Podcast Episode 63: Episode 14: Rock v4 Update

Description

Find out the v4 release date as well as several other updates on the Rock project and community.

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 back to the Rockcast podcast. We're here with the Spark Development Network team, which is focused on developing Rock and have some great things to share with you today. So let's get right down to it. David, you've got some good news for us. Yep, four point zero is coming out soon. We actually went to beta about three weeks ago and we're targeted to release four point zero next Friday, which is January 22. I just want to thank all the beta testers that have been working hard to review that. And we will have both the update installs on that Friday. And they'll be for four point and we actually have a 4.1 update coming out at the same time. So looking forward to get that out. It's a big update. So it's taken a while and done a lot of testing. I think we had over 3,000 commits. So there's lots of new features. That's great. I know we've had a lot of interest in that because we've been talking about it for a while. Is this the biggest update that we've done so far? Yeah, by far. Probably as big as most of the rest combined. So it really adds a lot of those features that churches I think have been waiting for, know, that registration probably being the biggest of them. Sure. So if they want to get ready for this ahead of time, what should a church do right now? Well, the documentation's been updated. It's been released. We also have the demo site has been updated to four o. So you can get to that from the Rock site and start playing around with it now. That's pretty exciting. And the fun part is this is really something that we're announcing only to our faithful podcast listeners so those who aren't podcast listeners don't have this date ahead of time so this is a big thanks to you guys our faithful listening audience. It's a fun little secret we can share with you so thanks for that info David. John there's something going on with the NMI gateway can you give us a little bit more information on what that is and what you're working on? Yeah that's a new project that we're working on It's a feature that will be in five o, and it's really a partnership that we're doing with NewSpring to create a new way that you can give. So it's a new gateway. But on top of that, actually has some new features too that are very exciting, especially for churches maybe who are new to giving or maybe aren't doing online giving. Picture it as as the same tools that we have today in Rock with the additional benefit of not having to worry about PCI. So with this gateway and with this new interface and with these new blocks that we're creating, the credit card and ACH information will never touch the church's Rock server. It goes direct directly to the gateway, and then, we get that token back, that secure token back so we can actually do the giving. The the cool thing is, I mean, that's kind of impossible in the in the past, but really the neat thing about this is the user experience is really gonna feel first rate. It's not gonna feel you shifted to one place and came back. That always feels awkward. It always has in the past, and that's one reason why we never were really that excited about doing something that in the past. But this is gonna give you a very first rate experience, and you're never gonna have to worry about all of the different deep PCI rules. You basically just have to fill out one very short survey. It's just a couple questions. And basically, all you have to do is tell them the card data never touches my server, and you don't have to worry about scans or anything that. I think it's gonna be a great windfall for a lot of small churches who just can't really get into that. They don't have the time or the energy to worry about PCI. I think they'll be able to keep their integrity in terms of not having to lie about being PCI. It'll be simple. And it's just another great option in the giving toolbox. That said, there's plenty of other options out there. There's this we're we'll still continue to have, the pay flow pro that is in there today. There'll still be options from third parties push pay. But this is just another option. And it really what's great about it is you don't have to worry about the PCI component as much. Again, this is that very short survey that says I'm not touching card member data. That's great. One of the things that we most about the product that we're developing is the amount of flexibility so everyone can find the solution that works for them. Exactly. So you said you're working in conjunction with NewSpring on this? Yeah. It's something that they really thought was very important to their rollout and they really wanted to not have to worry as much about that PCI component. And I think what's great about this is it's it's it's another example of one church investing in innovation that's now gonna be spread out for literally thousands of churches now to be able to use this. We're also working through this NMI Gateway with Transnational. So they're another organization that's really saving churches a ton of money. Basically, they're they're giving their services, their merchant services away for free to churches. Their thing is they have been very successful. God's blessed them in their merchant services to the secular world, and their way of giving back is to provide those merchant services back to the church at no additional cost on on them. Of course, , Visa and MasterCard are gonna, , take their their percent, but they're not gonna tack on anything on top of that. And we've had a chance in the in the last few months to meet personally with the folks from Transnational, and they are amazing people. They