Development Blog

Still Here

Just a quick update about what's been going on with Courtyard. It's been 3 whole years since the last update on this blog. We have done a little bit better at actually making updates to the site, although those too have been pretty sporadic. Paul and I have both had a lot happen in our personal lives over last 3 years. (We've both had children and bought houses, and Paul oversaw a year-long renovation.) Between our family responsibilities and our full-time jobs, the time we have been able to devote to Courtyard has been pretty limited.

Nothing about that picture is going to change. Going forward we are still going to be limited in the amount of time we spend working on Courtyard, but we are going to try to be more organized about the time that we do spend. We've put together a roadmap for what we want to accomplish in 2015, and I will be keeping this blog up to date as we make progress on that roadmap. We have a pretty good idea of what the most critical needs are from all the feedback we have received, so we will be concentrating on the issues that will make the biggest difference.

I do want to make a few (belated) feature announcements. We have added a Combined PDF export that displays family photos alongside all of the family's contact information. This was a common request, and was a bit tricky to figure out, but I think the results are quite nice. We also re-architected our photo exports to be pre-generated, so if you have a large directory it will no longer take like an hour every time you try to download one.

But I think the most exciting update is that just recently Paul rewrote the iOS app for iOS 8. This was quite a bit of work since the code was several years out of date, but it now runs nicely and fits in with the iOS 7 / 8 look and feel. (We know that the Android app has also fallen behind the latest design guidelines for that platform, and rest assured, that is on our roadmap!)

Finally, I'd like to thank all of you for choosing Courtyard, and for sticking with us over the years. It is an honor to have you using our software. My hope is that a year from now it will serve you even better then than it does now.

Posted by Austin Taylor on 03/27/2015

Custom Fields

Happy New Year from Courtyard! We've just rolled out one of our most requested features ever: custom fields. Whatever data you want in your directory, from wedding anniversaries to twitter handles, can be configured from a new section under the Settings tab. We have a list of common fields that you can choose from, or you can define your own. You can even create multiple choice fields with custom options.

Custom fields can be defined either at the family level, or at the individual level. You can also make certain fields only on adults, or only on children, as needed.

Along with that, we have added support for private fields. You can now control who can view each field–either all members, admin + owner, or admin only. You can also control who can edit each field–either admin + owner, or admin only. This gives you quite a few options if your staff wants to store extra information in the directory.

Note that these fields are only available on the website right now. We are planning to push them out to the iPhone and Android apps in the future.

For a more detailed walkthrough, see the new help section on custom fields. We think this will make your online directory a lot more useful. We can't wait to see what you guys come up with!

Posted by Austin Taylor on 01/09/2012