What would happen if you gave a Small Groups or Connections Pastor their very own software development team? What would they dream up?

Today Upper Room Technologies announces their newest version of Groups Interactive, the most robust small groups application available. Churches can now take their community-building to the next level.

All the updates and new features are a result of feedback from our church partners:

• Groups Interactive allows members to receive emails and calendar reminders in their favorite software: Outlook, iCal, Google and Yahoo calendars. Later this year, Facebook and handhelds (iPhones, Blackberrys) will be added. Your members are never out of the loop, even if they don’t login to Groups Interactive every day. You get information the way you’re used to getting it.
• A powerful new group search tool that helps you find groups by neighborhood, zip code, keywords (“Friday” or “women”), or type of group (Adult Bible Fellowship, men’s accountability, etc.) Newly formed groups and groups seeking members are automatically highlighted in the search window. The result: groups become “stickier” because visits lead to more permanent connections.
• It’s almost impossible for anyone to fall through the cracks. Pastors and admins can track group health, attendance, and studies through an impressive array of reports. You can see registered users who haven’t yet found a group, and even see the most popular searches by members looking for one.
• In a much-requested feature, you can now add the role of Group Coach or Area Pastor to the system for churches who need mid-level pastoral oversight. Multi-site churches can also track groups by campus.
• Church-wide calendars can be imported into Groups Interactive through ServiceU, a popular event management system.
• Churches can create and manage a library of book or DVD studies for their groups. You can even create weekly studies and downloads for study guides or discussion questions. This is particularly helpful if your church is doing an integrated study, where all groups are discussing the current sermon series.