We have been able to send SMS / Text messages in Arena for a while now- but we thought it was missing one critical component. The ability to receive replies to SMS messages was a critical component for our team. We could not stand the thought of some one replying back to one of our messages and not receiving it.

We worked with Voracity Solutions to have them develop a Two-Way SMS provider that would integrate into our Arena system- and they did a great job!

The user interface is well designed and takes advantage of components already integrated into Arena. The agent also sends email notifications when a new SMS is received.

If your church might be interested in this module contact Voracity Solutions for more information.

We worked with Voracity Solutions to create the integration into the Arena System.

Similar to the system at CCV each step is represented with a standard icon that is used throughout our processes at NCBC. If some one has completed the step, its in color, otherwise it is grayed out.

The next steps project has allowed our staff to have an immediate visualization of where some one is currently at in our ministry process here at NCBC.

Brief Explanation of our Next Steps:

Compass: Our Starting Point Class (http://newcovenantbible.org/stratingpoint)

Water: Baptism (http://newcovenantbible.org/baptism)

Toolbox: Serving (http://newcovenantbible.org/serve)

Group of people: Adult Bible Fellowship Classes and Small Groups (http://newcovenantbible.org/smallgroups & http://newcovenantbible.org/abf)

Puzzle Piece: Membership

Here at New Covenant we had the privilege of beta testing Voracity Solutions new Mobile Membership software for the ArenaChMS product.

Mobile Membership is an enhancement to the current Arena Mobile Modules and is a great add-on to Arena for any church that would like to take there database with them on there cell phone.

We worked with Voracity to make sure the modules would all work properly on Windows Mobile devices, as well as iPhone and Palm devices.

Voracity has made the system very easy to update – by using their Control Panel to perform the initial install, as well as all future updates. The Control Panel detects what version of Arena you are using and makes sure Mobile Membership is updated to work it.

You can learn more about Voracity Solutions as well as there Mobile Membership product by visiting there website- www.voracitysolutions.com

One of the tools I rely on often is Xmarks. Xmarks allows me to sync my favorites between Internet Explorer and Firefox as well as my Firefox passwords between computers.

It is great to be able to have a page open in the office at work when I leave the office for the day, and when I return home open the browser on my home computer and have it open in the same spot.

I never have to worry about not having a saved password to favorite as well.

If you currently do not have a tool to sync favorites between browsers and computers as well as passwords you might give Xmarks a shot.

Staff Birthday’s

select DAY(birth_date) as 'Birth Date','<a href="default.aspx?page=7&person='+CONVERT(VARCHAR(20),cp.person_id)+'">'+cp.nick_name+' '+cp.last_name+'</a>' AS 'Staff Member'

from core_person as CP

where MONTH(birth_date) = MONTH (GETDATE()) and staff_member = 1

order by DAY(birth_date), last_name asc

Staff Anniversaries

select DAY(anniversary_date) as 'Anniversary Date','<a href="default.aspx?page=7&person='+CONVERT(VARCHAR(20),cp.person_id)+'">'+cp.nick_name+' '+cp.last_name+'</a>' AS 'Staff Member'

from core_person as CP

where MONTH(anniversary_date) = MONTH (GETDATE()) and staff_member = 1

order by DAY(anniversary_date), last_name asc

Staff Employment Anniversaries

(this code works in Shelby V5 and assumes you are using V5 payroll for Employment Information)

Use ShelbyDB

SELECT 

DateDiff(yy, HireDate, GetDate()) as "Years On Staff",

NA.Salutation + ' ' + NA.LastName AS Name

, HD.Descr AS Department

FROM Shelby.NaNames NA

 INNER JOIN Shelby.PREmp PR ON NA.NameCounter = PR.NameCounter

 LEFT OUTER JOIN Shelby.PRHomeDept HD ON HD.Counter = PR.HomeDeptCounter

 LEFT OUTER JOIN Shelby.NAAddresses Adr ON Adr.AddressCounter = NA.MainAddress

 LEFT OUTER JOIN Shelby.NAPhones PH ON PH.NameCounter = NA.NameCounter AND PH.PhoneCounter = 1

 LEFT OUTER JOIN Shelby.NAPhones MO ON MO.NameCounter = NA.NameCounter AND MO.PhoneCounter = 5

WHERE CoNu = 1

 AND Status = 'A'

 AND Month(HireDate) = CASE WHEN Month(GetDate()) = 12 THEN 1 ELSE Month(GetDate())  END

ORDER BY "Years On Staff" Desc, Name

You just need to make sure you add the Report Grid for Query Module to your page, then copy and paste the SQL code into the module.

