Updates This Week (March 16 - 23) - Congregation Hub Blog

It was a productive week at Congregation Hub! Here's a rundown of what shipped across the platform.

In-App Purchases (iOS & Android)

The biggest effort this week was rolling out in-app purchases across both mobile platforms. Churches can now purchase SMS messaging credits directly from the Flutter app on both Apple and Google Play. This involved:

Adding Apple in-app purchase support for one-time SMS token purchases
Adding Google Play in-app purchasing
Fixing billing reconciliation for SMS tokens purchased through Apple
Squashing several purchasing-related bugs along the way

Kanban Board & Ticket System

We added a built-in kanban board for tracking project changes and bugs, along with the ability for users to submit support tickets directly from the Flutter app. This gives churches a way to report issues and request features without leaving the app.

Service Planning Improvements

Service planning got some nice polish this week:

Hymn numbers now display on service element cards — e.g., "Opening Hymn – 74 Praise to the Lord the Almighty"
Bulletin hymn titles now show the actual hymn name from the hymn book instead of a generic label
CSV hymn book uploads — churches can now bulk-import their hymn books via CSV
Fixed missing element types (announcement/sermon) in the element form dropdown

People & Groups

Phone numbers now accept standard American formats without requiring a country prefix
Added middleware to ensure every user account has a linked Person record
Fixed a bug in the active group people picker
Fixed issues with post creation and group management

Communication & Notifications

Added a "Prayer Request Updated" notification so members get alerted when prayer requests they care about are updated
Added an invitation type for more flexible member invitations
Fixed a bug with sending emails

Website Fixes

Fixed issues with www domain resolution — churches whose members type www. before their domain now get routed correctly

Flutter App

Fixed calendar display when a user has no events or services scheduled
New release build pushed to both app stores

Other

Added useful links to the admin screen
Fixed a registration bug
Various cleanup and debug logging removal