Podcast Episode 188: Episode 161 : Building Next Gen Rock: A Look at Check-In

Description

Today join the core team – Jon Edmiston, Nik Airdo and Emilly Forman as they share about the latest version releases and those that are coming up, closing issues in GitHub, writing the next generation of Check-in and all the community happenings.Show Notes:Update your Commitment here: https://community.rockrms.com/organizationsFunding the Future: https://community.rockrms.com/connect/rock-rms-donation-update-what-you-need-to-knowGrant Link: https://www.rockrms.com/grant-application2023 Classes: https://community.rockrms.com/classesRX Registration: https://rx.rockrms.com/RX Hotel Link: https://www.marriott.com/event-reservations/reservation-link.mi?id=1694551025506&key=GRP&app=resvlinkChip Challenge: https://community.rockrms.com/chip-challengeRock PartnersWe are thankful for our Rock Partners and their support of the Rock Community. Visit their websites through the link above to learn how they can help your ministry and confirm that those you work with are as invested in the success of Rock as you are!

Transcribed Content

This episode of Rockcast is brought to you by Rock partner Triumph Tech, a full service specialist partner. Rock partners provide crucial support for Spark Development Network and important services for the Rock community. Connect with Triumph Tech today at rockrms.com/partners. Welcome to this edition of Rockcast, the podcast that explores the intersection of technology, ministry, and community with ROCCRMS. I'm Emily Forman, and with me today are Jon Edmiston and Nick Airdo. All right. We are going to kick off our discussion as always by getting an update on where we are with our Rock version releases. And there are a lot of moving parts on this right now, aren't there Nick? There are. Yeah, there has been a lot of activities. Some of it is, was queued up a year ago. I'll get to that in a second, but let me just start with the latest. So 16 is already out. We've talked about that. 15.2, which has pretty much all of the bug fixes that were in 16 are in 16.2. That's coming out today as of the day of this recording. And then 16.1 will be up next. So it will start alpha testing and beta testing along with version fifteen three. So there will be a fifteen three that will come out shortly after or right before sixteen one. Those two are kind of paired up. They have a lot of bug fixes for event registration and pretty much targeted toward that event registration bug fixes. And then we have some older news 14.3, which went early access last year is now general release. So all the 14 ohs, but don't stay on 14 ohs. Go all the way to fourteen three. And anybody who's been waiting for that to general release, you are good to go. And then last but not least, end of life. If you are somehow still on version 12, not at all recommended, that's end of life. It's no longer supported. We're not putting security patches or anything. So you want to move forward, preferably all the way up to 14, 14 point three. 14 point three, right. And we've been talking about this for a while. We can't maintain versions going back in history indefinitely. Make sure you're on the V13 train at least. And I'm sorry, I think you meant sixteen. Sixteen. Go from twelve to sixteen. Would you stop at fourteen? Just get on the early access program and keep Well, would say fourteen. In my mind, that's kind of legacy. You're so far back- You are missing quite a bit. That there's so many features and even bug fixes. Can I get an amen? Yes, of course, for sure. Just stay current. Yes, stay current. And so that might mean taking another look at the early access program, which is a donation based program for those that are donating at the recommended level to be able to have the earliest access to features as they're released. That also helps make sure that Spark is funded in a way that we can continue building these features. So it's a win win for everyone. And if you haven't had a chance to get on that program before, go back and take a look at it. Now we're we're considering next year's budgets. It's a great time to review that. We do have a step down grant program available if that's something that you need help with, moving slowly toward the early access goal for your organization. So reach out and let us know if you need help evaluating that, but absolutely stay current with the latest versions because there's so much incredible work that's available to you if you're just missing out. Yeah. Lastly, regarding that, if you went to 14.3 only and you happen to find a rare bug that impacts your particular situation, it's not going to get fixed in 14 or there isn't going to really be a 14.4. That's only for security concerns. So it's kind of risky to be out way back in that older software. Well, if you look at the Rock community in general, the pack has moved past 14. So you wanna be in the- With the pack. You wanna be with the pack. For sure. All right. So John, let's talk a little bit about what we're working on now. It seems , again, we have a lot of moving parts in this area, but we could maybe highlight a couple of things. Yeah, so we're in an interesting point because we're starting 'seventeen. So we have some features already in development for 'seventeen. Many features are on the drawing board for 'seventeen. So trying to get time to get the mock ups and things completed. One of the biggest things that's currently in the design stage is the new email wizard. And a lot of the polish of the current stuff is done, but trying to figure out how does personalization how do we make personalization super easy within that tool is still