We were able to do the Birthdays and Anniversaries fairly simply by using the Report Grid from Query module-

The Employment Anniversaries were a bit tricky as we do not track HR information in Arena – it is stored with in Shelby’s Payroll module. Thankfully the Arena Report Grid module allows you to connect to another database to pull information- so we wrote a stored procedure to grab the information from Shelby.

Now our staff can go to our Arena Home Page, and add the additional modules they wish to access.

We plan to add some additional report grids in the future for upcoming events, etc – but this is working well for us so far.

Last week I saw some action on Twitter about ClearContext… our team has been using ClearContext for over a year now and it many ways it has transformed the way we manage our inbox box.

Many of our staff do a much better job keeping their inboxes at or around 0 and staying in control of their incoming items.

All of us manage our inbox a bit differently – and even have adopted ClearContext to work the way we want it to.

The software has many customizable settings to automate certain actions – and it even allows you to click on a folder in Outlook and it shows you all of the attachments for the folder.

If you are use Getting Things Done and have implemented a “tickler” file within Outlook – ClearContext automates this with an option to defer a message to a later date. The message them automatically pops up in to your inbox at the date you choose.

The new version has some project management features built in to it as well.

They also have a beta program you can participate in as well as a  community forum to post ideas. They are very actively making changes to the product and listen to the ideas on their forum.

If you have not yet given ClearContext a try – I would encourage it. (and they have special pricing for non-profits)

Just when I though I would never have to see / use a floppy disc again, we had to install a piece of older software that originally come on floppy discs purchased about ten years ago.

We were able to get a CD to replace the 8 floppy discs, but the license information was still stored on one of the floppy discs. The installer from the CD asked at the end of the installation to insert the disc into drive “A:” and hit okay. The only problem is the computer did not have a floppy disc drive.

My first thought was “this will be easy” – we will just make make an ISO file with the software on it and mount it as an image.

It ended up being a bit harder than that- as you cannot mount to drive letter A since it is reserved.

I then had to go into the registry to HKLM\System\Mounted Devices and look for “\DOSDevices\A:” and rename the “A:” to a different drive letter to free up a letter “A:” to me mounted.

I then realized that a floppy cannot be an ISO – and I would need to find some sort of floppy emulator as well as piece of software to turn the floppy into a floppy image file.

We ended up finding WinImage to create the floppy image – and used Virtual Floppy Drive to mount the image. We were then able to run through the install CD from start to finish with out actually having a physical floppy drive with the license information on it.

Earlier this week I was listening to a podcast from Andy Stanley’s leadership series. This specific episode stated:

“If we got kicked out by our board, and they hired a new guy, what would the new guy change or do different? Let’s walk out the door and walk back in, and make those changes.”

It was a good reminder than we always need to be doing the best we can to accomplish the mission and vision of our church- and need to realize what is not working.

Andy Stanley also mentioned to acknowledge what’s not working, and own up to it.

It got me thinking about what changes we need to make in IT that will allow us to go further, and progress faster than we currently are. Specifically at some of our systems we have in place, and our processes within our membership system that need some improvement.

Many of our previous solutions have been ineffective and hard for our staff and ministry leaders to use.

With the addition of documents in the 2008.3 release of Arena ChMS we are trying something new-

We have posted all of our training documentation and training videos on the Arena system with-in our Intranet.

We are hoping that by making our training information as well as our general procedures for entering data more easily available to our team – we will be more effective in how we manage our data.

The Videos are all saved as .SWF files so they open up in a player. It would be really sweet if this module could eventually recognize certain file types (such as flash) and open up a player by default.