ChMS - BVCMS

Although RefreshCache is generally a meeting of Arena developers, this year two guys that work on BVCMS were invited to present as well. This provided me with a great opportunity to see bvcms and ask questions of Dave Carroll who is the primary driver behind bvcms and the owner of bvcms.com, an organization offering hosting, service and support for bvcms.

BVCMS was the internal database project of Bellevue Baptist Church in Memphis, TN. After putting a lot of time and money into its development, their elders decided to release it as an open source project in April of 2009.

It's impossible to tell how many churches are using bvcms because anyone can download it, install it and get it running without telling anyone; however, bvcms.com has 74 churches that are using the database and paying for their support. Additionally, Dave said there are at least five churches that have contacted him for some assistance that are not clients of bvcms.com, meaning the real number is probably right around 80. Six of these clients have over 5000 records in their databases (averaging 18,347), and 51 have fewer than 1000 records. This data indicates that bvcms is becoming a web based database of choice for smaller churches, but scales well enough to be used by some of the largest churches in the country.

One of the things I did not realize about bvcms until this week is that it is available as a fully hosted and supported solution through bvcms.com. This means that you don't have to have a big IT staff and a group of programmers to run bvcms at your church.

After the initial release by Bellevue, the banner of BVCMS has been carried by David Carroll & bvcms.com. If I understand it correctly, the lion's share of development since 2009 has been done by David himself. At RefreshCache 2011 David said some of the keys to making this possible were a methodology of do the simplest thing that could work, avoid complexity unless necessary, don't repeat yourself and don't build things you're not going to need. David details his approach to development on his blog under the title Agile Methodology.

David also uses a novel approach to support that I really like. He takes support questions by email, writes the answer on the wiki and then replies with the link to the wiki. By doing this he insures that the wiki continually grows with valuable information on how to solve real world problems, and he doesn't spend time rehashing the same solutions over and over again. As a bonus, that creates a nice documentation library for anyone to access on how to use the software.

The biggest shortfall that I can see with bvcms support is that there is no set of community forums for the churches that are using bvcms to help each other and discuss things. With the open source nature of bvcms any church could set one of these up, but so far it does not exist. Based on our experience with the Arena community, this is a big loss. Hopefully as this product grows this shortfall will be addressed.

Because bvcms is open source, you can investigate it yourself if you have the IT staff or expertise to pull it off. All you need to do is download the code and then follow the directions that are posted on Dave's development blog.

So, what does bvcms offer? Quite a lot actually. Aside from the usual basic chms requirements, it has a very nice query builder, online registration, a check-in solution, iphone app, etc. In short, bvcms stacks up nicely against the rest of the market, with the huge benefit of being free out of the gate.

Unlike most of the solutions, there is zero risk to test out bvcms. From bvcms.com you can watch video demos on a lot of the basic features, and then connect to a demo site you can play with. If you want to investigate further, you can download the source and install it and start playing on your own.

There are two ways to run bvcms. The first approach is the traditional open source approach. Download it, install it, and start using it! This is a solid option if you have the technical expertise to pull it off, and if you have programmers on staff or volunteers, you can begin to customize the product and make it your own. The second approach is to contact bvcms.com about getting setup as one of their customer churches, and letting them do all the heavy lifting. Either way, bvcms is a solid option in your search for the right ChMS for your church.

Joel

RefreshCache Reflections

It's almost midnight on Tuesday, and RefreshCache is officially over. RefreshCache was an opportunity to rub shoulders with and learn from the collective wisdom of over 30 individuals representing eighteen of the finest churches in the country.

When we talked about making it a requirement that you had to present to attend, we wondered if it would put a drag on attendance, and if people would step up to the plate. Well, this was the largest group we've ever had for RefreshCache, and people didn't just step up to the plate, they hit it out of the park!

I would say that requiring everyone to present was the best move we could ever do. The end result was that everyone gave, and everyone learned. HDC got some great ideas on how to make Arena better, how to make our website better, and how to be more effective at the things we do. Personally, the time given to me by Tom Powers to help me learn performance tuning was priceless. His expertise and patience as we slogged through a particularly frustrating issue was amazing, and our church will benefit every day going forward with what I learned from him.

I really enjoyed seeing bvcms and getting to know David and Jeremy a bit as well. This is an important new player in the church software market, and I look forward to sharing my review of it with you when it is finished.

This week also presented some wonderful personal ministry opportunities and great time building relationships with some of the brightest technical minds in the church field.

RefreshCache 4.0 is only a year away, but I look forward to seeing how next year can be even better!

Joel

ChMS - RefreshCache 2011

We are in Gilbert, AZ for refreshcache 2011. This is the third year for this gathering, put on by our friends at Central Christian Church. The purpose of refreshcache is to encourage and motivate developers in the area of Church Management Software, mostly centered around Arena. We also had a presentation from David Carroll on bvcms, a product that I have not yet written up on this site. More to follow in another post.

One of the requirements we added this year on all attendees this year was that every church needed to present at least once, if possible. This was initially met with some fear and trepidation but the end result is that RC2011 is incredibly rich and feels like a community effort rather than a few people disseminating knowledge.

Collaboration seems to be the overarching theme of the gathering. One of the things that has really struck me lately is how much better things go when we work together and involve other people. The monday sessions started off with Derek Neighbors talking about collaboration as the second phase of creativity.

After some technical sessions, David Turner showed us some of the awesome things they have been working on at CCV, and then Jon Edmiston got up and challenged us all to work on "Google Car" levels of innovation in the church software field. Jon had very practical things we can all do to make ourselves better, and I really respect Jon as a guy who never stops learning and pushing forward.

One of Jon's closing statements was that we need to focus on major features, not incremental upgrades. While incremental changes are not a bad thing, they take away time and attention from making the next great thing, and church software has a long way to go before we hit real maturity in the innovation sector.

Jon closed with "one more thing" announcing the Spark Development Network, which is a non-profit devoted to developing open source software for the church environment. Their first project is an open source ChMS product simply called Rock.

This obviously is huge news, and I'll post more on it later.

Great meetings so far, looking forward to the rest!

Joel

ChMS - Charging all of those iPads

If you are using iPads for check-in or in other manners in your church, there is a good chance you have lots of them that you need to keep charged. This device can make that job a lot simpler.

In our case, one of our staff members maintains our iPads every week, cleaning them and plugging them in to be sure they are fully charged. We rarely sync them because they only use safari, but occasionally we need to do that as well.