a little in the in the mixing, , trying to figure that out. And especially when we look at things adaptive messaging. So it allows you to create a single message, but have it adapt to certain segments that you might have. How do you make that, , ridiculously easy for someone in the in the wizard just to say, hey. I wanna pull over this message and I'm send. Do you just figure out what's the right exact message to send for this particular person? Pretty easy to to technical technically do it, but to make a user experience around that is a little bit is a little bit difficult. But while we do that, we are heavily investing in just going to our backlog of of issues in GitHub. So I think we started probably three weeks ago, four weeks ago at about 198 and we're down in the seventies. So that's a huge, huge effort. A lot of those issues are very old. And so we've been going through and kind of grooming that. So we have a metric now too that tells us the average number of days that all of our issues are. So I think we started in the six hundred days and we're much, much lower today. But I think as we look through that, it causes us to have to look at our process too and determine how do we classify certain issues. Some of these issues, not many, but some of them are literally code that we don't control. So it's a component or some other piece of code that we bring into our development environment. So if there's a bug in that, what do we do? And especially if they're not planning to fix it. Some of them are not even bugs in the other components. It's just, they're just architectural. Just the way it was built. It's not meant to have that feature. So our choice is , keep it open or close it, because there's nothing we can do. So we close it with a note. Now many of these are in components that we do plan to replace in the near future. I can't tell you what near future is because I hope it's next year, but it could be even further out because our roadmap and our time is really at the mercy of the community. So, but we're closing those. There's a few that are debatable whether they're issues or that it wasn't really meant to do that. And so we're trying to lean into that. Some of them are so old that they're actually fixed. And that's why it's important to be on the later versions. And so in those cases, we close those, but we always try to say, Hey, if you can reproduce it in the new version, we can't in the new version. And we think, we can usually point to a commit that we think did fix it. But a lot of those older issues, the people who reported them are no longer in the community. GitHub has removed some of the images that were there for us, so don't even have those to look at. So we're really just going through that grooming process, bringing down that issue count, but also putting in together processes so that we can be a little bit more responsive to questions that get asked in there. And then make sure that we don't go back to 200. My message to team is , if we get back to 200 again, that's a failure. we don't want to do that. We've been keeping it at about 200, which tells me that we can sustain a number. It's just now we need to get it down and then sustain. Now, what we don't want to happen is we don't want people now to turn in every ticky tacky. Let's help them get back to 200. Yeah, no. Yeah, now you're really paying a lot of attention here. I'm just gonna throw all my stuff into here. It's , that would not be helpful. Honestly, there are a decent amount of issues that aren't issues. It's one person either on an old version or one person doing it wrong or one person having a bad theme. That's not a core theme. It's not our theme. And there's some that just plain aren't , we don't even know what you're talking about. These aren't a majority, but they do take up a lot of our time. And so what I would say too is two things. One is if if this issue is a pain to you, which I'm assuming it is because you're turning it in, , put a little bit of extra time into description of it. Man, you just will increase the likelihood of that issue being fixed quickly if we know what you're talking about, if it's well documented. Some people in the community do an excellent job of that. you read their issue, you're , oh my gosh, this is so helpful. And it removes a lot of the stress too because you're , I know what exactly you're talking about. And it just launches us into a trajectory where it's almost half to fix just by understanding it. And then there are others just , I don't even know what page you're on. I don't know what feature you're talking about. Vocabulary is very important. Sometimes we use slightly wrong vocabulary, but it actually points us to a different feature, especially around groups. There's so many things in groups. Group schedule, which one? which type? RSVP, group scheduling, new signups. The new signups has been kind of confusing because it's now people are scheduling people in their minds, they're scheduling people for those. It's , yeah, they're signing up, but you're using the word scheduling, which tends to push us to a different feature. And if there's no picture, it's often sometimes twenty minutes later, they're , Oh, now I know what you're talking about. And that's highly stressful. So I think just a little bit of extra time there is helpful. Second point is do the same thing with your ideas. If these ideas are important to you, then man, take a few extra minutes to really explain the why. Because sometimes if you don't share the context, we're not even sure of the why. Sometimes I understand even sometimes what you're asking for, but I don't understand why it's important. And