This series of pages explains how to search for existing people records or add new records for the following reasons:
Follow the Search Add Workflow after you have arrived at one of the above mentioned pages. In essence, this is the reason for adding this person.
To add a person to the database, you start in one of the above mentioned contexts. The program forces you always to search for the person before you add them. This is the proper order to avoid duplicates. There is an Add People button in under the People menu. However, there is a very good reason why we do not recommend that you add people using this button:
If you use this button, you have no context for why the record was added. Was it a visitor to a worship service? Was it a new family member? Was it someone who enrolled in a class? These are the kind of questions that are very important for ministry so we always start in one of those contexts.
Notes on Searching
When you click add visitor or add person to family, etc. a search dialog box will open.
The process is the same whether you are adding a member to an organization, a new family member, a visitor to a meeting, or a contactee to a contact.
You will always search for the person first.
Then if you do not find the person, you will search for anybody in the family.
Then you can either add a new person to an existing family or to a new family.
Search for one criteria at a time, adding more as necessary to narrow the search.
Proper Searching helps ensure that you get the desired results and helps prevent the creation of duplicate records.
Reasons why you might not find a person who is in the database:
Note: The search will look for all name fields: first, preferred (Goes by), last, former