Griffin Technology announced a product that looks like it will be perfect for churches looking to maintain large numbers of ipads: the MultiDock.

The photo above shows each mac syncing to ten ipads, but you can link multidocs to sync up to 30 ipads to a single machine. This vastly improves the central deployment practices for a large organization, and makes keeping all of your check-in stations charged very simple.

By the looks of it you need to contact Griffin directly to purchase.

Joel

ChMS - ConnectionPower / FellowshipOne Webinar

I've been listening to the webinar (despite the fact that I general despise the things) about the acquisition of ConnectionPower by ActiveNetwork. The short version: ConnectionPower has been acquired by ActiveNetwork and the distinct strengths of ConnectionPower will be integrated into FellowshipOne.

There was one question that was asked during the webinar that really caught my attention, because I completely disagree with the answer. The question: "Churches that are currently new customers to ConnectionPower {and} are still in the implementation process, should they continue that process or do they have the option to move over {to FellowshipOne}?" The answer was "My encouragement there is to go ahead and implement ConnectionPower..."

This is a very bad suggestion! Here's why: Implementing a ChMS is a HUGE process. It takes a tremendous amount of staff time, volunteer time, vendor time, and ultimately congregational time as everyone learns the system. Not only is our entire staff trained on Arena, but our small group leaders have all been trained on how to use the tools available to them, our congregation has learned how our online giving works etc. In the same call ActiveNetwork stated that ConnectionPower will be end of life as a separate product by the end of 2012. This means that if you spend the time now to complete your implementation of ConnectionPower, you will have to go through ANOTHER transition in eighteeen months.

The very reason I spent so much time researching which ChMS product I wanted to implement here at HDC was because this is such a massive undertaking. Getting your data moved to a new product and the staff trained is a lot of time, but it's only the tip of the iceberg. Once the product is in place, it takes time to learn how to learn the new functionality and get everything working with your organization. To do this with a product that is going to be gone in eighteen months is a very, very bad idea.

If you are on the front end of a ConnectionPower implementation, you should absolutely stop right now and make the switch to FellowshipOne. Although you might not have access right now to a few things that excited you about ConnectionPower, you will save your staff and congregation a HUGE amount of headache by not having to do it all over again in a year. The idea of continuing this to preserve momentum is a bad idea, as you will waste a lot of staff hours and adapt your congregation to a system that is going to go away within 18 months.

If you are already implemented and live with ConnectionPower, well, that's the group that these guys are working hard to make your transition as easy as possible as well. Step one is creating a bunch of videos that show you how to replicate ConnectionPower functionality in FellowshipOne. Step two is for them to integrate the stuff that isn't there yet, and once that is online, the transition of longtime ConnectionPower churches should happen in earnest.

Joel

ChMS - ConnectionPower Acquired by ActiveNetwork

I received an email today that ConnectionPower has been acquired by ActiveNetwork. If this sounds familiar it's because these are the same guys who snatched up FellowshipOne a few months back. While I'd never heard of ActiveNetwork before they bought F1, it's pretty clear they want to be a major presence in the church management software space.

According to the announcement on CP's site, the "unique ministry capabilities" of ConnectionPower will be rolled into FellowshipOne and it will all eventually be branded ActiveWorks | Faith.

I don't know if it's fair or not, but I have had a general feeling that ConnectionPower was having a tough go of it in the marketplace. This confirms that to me, as this is likely a customer base acquisition on the part of ActiveNetwork.

I'm still nervous about ActiveNetwork because I don't know them at all, but I think this is a good thing for customers of ConnectionPower. It gives them access to FellowshipOne and the ongoing technology development that is happening there, and hopefully the things that make CP unique are integrated nicely into that product.

The downside is that a significant player has been eliminated from the marketplace, and that reiterates the need for FellowshipOne, Arena, CCB, MinistryPlatform and others to innovate and push forward.

It will be interesting to see where the market is in a year after these changes fully shake out.

Joel

ChMS - iPad Kiosks

One of the most desirable aspects of our check-in system is that check-in works on iPads. More churches talk to us about our check-in for this feature than any other. The question that always has to be answered though is how to secure them.

Our production director found these:

Made by a company called ipadikiosk.com, they answer the question of how to secure ipads for use in a public location. They can also operate with the ipad plugged in, making them easy to use without having to charge them every week (like we do now). The whole thing is held securely in an attractive kiosk. There are three styles, two free standing and one for tabletops.

The downside is that like any well made product, they are expensive. The tabletop models are $275 each + $50 shipping and the freestanding ones are $500 each + shipping. This takes away some of the "it's cheap" appeal of the ipad, but it's still a good solution for kiosks.

We don't have any of these yet (Today was the first time I'd ever seen them) but we will consider them for our next campus which opens in September.

Joel

Interview with Jeff Hook of Fellowship Technologies

In February Fellowship Technologies was acquired by ActiveNetwork. Rather than just speculate on what this means for FellowshipOne, I asked Jeff Hook, CEO & Founder of Fellowship Technologies, if he would be willing to answer questions about this significant development in the church management software market. He graciously agreed. 


I broke my questions into three areas, and limited it to four questions per area. I asked a few friends of mine in the ChMS community what they would like to ask as well, and some of their questions are integrated into the twelve below. Introductions aside, let's get to Jeff's answers!

The first category was for general questions about the acquisition.

(1) What brought about this development? 

Active contacted me first in September of 2007 saying they wanted to get into the church space and I told them I was not interested in selling. I finally entertained their request and went to San Diego to visit their corporate headquarters. They were very impressive but I again reiterated that I was not interested in selling at that time. Every so often, they would call and we'd engage in each others' vision. As we saw common ground, it became clear that we were either going to be a big part of their strategy or we'd have to compete. After a lot of prayer and petitioning to the Lord, it became clear this was what we were supposed to do. We conducted the due diligence on each other and closed the deal on February 1st of this year.

(2) How did F1 become aware of ActiveNetwork or vice versa?

They conducted market research and came to the conclusion that we were the market thought leaders in the industry. They were also convinced that we could become the market leaders based on our people, process and technology approach to business, if we just had more capital to grow faster. We were already growing at a good pace organically, but they knew with more resources, we could ignite development, increase the number of leads and add churches faster.

(3) What do you see as the strongest aspect of ActiveNetwork?

Active is made up of quality professionals who strive to provide value to their customers and are truly dedicated to helping make them (the customer's) successful in fulfilling their vision. In each area of the solutions they provide to the market, they want to be the best - either be the best or do not play; provide innovation or do not play; add the most value or do not play. 