why is that important? Because that helps us understand the priority. It helps us even understand maybe what you're asking for is not really what you want. you want actually this feature. But if someone just says paint the roof blue, it's , okay, why are we doing this? Because there might be a better reason not to paint the roof blue. The worst thing you can have is a product team that just does exactly what every single person who uses a product does, you'll have a mess of a product. The bug thing is something that we're really focusing on trying to get that down. And I think you do to help is you can jump in and help clarify bugs that are in there or provide additional context. There's some people again in the community who just go above and beyond and work with our team to help. We'll provide SQL scripts for them to help us identify the issues. Because some of them are , well, I get it. We have no idea how that's happening. And so we need to kind of do some triage and some exploratory surgery. And many in the community are so helpful in helping us do that. So that's really great. On top of all that, we are working on some other features that are more of our next gen platform. So we're starting the process of getting our next gen check-in initiative going. So several large churches have stepped up to kinda help provide some additional funding for for rewriting check-in. We're not a % there yet, but in terms of funding, but we're moving ahead with the work on the future because we feel , well, there's enough there to start. And we feel there are a few churches who are still considering donating. So it feels safe to start. And that's a big one because check-in is one of the first features ever written. It's super important. It's one of the features that every church uses. I can't think of a church running Rock that doesn't use check-in. I'm sure there's one, but I don't know of one. It needs, hasn't really been refreshed or rethought of in a long time. It's probably one of the most unperformant features to what it does Ben, it seems it's a lot of data shifting and loading for every single step, a lot. you'd be surprised at how much data is shifting back there. And so we're really interested and excited to be able to have another chance to redesign that, make it much, much more efficient. Think definitely your server will notice the difference when we get to the new one. But we also wanna ideate and say, hey, maybe the whole concept of check-in has changed. And how do we provide new experiences for churches? That said, we won't be moving everybody's cheese. The first step in this whole project is to redocument every single feature and micro feature. And of course it's in the documentation, but we need to technically document it again and say, what does this really mean? And how does this feature work? So that we make sure that we don't necessarily break that. I'm sure there will be some breaks as we go through a whole system. This one being so complex, it'd be almost impossible. Some of those breaks may even be intentional. It's there's small things that actually don't work the way I think most people would assume they do. And we want to take the opportunity to kind of polish that. But I think it's also difficult because we're now at a stage in the product too, where we're having to look at, okay, well, when we started this, was maybe a dozen churches using this. Now there's many hundreds of churches using this. Hopefully sometime soon there's thousands of churches using this. So we have to simplify things too. And I think that's what's really hard as we look at the product is , how do we simplify this so it's more accessible? It's one of our core values. At the same time, we don't take away features that churches need. Because I think that is the special position in the space that Rock really does well. Can have it your way. It's kind of Burger King. But hopefully it tastes better. I don't know about that comparison. Well, it is their slogan either way. But at the same time, we don't want that to be at the expense of many churches not having a way because they can't feel it's accessible. The flip side, there's other products that are overly simplistic. I was looking at one product and they the concept of, you can put additional fields on a person. Well, I think it has eight field types. And it's , woah, that seems really limiting. How do you fit into the eight field types? Yes, no, date, text. It's , oh, cool. I can see how that hits 80% of what you need, but that last 20% is it's not happening. And so we don't wanna get to that side either. And so there's a lot of thought that needs to go into how do we make this super, super simple. And it's a deep, deep pit because it goes into printing, it goes into labels, it goes into configuration, it goes into all kinds of stuff. And perhaps there's some features that we just need to rip out a check into. But before we can even consider that, we have to document it and we have to do some surveys to make sure, is no one using this? There's a few features in check-in that shouldn't be there. And there's some new features that people have been asking for that we can't do in the current one. It's just it's literally not technically possible. And so we need to address that. So a lot of work going on there. On top of all the other things, there's still work being done on other next gen topics. we're heavily invested in the V2 API that's coming along really well and is nearly done. So huge things are happening. Promise we have many huge things. Yes. And there are various layers of strategic or tactical work that need to be done. It's a mountain that we're