have an amazing story, and almost what they talk about, it almost sounds too good to be true. And I think that's actually probably one of the hardest things that they deal with is people are , okay, what's the catch? Is it free now? Is it always gonna be free? and then talking with them and getting down to the gory details, it it really is that good. So churches can save a ton of money. They're saving churches today a ton of money. Big churches. Churches that we all know. Wow. And they're just great people. So it's really a cool project. So we're working with quite a few people to to bring this to the table. And how will people be able to access it? You've mentioned five o, so we have been talking about four o. This is not a four o feature. Correct. Wanna reiterate that. Yes. This is definitely a five o feature. And again, it's another option. Great. Well, that sounds something that will benefit a lot of churches potentially. Again, have that flexibility that's there. It's nice to have a full community to work with and we love getting your feedback because that helps us as we're talking with different vendors, pursuing different opportunities to know what is making Rock accessible and helpful to your organization. Speaking of that, we are wanting to share more with you, the Rock community, about what we're doing and enjoyed meeting with you face to face at the Rx twenty fifteen Rock conference, and we are in the process of planning our Rock experience twenty sixteen. We don't have dates to share with you yet or a location, but wanted you to know we're actively working on it and we're looking at probably early summer, for a time frame. So we will probably be at a different location than last year and the time frame will be just a little bit different. So just keep that mind and stay tuned we'll have some updates for you on that. In the meantime there are a lot of other ways to be involved in the community and we want to make sure we just touch base on what those are again, some best practices there and how you can be someone who both benefits from and contributes to this Rock ecosystem that's so unique. Nick, why don't you tell us some more about that? Yeah, there's been an increase in interest in Rock and so it's more important, than ever to be involved in the Q and A. And I just want to remind you guys, you're our heroes out there answering the questions for the community. You're freeing us up to continue to do what we have to do. And so it's vital that you just keep doing that. And I would say keep your eyes on that, Q and A, looking for people that need help. I would also add that, if you're on the Slack channel that, we had a number of great discussions out there. It's been an amazing tool that's been running now for several months. And I would just say because our Slack channel isn't really a permanent resource that that data kind of comes and goes, it's flowing down the river. If you are involved in a long kind of topic that's probably gonna be of interest to someone else down the road, then we would just ask that you take some additional time to craft a question and an answer and go post it to the to the appropriate forum, on the Rock site. And that would be a great help to everyone. And that would make really that topic searchable in the future. Right? Absolutely. Yeah. So again, remember, you guys are becoming the superheroes that, are making an impact on churches. What we're doing here with Rock on this side is trying to help create and curate the right tools to empower you to do what you do and to help each other. So that's a really great reminder on that. Another thing that happened just yesterday in this election that I thought was great is someone new joined, and a few people actually welcomed welcomed them. And, I mean, just think how awkward it might be to just land in the Slack community and you just dropped in, all of sudden, your name shows up as you just joined and and it probably would feel a little awkward. It's kinda the new person showing up for church. Right? They're, , looking around going, , is anybody noticed I'm new? Or Yeah. I think just jumping in and just having a nice welcome was really cool. So I That's great. Just keep encouraging that. Yeah. It shows that the community is real. , it really does care about one another. Yep. Nice job. Good work. So as you guys are doing what you're doing in the community, becoming the superheroes, answering the questions, we want to be able to focus more and more on the innovation of our core product because that's why we're here. Why we have Spark Development Network. And as it's fairly new that we have been launched and out on our own. We've been working hard on quite a few projects and we want to be able to better focus on moving the core forward. So we're looking at ways to structure our time, block some out, specifically and purposefully so that we can focus on core. We want to add new features, we want to polish existing features and we need to block that out. One thing that will help us with blocking that out is our monthly cash flow, if we can just be completely honest. So we're looking at that and saying, hey, this is a great time, this is a great opportunity, how much time can we afford to donate to working on those projects? And, and thank you to everyone who donated last year. We have a little time that we can start blocking out now. It's not a lot, but it's a great place to start and we are so thankful for your support. If you are giving this year, one thing that would really help us out is if you could look at donating on a monthly recurring, process instead of in one just one or two times throughout the year. That would be helpful for us to manage how much time we can block out to working on new features. So if that's something that