(4) What was most attractive about FellowshipOne to ActiveNetwork?

According to a document I saw after the acquisition, the primary things Active liked about Fellowship Technologies is the quality of our people and our approach to business and innovation; the secondary reasons for buying us was the technology and Active's motivation to get into the faith market.

My second area of questioning was more structural. How would Fellowship Technologies operate after the acquisition?

(1) What kind of changes has the integration made to FellowshipOne as an organization?

Since the primary reason for buying Fellowship Technologies was our people, Active has not changed the structure much at all at this time. The only change so far is that our HR department now reports up through the corporate office and will support additional business units as well as our own. Over time, we will begin to transition into the matrix organization to ensure that we are conducting certain aspects of the business using a common approach, but with me, the general manager of the business unit, directing the priorities required to address the needs of the market. All of the executives are incented to stay the course to help fulfill our vision of providing better systems to churches to effectively care for people, efficiently manage resources and to enable growth (spiritually and numerically).

(2) What short term benefits should FellowshipOne customers expect from this integration?

Of course, the answer to this depends on how you define short-term. As you know, very few things happen in technology in the short term. Over time we will be able to apply more resources to the business and share some functionality that are in other Active solutions. We will also be able to attract employees who live outside of Texas to expand the reach of resources available (It is hard for a smaller company to manage the regulatory requirements of adding employees in more than one state). We will also be able to provide better support to our customers who depend on Active for solutions outside of Fellowship One.

(3) What long term benefits do you see for FellowshipOne customers as a result of this transition?

These are too numerous to layout here. Let me suffice it to say that I believe, in less than five years, the marketplace will agree that this acquisition was ingenious and will bring bring more to the church market than any other ChMS ever imagined. That includes the "previous" Fellowship Technologies before I started to expand my vision of how churches could be served; and, as you know, my vision has always been pretty big!

(4) You've provided excellent leadership at FellowshipOne for a long time. How long are you committed to staying at the head of FellowshipOne? 

Thank you. Of course, I cannot foresee the future. I assume I will continue to be here for quite some time. I am making no plans to leave. Let me just say I continue to be committed to helping make God's vision for Fellowship One that He laid out for me that very first day that I was approached about this software a reality. Maybe I will leave after I have run out of good ideas for how to apply technologies and processes to help the Church serve God's people better. I don't know if I have one of the best jobs in the world, but I do know I have one of the best jobs for me.

My final area of questioning was related to how this would affect the FellowshipOne product directly, as well as a few of Jeff's thoughts on open source solutions:

(1) Will this acquisition by ActiveNetwork provide more resources to FellowshipOne and speed up the development process?

Yes, that is part of the plan. We are working through how best to make that happen. Active has a large development organization that we can leverage in many different ways. Several of them have even come forward and confessed their faith and commented how they are so proud that Active has made serving the Church as part of its vision.

(2) Will this provide the ability for churches to develop their own apps and such for the FellowshipOne platform?

With our API strategy, that was already happening. We just released a giving API to help churches and third party vendors who wanted to post transactions to congregant's giving records. We are definitely committed not just to have an API across the platform, but to use it ourselves in our own development so that we know it works and works well.

(3) Do you have any thoughts on the ChMS market in general, and in particular the open source initiatives like bvcms and others. 

Although people like yourself may disagree with my bias, I do not believe there are enough highly skilled programmers on church staffs to make an open source initiative work in this targeted vertical. To make an open source approach truly successful, there needs to be a vendor committed to allowing others to affect everything, including the kernal, as well as an outstanding, large group of individuals who can add value using the right set of standards and guidelines that everyone can agree with. I've looked at taking a more open source approach to church management and I think it is very hard to pull off. I prefer the API approach of a platform as a service using a strategy that allows a lot of flexibility but can insure the inner workings because of the control and QA the vendor is committed to providing. More of an Apple approach than a Google approach - both are good companies, both approaches can work, but the open source approach requires scale on a much larger level.

Almost every open source solution that has made it in the secular world has had a lot of capital behind it to get it off the ground or at least to get it to scale in a supported fashion. My question is are these solutions willing to raise the money to make these solutions viable in the long term, not just a flash on the continuum of time. The attractiveness of these solutions is the out-of-pocket price but we all know free is not really free. I equate it more to a DIY approach to systems and some churches are attracted to that. The overarching business question is does a church believe that building and supporting information systems is one of its core competencies?  Most churches that have built systems build in some basic flexibility, but do not take the time to conduct Quality Assurance on the entire system because development is off to the next thing. Or the QA is conducted by the programmer him/herself and only tests for a subset of what the user really tries to enter into the system. As the applications then do not perform, the user is the one holding the bag. When you are a professionally run software company, you can specialize and have designers design, coders code and independent QA personnel test; I believe it makes for a better system.

In general, I believe the consolidation in this market will begin to accelerate. I also believe new vendors will always bring new solutions to market. However, at some point, the barrier to entry will force the smaller players to take a secondary role because the established vendors with robust solutions including digital content delivery, integrated data analyses, mobile everything and congregational self-service will be the table stakes. I have never believed that our customers should buy from Fellowship Technologies because we are good guys, I want our customers to buy from us because we provide the best software for the best value and help them achieve their mission. It's about helping the staff do their jobs better and helping congregations live more functional Christian lives.

(4) What is the one thing you'd like to say to any potential customer about this acquisition and the future of FellowshipOne?

I will paraphrase Austin Spooner's comment, "it's definitely worth watching over time!" We are authentically passionate about the Church. We believe the Church deserves the best systems out there and are committed to providing them. With the integration of Fellowship One to other Active solutions, coupled with the vision God has set out for us, we will be in the position to offer features and services that no one else in the industry is even thinking about. Can we pull it off? I'll let every person decide that on their own; however, we would definitely appreciate it if you look closely at where we are headed and the value we can provide.

So there you have it, right from the "horse's mouth" so to speak. Although HDC is not a FellowshipOne customer, we have always appreciated the professionalism of FellowshipOne and the energy, passion and innovation they bring to the church software market. Every church that uses church management software benefits from strong competition in the market, no matter what product you choose at the end of the day. Thanks to Jeff Hook for taking the time to speak with us today.

Joel

ChMS - FellowshipOne Acquired by ActiveNetwork

Today I learned that Active Network has acquired FellowshipOne. The first thing you should do is read the press release here.

They are saying all the right things, the kind of things that are always said at acquisitions, but I have very serious reservations about this. I'm trying to think of a single product that has gotten better through acquisition for the userbase.