moving. Yeah. But I think going forward, one of the tensions that we're gonna have to manage better and that's for all of us, the whole community is, I know our church has a unique need, but it may be in conflict with every other church or every other direction where this needs to go in terms of simplification and how we manage that is gonna be difficult going forward. If we wanna be accessible, we're gonna have to figure those things out. And it doesn't always mean that's a no, it just might mean that we need to do something different. And just trying to think through that is because I see the I can see the benefits of that simplification, but at the same time, we can't rob from what makes Rock unique. And oftentimes, it's not a or b. It's trying to figure out what c d e f g is. And I think this is gonna take some some thought. Yeah. Definitely a lot of critical thinking having to happen right now on so many different fronts. And for our listeners, there may be some that made a strategic choice at the conference to take a chip challenge coin and commit themselves to personal growth over the next year. And so there's some strategic thought that might need to go along with that too. And this is a great season for that, actually. Prepping for end of the year, budget changes, things that are going on on that front provides opportunities to stop and and take a moment and make some decisions or determine what tactics are gonna get you to your strategic goal. So we have a few things open right now to consider for those in the community if they're working toward their own personal growth or helping their internal teams grow as well. Because the holiday season gets really busy, this is kind of a high season for us to wrap up the last classes of the year. So if you're intending to take a Rock class to further your learning or to help your team get signed up for some classes, We have some coming up right now. So you'll wanna make sure that you have access to, this is a virtual masterclass. We do typically one virtual masterclass a year. We're actually doing a second one because of demand this year. So that's getting ready to happen here very shortly. And we do have seats available there still. And we have a sequel and a finance class. So if any of those are on your radar, this is the last opportunity this calendar year. Make sure you get signed up for those as soon as possible. Additionally, the RX twenty four is coming up and it always comes around faster than you think it's going to. So don't delay in getting your ticket. You can still get your conference ticket for next year on your budget for this year, which might free up some funds next year for something else. So see if you can allocate that this year. That's both the conference ticket and the hotel. We did open up the hotel rooms so that link is available. And as always, we always say it and it always happens. The hotel where our conference is located fills up. There will not be enough space for everyone. And every year we have people coming to us saying, can you help us find a room there? We didn't we didn't get it done fast enough. So this is your opportunity to get ahead of that pack we were talking about and book your hotel room and your conference ticket with this year's budgets. Additionally, Spark is looking at what do we need to do to stay on top of where we're going and what we're doing. And and the initiatives that we've undertaken are so broad. The scope of what Rock is doing is so complex and so unique. We need to make sure that we have the right funding goals in place. So we have been sharing with the community for the last month or so that we are increasing our early access recommended donation level starting in January. Now our goal here is to leave no churches behind, but it is to move the community toward a more sustainable pace of Rock investment and growth as far as funding goes. So if you have not yet had a chance to review that on your end for budget reasons, please make sure to do that. And don't forget to share that with us. So we track that so that we can know how to budget and allocate our resources internally. We do that through your commitment. You can update that on your community profile page, and we do ask that you review that commitment. We are looking for a a new commitment level of $4.10 per average weekend attendee per year. And again, we're we don't wanna leave any church behind. So if there's any kind of conversation you need to have about budget seasons being different than calendar year or anything else, please reach out and let us know. That conversation is critical, and we'll work with you to help make that happen. So a lot of opportunities right now for reinvestment, for personal and strategic growth, and some really incredible things that we're working on here as well. And that's all going to come together for a pretty powerful 2024 inside the Rock community. Well, we thank you for tuning in. Don't forget to subscribe to our podcast wherever you listen so you can get the latest and greatest every time that it comes out. Thanks for joining us, and we will catch up with you on the next podcast. Do a church that loves the idea of using Rock but hasn't taken that leap yet? With managed hosting, churches of any size can get access to Rock's amazing technology, hassle free. With just one click, Rock's managed hosting removes the roadblocks that might stop a church from switching to Rock by making the process simple. Churches get the ease of a SaaS church management system without losing any of Rock's powerful features. Are you ready to take the next step or share with another local church? Visit rockrms.com/hosting today.