Core Docs - Supporting Rock - Use Data Automation

Rock Version: v19.0
Last Modified: 2025-11-05 4:36 PM

Rock ships with a powerful Data Automation job that automatically updates person and family records. This makes things a lot easier for you. The job settings are configured here on the Data Automation page, located at:

Tools > Data Integrity > Data Automation.

The Data Automation job uses these settings to update person and family records in the following ways:

Updates are made to records when the Data Automation job runs. By default, the job is configured to run every Tuesday morning, but you can change that time to what works best for your organization. Also, note that the job is active by default, but the data automation types listed above are all disabled. The updates will run automatically once the settings are enabled.

OK, now that you have an overview of the job, let's take a closer look at the different types of data automation included in the Data Automation Settings screen.

Reactivate People

When the Reactivate People option is enabled, every person in the database who matches any of the following criteria (according to your selections) will have their record status updated from 'Inactive' to 'Active'.

When the Reactivate People automation runs, the Inactive Reason and Inactive Note fields for each person are cleared.

Allow Automated Reactivation
There may be scenarios where you don't want certain people reactivated even if they meet the conditions you've configured. For instance, someone might have given in the last 90 days but has recently told you they've moved or will no longer be attending. For cases like these you can set Allow Automated Reactivation to "No" for certain inactive reasons (e.g., Moved, No Longer Attending) in the Inactive Record Reason Defined Type under Admin Tools > Settings > Defined Types > Inactive Record Reason. This will prevent automatic reactivation for any people with the given inactive reason.

Inactivate People

When the Inactivate People option is enabled, every person in the database who matches all of the following criteria (according to your selections) will have their record status updated from 'Active' to 'Inactive'. Each person who's inactivated will also be inactivated in most of the groups to which they belong, including security roles. Once these people have been inactivated in their groups, there's no process to revert that change.

When the Inactivate People automation runs, the Inactive Reason for each inactivated person is updated to 'No Activity' and the Inactive Note field is updated to 'Inactivated by the Data Automation Job on mm/dd/yyyy'.

Any person who's inactivated will also be inactivated in all of the groups they belong to, except for those that have a group type with the Don't Inactivate Members option selected.

A Note of Caution
Enabling the Inactivate People automation could have pretty significant ramifications if the options aren't configured correctly. For example, if only one criterion is selected, everyone who doesn't meet that one criterion will be inactivated. For this reason, it's best to select all of the criteria so a person has to match all of the options in order to be inactivated.  

Update Family Campus

The Update Family Campus option is available only if you have more than one campus.

When the Update Family Campus option is enabled, the attendance for every family will be evaluated. If the family is attending or giving to a campus other than the one that's currently configured for the family, the campus for the family will be updated. Let's look at how this works.

First, the Data Automation job evaluates the attendance records at a specific location for all members of the family in question to determine if that location has the greatest number of attendance records for the family. Next, the job looks at all of the contributions to campus-specific accounts made by members of the family, to determine if that campus has the greatest number of contributions. Finally, the job uses the following settings to help determine if the campus should be updated:

Move Adult Children

When the Move Adult Children option is enabled, the DataAutomation job processes people who have a child role in one or more families, but also are of an "adult" age. The default adult age in Rock is 18. The job processes one person (not a group member) at a time. For each person, the job looks at all of the families that person belongs to and their role in each family.

The job considers the following options:

The job also considers the "Lock as Child" option in the Edit Person Advanced Settings. If this option is selected on the person, they won't be made an adult by this job.

Update Connection Status

When the Update Connection Status option is enabled, you can update connection status values based on one or more Data Views. The status is set to one of the values listed below if the person meets the conditions of the data view.

Update Family Status

When the Update Family Status option is enabled, you can update family status values based on one or more Data Views. The status is set to either Participant or Unknown if the family meets the conditions of the data view.

General Settings - Gender AutoFill Confidence

Included in the General Settings section of the Data Integrity Screen is an optional DataAutomation task to autofill gender. This task looks for individuals with an unknown gender and attempts to set the correct gender based on the person's first name. The process uses the minimum confidence level (think of this as an accuracy rate) entered in the Gender AutoFill Confidence field to automatically set blank genders while running the Data Automation service job. If the number is set to 0, genders won't be automatically determined. If the number is set to 99.9% (the default setting), only names with genders matching that 99.9% confidence level will be determined. If the individual is a child, the job checks the likely match for gender against the minimum confidence level. If the likelihood of finding a match is greater than the confidence level, the gender is updated. Otherwise, it's left unknown. Adults won't autofill with a gender that's already taken by another adult in the same family.