The first thing that came to mind for me was this excellent article at 37 signals, What happens after Yahoo acquires you. While FellowshipOne is not being purchased by Yahoo, I don't think we should ignore this type of precedent. At the very least this acquisition inserts a giant amount of uncertainty into the ChMS market.

Joel

ChMS - iPad Checkin is Live!

We first floated this idea in June, and after a few snags (for example, Zebra's wireless printers don't work on wireless, go figure) we went live with check-in for our second campus this weekend. Our check-in station consists of:

(1) Network in a Box (soon to be replaced with network in a brick)

(2) An old G4 laptop to be used for entering new families and correcting information

(3) Three iPads

(4) Three Zebra GK420d network label printers

(5) Three Apple Airport Express wireless bridges

(6) One really big box from Home Depot that allows it all to be packed up and rolled away.

The first thing that happens is that Network in a Box is plugged into the school's internet connection, creating our own wireless networks on the campus. These wireless networks are routed via a VPN to our main campus, creating an extension to our network in the remote location.

The iPads connect directly to the wireless network and then access our check-in system. We are using a custom Arena module developed in conjunction with CCCEV for check-in. Only minor changes were required to make it work with the iPad.

We tried wireless printers from Zebra, but on a secure network they would lose their network connection after 20 minutes, making them useless. After working with them for a month or so to resolve the issue we threw in the towel on them and exchanged them for standard ethernet label printers. We purchased Apple Airport Express switches to connect the ethernet printers to our wireless network.

Printing is handled directly from our server over the VPN. The print speed is nothing short of astonishing. It is every bit as fast as printing on our local network, even though it is being routed over the internet through our VPN. We could not be more pleased.

The only hitch we ran into was that the usb flash stick that hosts the OS for network in a box lost connection at one point causing the server to be unable to issue new DHCP leases. Thankfully we found that while nobody was checking in. We have ordered a hard drive for Network in a Box for the short term to prevent that from happening again. In the near future Network in a Brick (a very small replacement for the entire network in a box) should make that obsolete, but we are having some issues getting network in a brick to work through the school's firewall at this point.

The iPads are really what made this possible for two reasons. First, they are much smaller and vastly more portable than a machine + touchscreen solution. Second, they are cheap at around $500 each, costing roughly the same as the touchscreens on our Victorville campus kiosks. Out the door we spent about half the money per kiosk that we did on our Victorville campus. The downside is that they require more attention (can't leave them alone, they can walk off easily) and they have to be setup each week. The kiosks are still a better solution, but they cost more and are too big and bulky for a campus that does not have permanent facilities...

All told iPad check-in was a resounding success. We have learned a lot and should be able to go live with check-in week-1 at our next new campus.

Outsourcing and IT Spending

From time to time vendors come to me with ideas on how to outsource our operations using their products. Somehow it always seems to me like their solution to save money is to spend more money on their product. Needless to say I'm not a big fan.

Many years ago I was part of a decision to outsource some of our custodial work. At the time we were promised many things, among them significant savings over what we were spending on the employees to do the same work. After the switch I saw our savings all but evaporate as we "fine tuned" everything with the vendor. At the end of the day I felt like the savings were immaterial, and we had traded quality employees invested in the church for high turnover people who worked for another company and made less money. Lesson learned.

Today I read an article in Information Week entitled "Outsourcing Doesn't Cut Total Spending" about this very thing. The first line under the heading Practical Insight reads: "Companies that outsource tend to increase their total IT spending, not lower it." Another rather fascinating quote was this: "New outsourcers see immediate IT spending increases, while firms stopping [IT outsourcing] see immediate decreases."

The point being made here is that you do not outsource to save money, you outsource to increase capacity. Perhaps you can't find the in house programmers you need, ok, hire a firm to help you accomplish those projects. But don't do it expecting to save money. The article I read links to the original research available (for a fee) here.

Outsourcing has its place, but be very careful anytime you try to justify it by cost savings. In reality, you are bringing another organization that has to pay somewhere in the neighborhood of the same salaries you do, but you add to that their overhead and profit...

In the area of ChMS, moving to a modern platform will almost certainly increase your spending. This is true if you go with FellowshipOne, it's true if you go with Arena. That doesn't mean you shouldn't do it, but it's something to be aware of. Sales guys love to say with a SAAS product you won't need IT and you won't need a server room, but if you are a large church chances are you already have those things. Don't think that a move like this is going to save money. It's not, but it's going to dramatically increase your capability. The money we have spent on Arena has been worth every penny. We can do far more than we ever could before. That's why we chose a platform not based on cost, but on capability.

Joel

ChMS - MinistryPlatform

Church Management Software is not standing still, and in an effort to keep this blog up to date and useful to people who are reading it I try to follow new developments and write on them when they come up. A new player in the market that is not reflected anywhere in my work to this point is MinistryPlatform. While the name may seem a bit plain at first, as you will see it describes the product perfectly (not that it's plain, but they have built a very robust platform!).

MinistryPlatform (hereafter MP) has been operational since May of 2009 and utilizes the SQL Server 2005/2008 platform and like any modern ChMS is a browser based platform agnostic system. Kevin McCord, the gentlemen who showed me the ropes with MP has a background as a professional DBA, and as such the backend of this product is designed to be incredibly robust and to follow the rules of an ideal database (things like all the data being in third normal form for those of us geeky enough to understand what that means). Kevin's statement to me was that they work to leverage the DBMS as much as possible, and do everything else through an API.

Ah, now things get very interesting, and if you are early in your search and haven't spent a lot of time thinking about this your eyes are going to glaze over very quickly. Let me see if I can explain this simply: Church Management Software is really two things in one. The first part is the database, which is the actual repository for the data. In its simplest form a database is just a table. A single table might have your name, your birthday, perhaps a social security number and anything else that is always completely unique to you. A database for a church management system will have hundreds of tables, all related to one another. To interface with this data you need an application, and it is this application layer that we think of as the Church Management System. The application interfaces with the database and presents the data to the user.

The approach that MP has taken is to build the best set of tables possible, and then build an API that interfaces with those tables. The advantage of this approach is that it makes no presumptions about what you want to do with the data, and provides the maximum flexibility for developers to utilize that data. This approach takes more time on the front end (building API's isn't easy, and it doesn't result in anything an end user can actually use), but once the API is complete this allows a church to build pretty much anything they want.

