus Giving, while in the Transactions tab, click + Add New. This button is specifically designed to allow admins to keep track of offline donations, such as cash/check donations. Naturally, if someone gives physical donations, they may not have an online person record to associate these gifts to. So here, you can also manually create a person record.

To create a new person, select the + Add A New Person button.

Follow the prompts to enter the person's name and information.

Then, enter in their manual transaction details. (Since you're creating a person record in Nucleus Giving, the assumption is that you're needing to associate a donation to their record. So you'll need to also add in a donation to associate with their record next.)

Don't forget to click the Save and Add Now button!

Using Lists & Connection Types

As discussed here, Connection Types are an integral piece of information Nucleus uses to determine access to specific parts of your Nucleus platform (be it specific Flows or your Prayer Wall). This limiting of access in Nucleus is what we like to call privacy controls.

If you're subscribed to Nucleus People + Messages, in addition to seeing automatic lists like Connection Types, you're also able able to create custom lists that you can add people to. This can be helpful for creating audiences for sending out emails through Messages, or organizing volunteer or staff lists.

To create a manual People List, while in Nucleus People + Messages, choose the Lists tab and click the + Add New button.

Then enter in a name and description for your new list.

Once your list is created, you can see it listed under the Lists tab. Now you can add people records to this list by clicking the View List button beside it, and then selecting the + Add to List button. 

Next, begin typing the person's name that you would like to add to the List, then select them from the options that display, and save changes.

Or alternatively, you can add a person to a List from within their record. To do this, go to the All People, find their name in your People records, and click the View Profile button. 

Once you're viewing their profile, you'll want to select the Lists option, then click the + Add to List button.

Choose the List you would like to add them to and save changes.

Security & Privacy

Now, you might be wondering: if we created a system where you can store such personal information, then surely we must have a robust security and privacy protection plan in place.

And to that we’d say, “Absolutely!”

Check out our entire privacy protection plan here.

What Next?

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