Now that the 1.06 upgrade has been released for a solid week, and early returns on the automated update logs show that a large number of users have downloaded and installed it successfully, we in the Builder development team have turned our attention to version 1.07 and to building in additional content over the summer months. Since very little tends to happen in most congregations over the summer, there’s additional time to work on the rites and content that our users will be looking for come fall.

What I’d like to do briefly is to outline what we’re working on and what users can expect in version 1.07, which should arrive at the end of the summer.

Click on to read more.

First, there are some distinct priorities already in place for the development of 1.07 (and have been for some time now). We’re intent on fixing some of the more common issues customers are experiencing, including one that’s been dogging the project since the release back in December.

The most important fix in 1.07 is a change to Lutheran Service Builder that – in early testing – is dramatically reducing load times on systems experiencing the Internet Explorer 7 conflict. This (as far as we can tell) affects a significant portion of our users and we are very excited that we will finally be able to implement this fix. By faster, we’re talking a reduction from a couple of minutes to fifteen seconds or less in our test cases. (Your final mileage may vary.)

We’ve also made some additional database indexing improvements that will increase the speed of searches while reducing the memory footprint of Builder to help it run more efficiently on slower systems.

The other big priority for us has been to work with the PowerPoint export feature and work to build in functionality that has been requested by our users and to work to make the interface more responsive and more logical in the process. More options like global toggles for certain kinds of content, finer control over the service elements that are exported to PowerPoint, better hymn stanza breaks and text separating (reducing the number of slides), and a reworked slide style editor are among some of the many changes you’ll see made to the PowerPoint functionality of Builder.

In addition to working on developing, refining, and testing 1.07, we’re also going to be working on additional content for Builder that will be published in data updates. The Propers for Years A and B of the Three-Year Lectionary are currently not present in Lutheran Service Builder, and we’d like to get them finished and uploaded well in time for those of you who like to plan services months in advance.

We’re also planning on including many more rites from the Agenda and Altar Book over the summer months, attempting to time their release to be seasonally appropriate. Work has already begun on incorporating more of the Holy Ministry rites in the Agenda to try and get them downloaded to customers in time for ordination services occurring over the summer. There are also plans to include more of the optional content from the Altar Book in some of the services already part of Lutheran Service Builder.

When these updates are prepared and are sent to the master server for you to download, we’ll make sure we post a message here detailing exactly what you will be receiving and any additional information needed to use that content. Please keep watching this space for more details.

As always, if you have any feedback or requests for the team, please leave a comment and we’ll get back to you ASAP.