Of course if all MP amounted to was a database and an API, there would be very few churches that could ever do anything with it. With the foundation in place Kevin and his team have built a very nice full featured Church Management System, ticking all of the important checkboxes and even adding a few that others miss. At this point the system is geared towards churches of 2000 people or more (although they are targeting 750 and up), and is designed with scalability and speed in mind. Most of the time that is a good thing, although there are some things about the interface that I don't like that Kevin explained are built that way with speed as the highest priority. This is part of the reason for the large church focus. When you only have a few thousand giving records in your system speed isn't really an issues. When you have millions of records, speed quickly becomes very, very important.

Kevin explained it like this: "At times it is important to distinguish between the Software Application Framework and the API.  The API is part of the Software Application Framework and it allows other applications to leverage MinistryPlatform.  MinistryPlatform is an Open Architecture, Software Application Framework that allows you to extend the scope of data it can manage without development.  In this way you can leverage MinistryPlatform to manage that new data.  At times a developer might also leverage the API for the new data that the framework is extended to cover.  It isn’t that we spent a lot of time on the API, we did!  However, we spent a lot more time on the framework that allows developers who use our API to focus on the specific ministry need behind the software they are building without worrying about managing all the data, developing workflow, or creating a security model. With MP you really don’t need a programmer to leverage most of what the software application framework can offer."

To drive home his point Kevin showed me a missions module that he had created as a non-programmer using only the application framework, in other words, only what you could do yourself not being a programmer.

I've talked a lot about the platform, and very little about the app itself. Part of that is because while I have looked at the product, I simply cannot give it the time and attention that I did to the products that were actively under consideration. For example, I spent five hours on the phone with FellowshipOne before bringing them in for an all day demo. All told I probably spent upwards of 20+ hours evaluating that solution for HDC. In the couple of hours getting to know MP I like what I see, but can't speak about the app with the same level of confidence I can of Arena, FellowshipOne, ConnectionPower or any of the finalists in my original comparison.

That doesn't mean I didn't learn anything in the time I spent. First off, MP is multi-site at its very core. The database is designed around multiple sites. As such, multi-site is not an afterthought or a tag, it is integral to the data design and table structure. If you are a multi-site church, this fact alone should have MP on your list of solutions to evaluate.

The overall interface of the product, as I reflect, felt a bit clunky. It seemed to me like I would have some training issues getting users fully up to speed on the product. It was very flexible and Kevin could definitely move around quickly, but the interface is not as polished as some of the competition. That said, I've seen far worse interfaces in my search than what MP presented, it just wasn't my favorite.

The product has solid assimilation and workflow features, including the concept of journey vs. milestones. Each person in the database can be in various journeys, and there are milestones that you can track and help move them along within those journeys. The workflow features seemed good, but I really didn't get to delve deeply into them to see how they would or would not work in our setting.

Another thing I liked about the product was the fact that you could add data from multiple locations. In other words, you weren't always having to go to the "right" place to enter the data you needed, the product seemed geared to allowing efficient operation across the board.

MinistryPlatform also includes event and facility management, which is not an essential part of a ChMS suite, but one that many churches ask for.

All told I was very impressed by what I saw with MinistryPlatform. If we were doing our search right now I am very confident that they would be a finalist. I really like the back end of the product and the philosophies on which it is built. The focus on API makes it extraordinarily powerful and customizable. If you are a church with weekend attendance over 2000 (or well on your way there), you should absolutely take the time to evaluate MinistryPlatform as part of your ChMS search.

Joel

ChMS Wish List - Are we meeting it?

Several years ago Tony Dye posted a blog musing about the lack of Innovative Church IT, and then developed a wish list for a ChMS. His comments were helpful in our search for a new database, and I wanted to step back and see how Arena today meets, or does not meet, the ChMS wish list Tony created. Note: Tony uses the term "CMS" which was more common in 2005, but was changed to avoid confusion with content management systems and contact management systems. Also, I use the term database interchangeably with ChMS.

(1) Trusted - The general principle here is that people must trust the data and count on the ChMS being the best source of current information. I give Arena a 5 out of 5 here. Our people use it and trust it, and it is always available (virtually no downtime).

(2) Consistently Used - If a ChMS is not used, then it is worthless. Our old database was used infrequently by a few staff members. Arena is used everyday by almost all of our staff members. Again, a 5 out of 5.

(3) Easy - A datatbase should be easy to use. Tony broke this down into five sub-points:

1 - No training required
2 - Simple things are simple
3 - Discoverable
4 - Work flow oriented
5 - Easy to do the right thing

I'll let you read Tony's post to get detailed breakdown of what each of these mean, but I think Arena nails all of them except possibly workflow oriented.

(4) Consistent - Does the product work consistently, in other words do menus work as you'd expect, is the user interface consistent, does the product feel like one well designed whole. This one is not where it needs to be with Arena. There are lots of inconsistencies throughout the interface, terminology and so forth. The product out of the box has three windows apps (check-in, contributions and bulk mailing) rather than being entirely web based (to be fair, so do their competition, but that doesn't make it right). I'd give Arena about a 2 out of 5 on this one. Lots of room for improvement.

(5) Available & Reliable - A database should run with near 100% uptime, be available on many platforms, and be available to more than just staff. Arena hits the mark here in spades. The server is rock solid and being browser based Arena is always available and ready to go for our people when they are at their desk. But beyond that, the iPhone client (the official one isn't so hot, but the HDC one rocks), the mobile site (works on iphones, blackberrys, and even android if you are desperate), and even from an asterisk phone if you set it up right. There are ways for volunteers and small group leaders to get access to what they need and to assist the staff as well. I believe Arena nails all of Tony's points here, 5 out of 5.

(6) Comprehensive - As with easy, Tony has several areas he identified here:

1 - Contact Management
2 - Engagement Factor
3 - For the members, too
4 - Easy to get data in, easy to get it back out

as well as two open ended questions:

5 - Financials as well as people and groups?
6 - What about all the add ons?

I'm going to take these one by one, because they are all pretty important.

Contact management - Arena is an ok cms, one that could be better. We haven't had time to do the Asterisk integration to provide click to dial on our phones, but once we do I think people will be more apt to enter notes and such in Arena when they talk to people. We can't do the incoming call record linking because our PRI doesn't properly provide us with callerID (go figure, something is borked at Verizon and we are tired of arguing with them). I would give Arena about a C- on this at this point. The basics are there, but it could be a lot better.

Engagement factor - The tools are there to track this really well (if you have no idea what this means, click on the link to Tony's post), but we aren't using them all yet. This is pretty key, and I believe Arena does this pretty well, although it could be better. I give Arena a 4 out of 5, and our implementation of it about a 2 out of 5 at this point. Definitely need to improve here.