you're planning to do this year, here we are at the beginning of the year, still the first month, maybe take a look at that and see if that's something that would work on your end as well. And finally, I wanted to also talk about implementation. So we know that a lot of you are moving toward implementation. We hear about it in the vibrant communities that we have online. We know, about some of them because you've self reported on our website but we know there are others of you out there as well who are working toward implementation or maybe are completely up and running on Rock right now. We would love to hear from you. Remember you can go to the website and self report that you are now fully implemented or in the implementation process and that's encouraging to the other churches that are working toward that. It's encouraging to us and it's just a great landmark to know where community is right now. So if you could, if you're in the process or have implemented, if you would please go to the website and self report we would love that. We're also in the process of contacting churches that have implemented and just asking for some great feedback from them, a couple of questions and answers and we're going to put together a blog series that just focuses on church profiles and you'll see those off and on throughout the year, something you can relate to, we'll share some best tips and things that. So we'd love to have you be a part of that. And then we have one last thing we want to talk about this is an exciting new major feature and addition to Rock that's coming out with four point zero next week. John can you help us with that? Yeah. Definitely. So the much awaited and touted Rock Shop will now be in full production and ready. So it's in four o. It's under your admin tools drop down menu. Coming out of the box, there'll be a few plugins in there. I think it's just just the start. So if you have something that you've been working on maybe for your church and you wanna get it into the Rock Shop, it's ready. You can submit that and you can help us through that. At submission process, you might we're gonna have to kinda figure out as we go, , how how we communicate and get what we need and how you get what you need to us. So we'll kinda work through that. But we've already had two of our beta users actually use the Rock Shop to actually download and install a plugin. So that was really great to see that actually working in real life. I mean, you can test it all you want, but when you actually see someone, , remotely do it, it's pretty cool. So there'll be plug ins day one. We hope to see many more. I know there's a few churches actively working on on submitting some stuff, and really hope that's gonna be one of your favorite things. I know, , I to browse the Apple store on my phone just to see what's out there and what's new, and and we hope that that will be something that you guys on a weekly, monthly basis are out there looking and just seeing the innovation that's happening in the church. And and we really just see this again as as your product and this is a way of you you sharing your innovation with others and everybody getting to benefit for that. So we're starting small with what will be available there but we are definitely gonna grow in that area and want the contributions of the community, right? Definitely. And do we have developer docs that talk about what the specs need to be to submit? Yeah. Definitely. If you go out to the to the site under the learn developer area, there is a manual already there about how to package up your plugin or whatever you're gonna be sharing. And I would just say if you if you do have some questions, just go in Slack and and we can help answer some of that and how to submit that and stuff. But it's all it's pretty much documented in the manual. But again, it's it's a one o manual. Right. We'd love to have your suggestions on that. And if we find that we're maybe getting an inundation of, questions, maybe we'll create a separate channel for plugins. Yeah. I think it's a technology. I think it's a great idea. I would say if you if you're thinking about writing a plugin, I mean, there's already some discussion going on in Slack about who's writing what. And we're we are working on some tools to help share and track who's working on what. But for now, I would definitely before you get too much time and effort put into a plug in, definitely discuss it in the community. It'd just be a shame if two people are working on the same thing and it's duplicated effort. To date, it's been really cool. I think the community is very open with their ideas and I think that's good. Sometimes I think there's a tendency within our human nature to kinda work on it in in private and then have this big ta da. And that's great, but that could that could turn into some sad trombone at some point when two people ta da at the same time. Better not to have two ta da's. Yeah. And honestly there. There are so many good and innovative things to work on. It would just it would just be a shame in so many ways if two people worked on the same thing. So so get out there and and it's just nice knowing too because hope you might have ideas that they could add to your idea and maybe give you some other ways to make what you're working on even better. That's a good point and we will have the potential to have free and paid apps right Definitely. Wonderful. Okay good. Well that's some pretty exciting stuff. I know there was a lot we went over today, and we're happy to share that with you. Again, thank you to our faithful podcast listening audience. We appreciate you. We enjoy sharing information with you and hope that you this little heads up on what's coming next week. 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.