For the members, too - Arena has made strides here, but still needs to come a long way to have compelling members functionality. I'd say a 2 out of 5 again. The basics are there, but they feel a little half hearted and unfinished. Online giving works pretty well, but they could do a lot more here.

Easy to get data in, easy to get it back out - Arena is SQL, and you can build monster complex queries if you want. The lists functionality is pretty good for getting dynamic data, and the fact that you can hand tweak the sql on them before execution is awesome when what you want is just a touch beyond what it can deliver. I give Arena a 4 out of 5 after the latest updates, but they need a really easy sql generating query builder before they can get a 5 out of 5. Also, Arena gives you quick and easy ways to export almost everything to word and excel, which is cool.

Financials as well as people & groups? - I have blogged about this before. I do not believe that financials (not contributions, but actual financial management) should be part of a ChMS, but rather a separate product. I'm glad Tony phrased this as a question.

What about all the add-ons? - Registrations and event management are built-in to Arena as is work flow to a limited extent (some of the community churches have made great strides here and built really awesome stuff). Arena can take payments as part of event management and registration, so I think that tag's Tony's "Web Store" base as well, although it is not setup out of the box to handle things like selling t-shirts or books or other such stuff. The only item on Tony's list that is not included is facility management, which shouldn't be included anyway...

(7) Extensible - Arena has a web services API that can be used to access arena data, as well as taking advantage of other API's for complementary data. For example, the Planning Center integration is almost done, and another church is working with ShadeTree to be integrated with Arena. These are just two examples (integration with facility management has been underway as well), but I think Arena does extensibility pretty well. That said, it's not perfect. Nobody has figured out how to properly integrate facebook into a ChMS yet, and the API has a lot of holes, but I think there is a good start. I like the fact that Arena is open and willing to work with people to connect rather than trying to stay a walled off little world. Arena is probably a 3 out of 5 right now, and it's getting better.

(8) Robust & Scalable - I have been very impressed with Arena in this area. In the research for my post entitled "What do the big guys use?" I found that three of the top ten largest churches in the country were using Arena (tied with FellowshipOne). Our own experience (weekend attendance is around 4500 adults) has been that Arena is very robust and stable at our size. In talking with the guys at Willow Creek and Southeast Christian, it seems like it is a solid product at their size as well. I think this is a 4 out of 5. It could be better, but it's pretty good as is.

(9) Secure and Integrated - Arena does a good job here. Database activity is logged, and history provides a convenient way to see who did what. Security is setup through templated security roles, and the default is no access. Arena can utilize active directory authentication if you have that setup and running. Other than the password complexity requirement (which we set, not Arena, so we are good) it almost feels as if Arena was designed while reading Tony's post on this topic... I really like the way Arena also allows notes to be set with private security, meaning they can't be read by anyone else at all (including the administrator). This allows pastors to place counseling notes and such and know they are secure. The security templates make ease of use for end users setting security on notes simple as well. Definitely a 5 out of 5.

In 2005 Tony lamented that there wasn't a product on the market that addressed these needs, and this was his wishlist. Five years later, I think it's pretty clear that Arena fits the bill pretty well and this no longer needs to be a wishlist. I can't help but think that Tony had some influence here.

Joel

ShadeTree

A while back Mark with BigBadCollab gave us a demo of ShadeTree. ShadeTree is a platform being developed that seeks to integrate church members into church life through social networking, spiritual formation, etc.

In some ways ShadeTree could lead to a full blown ChMS at some point, but right now it's really meant to augment what you currently have in place. I was privileged to look "behind the scenes" a bit with a beta church, to see how they are working on using ShadeTree.

Of most interest to us was the Spiritual Formation elements of ShadeTree, and how we can utilize it to help our people easily identify what their next steps are. These steps might be books, sermons, conferences, serving, attending events or whatever else the church establishes. The important thing is the front end survey that helps identify where each individual is, and what resources would be the most beneficial next steps for that individual.

ShadeTree is designed to be fully "skinnable" so that it fits within your website and design philosophies and looks like your church, rather than a generic look. I'm really excited about the platform as a way to give our people access to a path of spiritual formation. This is an area where HDC currently doesn't do a great job, and I really think ShadeTree can help us. The biggest issue will be figuring out Arena integration with the data, but the beautiful thing is that the church working on this with BigBadCollab is an Arena church, so I know they share that desire.

ShadeTree also does social networking. This is where I get less excited. I do believe that the church needs to be involved in social networking, but I don't agree with Mark that the church should be the place where it happens. To me, our people are already on Facebook, we should work to have a great facebook presence and to see how we can best integrate our members church and unchurched lives, allowing their relational networks to see their commitment to Christ. IMHO, if we create our own playground, we lose important opportunities to model our lives to those of our friends who do not know God.

It seems like there are a lot of products that try to integrate the church and social networking, but most of them seem to want to create an isolated sandbox away from "the world" and that isn't an viewpoint I share. That doesn't mean that I'm right though, only time will tell. Perhaps there is a sweet spot of integration between the two that I haven't seen yet.

Technologically ShadeTree is based on the LAMP stack, Linux Apach MySQL PhP, which I absolutely love. The cool thing about this is that all of those products are opensource, and ShadeTree is being developed as an opensource solution. This means that, once available, your church can download and test and even deploy ShadeTree for free. Awesome. If you need help, pay BigBadCollab and they will help you get it all running.

Good guys making good products to further God's kingdom at the lowest possible cost for the churches involved. Awesome stuff all the way around. If I've piqued your interest, click the ShadeTree link at the top and signup for more info when ShadeTree is released.

Joel

ChMS - Checkin Q&A

My last post has sparked a few questions that I thought were worth answering regarding some of the decision making on our kiosks.

First up:

I just read your 22 page essay on your check in build process. Did you give any thought to RF wireless keyboards? That would reduce the cabling spaghetti in the cabinet. The down side is batteries and the keyboard might disappear. I would hope that last problem wouldn't be a big problem in a church.

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Thankfully the cabling in the cabinet is not a huge issue, but there are three very good reasons why we chose the keyboards we did over something RF:

(1) This was the smallest usable keyboard + mouse that we could find. It had to be very thin to fit on the hideaway tray.

(2) Cables are more reliable than RF, no lost connections and such.

(3) Batteries are another maintenance and cost item.

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Next up:

Joel - just read through the PDF on your blog about your kiosk system - or at least the Mac mini versions... just curious why you chose to hook up the printers as ethernet printers (which required buying a switch) instead of just using USB? and for that matter - why did you go with a wired network connection?

if you were starting over today do you think you'd still go with the Mac minis or would you just use iPads? (especially since the new minis cost $100 more.)

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The printers are network printers connected to the windows servers, not local printers to the workstation. Since its 100% browser based and not OS specific this was the best way to make it work. Much faster and more stable than USB printer sharing on the minis. I have huge crowds of people using these things in short periods of time, and being rock solid is the single most important factor.

Wired network connections are more reliable than wireless, and I don't have as a single point of failure a wireless hub, I have a very nice POE Ethernet Switch. Since they have to be plugged into power anyway, a second cable is not a big deal.

As for today, I would still build this as is for our main campus, but we are using iPads for checkin at our second campus because an iPad + Network printer = $1100 or so instead of the $2500 these kiosks cost each. There is a downside though. The iPad requires a volunteer for every station. We generally have about eight checkin kiosks running with two or three volunteers. The kiosks do not have to be manned. If i left ipads out on a table for people to use for checkin, we would be replacing a lot of iPads that mysteriously disappeared...

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The iPad checkin for the second campus has been built and tested, but we aren't "live" with it yet because I am waiting for the budget approval from the campus lead to buy the equipment to make it happen. Still, it's a pretty slick solution. I'll share that in another post.

Joel

ChMS - Implementing Checkin

If you follow this blog, you know that we implemented check-in at HDC last summer. In the fall I wrote up a long document explaining our process, as well as detailing the design and construction details for our kiosks. I realized today as I went to point someone to it that I never actually posted it here. Please click on the link below to read the PDF on how we implemented check-in at HDC.

Implementing Check-In

Recently we paid for a secret shopper firm to come to our campus and evaluate HDC. We received very high marks on children's check-in, and perfect marks on check-out. This is in stark contrast to the last time they came to our campus when we got hammered on both of these points. All in all children's check-in has been an amazing success and is one of the best projects the IT department has been involved in.

Joel

Developer Roundtable 2010 Day 2

Day one was about the community and what we (collectively) are working on. Day two was focused on Arena and what we, the community, think they should be working on.

First off, props to Arena for involving us in this. It's not about saying "this is what I need, vote for me!" it's about the developer churches considering the needs of the community as a whole, and looking at what should be the highest priority.

Mike Gold is introducing a new development process known as SCRUM. The point of the scrum process is to distill requests down to concise stories that can be accomplished in a reasonable amount of time. After a week of planning, the developers are given three solid weeks to code and burn through the backlog, at the end of which there is a measurable product. During that time the scope is not allowed to change, and the purpose of this methodology is to produce a continual re-evaluation of development priorities while allowing important things to be produced quickly.

One key aspect of all of this is organizational. The scrum team also involves dedicated QA people, so they are testing during the development process and are committed to the same deadlines. Thus, at the end of the scrum the items should actually be ready to ship, rather than just sent over to QA for aging. Another key is that bug fixes have a completely different team, one that uses the scrum process as well. By separating out product development and bug fixes the development team isn't continually interrupted with high priority projects (because bug fixes always should be high priority) and the bug fixes can be patched and released faster.

For day two of the roundtable we as developer churches participated in what is known as the Sprint Planning Meeting. We looked over the product backlog, added items that were of importance to us, and then prioritized that backlog. From here Mike Gold and his team will schedule the scrum and kick it off, I assume next week.

I cannot stress how incredibly empowering it is to be sitting at the table with the other developer churches having direct influence on the development priorities of a software product. Obviously our decisions aren't the only ones that matter, but having a seat at the table for this discussion is simply huge. I can't think of another product that is so directly in touch with it's customer's needs.

At the end of the day we (the group, not HDC) had five items that will be placed into the first sprint, and should be in the next release of Arena.

Daniel and I left at 4pm and headed to the airport to catch our 6:45 flight, which departed at approximately 11:30pm... Needless to say, that made for a very, very, very long day. I am completely exhausted. But the roundtable was 100% worth attending, and one of the really great things about being an Arena developer church.

Joel

Developer Roundtable 2010 Day 1

As part of the Arena developer churches program we are invited each year to the Arena Developer Roundtable. Last year we heard from CCV about their fork of the code to allow them to develop features without being concerned about the business case for their development priorities etc. One of my concerns was that without a church involved in the development of the core that Arena could lose their focus, but we waited to see what would happen.

This year is different, but in a good way. Jon and David are not here in person, although they have been following the live feed. It's a bummer not having them here, they have become friends over the last nearly two years. THe biggest change with Arena is not the loss of Jon and David (they aren't gone, just not as involved as they used to be), although that is a significant loss, but rather the addition of Mike Gold. Mike came from Willow Creek, and brings a level of enthusiasm and professionalism to the whole development process that is incredible.

Today Mike lead us through an introduction to the SCRUM process of development, something that he is implementing at Arena. What is really, really, really cool is that we are part of that process tomorrow. As stakeholders, we are working with Mike Gold, Mark White, Jeff Maddox and the other Arena guys to narrow down and refine the development priorities for Arena tomorrow. This is exactly why we come to the roundtable: To have input into the future direction of Arena.

We also shared the CCCEV / HDC check-in suite, which is a full featured windows free alternative to the official check-in solution. We demoed check-in on the iPad, as well as using an iPad as a number display for parents in a service, and showed our solution for multi-site network in a box. We also showed a module that Daniel wrote to export any dataset in Arena to a .kml file for display and analysis in google earth.

Trey from Brookwood Church showed their members portal, and its very awesome integration of "contact us" and assignments, allowing people to sign in and initiate staff followup. Several other people showed stuff they had been working on as well, and then in a huge surprise, Scott from Watermark Church showed us their ShadeTree implementation via Skype. Scott is not here but has been participating on the developer IRC and watching and listening to the feed that Mike Gold setup. ShadeTree is a very cool spiritual formation app that also includes a very nice members portal and social networking features. I like ShadeTree a lot, and it already looks better than the Arena public portals in a lot of ways, but I think for us our preference is to keep things as tightly integrated with Arena as possible, and that means not using ShadeTree for group management, even though it's pretty good at it. But the spiritual formation aspects are really exciting, and I am looking forward to making that happen at HDC.

Finally at 6 we called it a day and headed off to dinner. After dinner we moved to the lobby where we are sitting now, discussing Arena, coding, comparing notes and just hanging out together. Day one has been great so far, and it's not over.

Joel

NAB & the church

NAB comes around every April in Las Vegas. It is the trade show for broadcasters, and covers everything from where to find a $5 cable to a news helicopter (considerably more than $5). When I first attended NAB it was very novel for churches to be there. Responses were usually along the lines of "You're with a church? And you want this switcher? Really?" as people tried to reconcile the idea of the little white steepled building they think of as church (disclaimer, the church linked to there is the church I went to as a kid and I have nothing but positive memories of it!) and the modern megachurches that have sprung up in the last twenty years or so.

Within about a five years the comments went from "a church? really?" to "we are targeting churches and other assembly halls with this product." It was a pretty stunning turnaround. Things have continued, and this year there is a Technologies for Worship Pavilion at NAB. I received an email today from Jason Rouse, representing NAB and this is what he had to say about this development:

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The Technologies for Worship Pavilion offers comprehensive training for house of worship staff and technical volunteers and is the focal point for all things related to worship technology at the NAB Show. In addition, you may be interested in Destination Broadband - the newest broadband-centric exhibit at the 2010 NAB Show. It will be featuring technologies like online video platforms, streaming video, mobile video distribution, and much more.

Technologies for Worship Schedule: http://ow.ly/1fCqd
Destination Broadband: http://ow.ly/14hgA

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Personally, I think this is awesome that technology use in church is being embraced by the industry. One of my titles is "Technologist" and finding ways to apply technology to HDC to further the gospel is part of my job description. I'm excited by the prospect of higher visibility for churches at this year's show. I haven't been in a few years, and looking at my April I'm not 100% certain I can go this year either, but I think it's well worth writing about.

I'm certain that Jason was hoping I would publicize NAB here, and I'm happy to, but he also passed along a code that you can use to register for free if you would like to attend:

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The reason I'm reaching out to you is because I have a special registration code for you to pass along to your readers, giving them access to the show – a $150 value - for FREE. This special pass includes the exhibit floor, the Opening Keynote and State of the Industry Address, Info Sessions, Content Theater, Destination Broadband Theater and Exhibits. All you and your readers need to do is visit http://ow.ly/13TL9 to redeem or register at http://nabshow.com/register with the code A913.

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If you can arrange a trip to Vegas in the middle of April, take at least a day and attend NAB. This is a fantastic opportunity to see the latest and greatest technology, and hopefully will cause you to think about great ways to enhance your ministry.

Joel

It's been a quiet year

Haven't blogged much, but I've been about as busy as I can ever remember, which is probably why I haven't blogged much. I took a couple of weeks off at the end of December and came back to an absolute storm of work. One of my key volunteers was also critically injured in a car accident, and her husband was killed, so I've been squeezing in time to visit her in the hospital as well. Thankfully, she is doing quite a bit better this week, so that's a huge answer to prayer.

Today Daniel and I met to discuss the project priority for 2010 and beyond. With a project as large as Arena, there are many things that we simply haven't had time to deal with. So we spent a few hours today looking them over, discussing the issues involved, and prioritizing them. Here's where we landed, in order:

Backups - The server is backed up. The database is backed up. Many user machines are backed up. A few miscellaneous odds and ends are not backed up. We need to make that "many" into an "all" and tag all of those other random things that need to be included. This is first priority. Nobody cares until their hard drive dies...

Point of Sale - Our POS solution for our coffee shop is simply, well, a piece of ... uh ... crap? It is very fragile, and quite slow. It is time to replace it, and it gets our first priority once we have backups nailed on everything else.

Arena Training Videos - Odd that this is so high on the list, but it takes a good hour to hour and a half to get an employee totally up to speed on Arena. On one hand, that's awesome because it's such a complex product and they can be using it in such a short time. On the other hand, every new employee takes 1-2 hours of one on one training. If we can show the standard stuff in a video, we can make the training process a matter of making sure they know how to login and answer any questions they have.

Event Registration - This will save us money, simplify our operation, improve the information available through the members portal, and give us better record keeping within Arena (we will have a better idea of what people came to etc.). No surprise this is the highest arena priority after the one that simply gives us more time to work on this kind of thing...

MyPortal - We have toyed with the better members portal tools introduced by Arena this past summer, but we haven't gone live with them. It's time we revamped our members site to utilize this.

Asterisk + Arena Integration - We need to update our phone system to the latest version for a number of reasons, among them better fax support and better call detail recording and recordkeeping. Along with this we want to complete integration with Arena for call histories, click to dial, and a few other little things.

Metrics + ERA + Peers - These can all be summed up by the category Data Mining. Each of these items are automated processes that mine our data for important information. We are currently using Peers, we went live with it, but we really need to spend a lot more time and pay a lot more attention to the relationships and values we assign to them in order to get the most out of this.

Intranet - Not really a primary purpose for Arena, but one we need to use anyway. We want to put the policy manuals, every form the church uses etc. into Arena so that people can find them. The larger the organization gets, the more common it is to have no idea what other departments are doing. Rather than start from scratch with a volunteer application, why not look at the twelve other departments have created and use one of those, or maybe modify the one closest to what you need...

Timekeeper - Just because we had extra time on our hands (NOT!) we implemented a computerized time clock at the beginning of 2009 simultaneously with Arena. This needs a little bit of TLC, and we will consider making it an Arena module if we implement the HR module...

Facility Calendar - We use our own, home grown, facility management software. It's awesome because it controls all of our building automation. But it's also old, and slow, and really needs a ground up rewrite for version 2.0. Do we rewrite it, or do we buy something off the shelf, or do we make an Arena module out of the whole thing? When we get to this, we'll figure out the answers to these questions...

Human Resources - There is a community module out there for HR. We need to get it running, test it, and implement the parts we need at HDC. If we decide to make Timekeeper an Arena module, this will move up ahead of it.

Planning Center Integration - This is a very big deal to me because our church uses planning center extensively. Unfortunately when I look at the development priorities around here, it has to wait until the higher priority items are done. We want to avoid data fractioning by keeping Arena as the primary source of all contact information. Likewise, I'd like to be able to import the serving activity that Planning Center tracks.

MapPoint Integration - MapPoint has features that allow it to work with the geolocation data in your SQL Server database. Awesome! Unfortunately we haven't had time to get it all working, and based on where this ranked, it will be a while.

Network Maintenance - There are lots of little things we need to do, and together they make a pretty big project. But for now, it's working so we'll leave it alone :-)

There are a myriad of smaller projects, but this finally let us set out a priority schedule for the longer projects and give us the ability to have a good answer when someone asks when these things will be done.

Joel