Podcast Episode 22: Episode 196: v17.1 Update, Rumor Busting & Your Summer Mission

Description

This episode kicks off with a look at Rock RMS version 17.1 updates, including a fix for Insights reports and guidance on unknown marital statuses. The team also addresses and clears up rumors around vendor incentives. Then, John lays out your “Mission Possible” for the summer — with practical ideas to level up in SQL, Lava, UI styling, communication, learning management, and more. Discover how to grow, lead, and prepare for RX!

Transcribed Content

Whether you're learning the basics or you want to be a Rock Master, we have a class for you from high level overviews to specific features. Find the training class that fits your needs this year at community.rockrms.com/classes. Welcome back to Rockcast, the podcast that takes you behind the scenes with ROCCRMS, the leadership and direction of what's happening here with Spark. So I'm Emily Forman. Today I have with me, Jon Edmiston, Nick Airdo, and we are going to catch you up for the summer and what's happening with Rock. Nick, kick it off with a version update of where we are right now. We just completed version 17.1 alpha testing. So beta testing started yesterday as of the date of this recording. And I think it's going to be a short beta, possibly one week, unless we find something. Yeah, 17.1 should be out very soon. The last thing though, want to talk about for 17.1 is we made some updates to fix one of the reports, but in fixing the insights report, we realized that some systems have a unknown marital status. And we did some digging around and we saw that we removed the unknown marital status way back in Iraq version three. So how are people getting it? Well, we found some systems have gotten it imported from other systems. The problem is if you have somebody's marital status set to that value unknown, we don't know it's unknown. So our report thinks it's counted as, oh, you have people's marital status. Unknown status. Yeah. So we recommend basically removing that and we'll have a sequel script in the show notes that they can run. But why aren't we doing automatically? Well, we think it could be presumptuous of us. We just don't want the risk. So we'll let you guys decide and you can remove that as needed. And it's basically going to set anybody who has the unknown value to null, and then it's going to remove that value from your system. And then your insights report will look correct. Great. Thanks Nick. Check out the show notes. So that would be on our blog on the community site to get that SQL script. If that sounds something that might be impacting your data and you'd to handle it. Okay, we wanted to just have a really quick and open conversation with our listening audience here, because recently we had heard from a giving vendor in the space that there were some anecdotes that Spark or potentially Spark leadership might be involved in receiving some kind of financial incentive or benefit from a particular giving vendor. And we just want to take the opportunity to tell you unequivocally that certainly is not the case. And we wanted to dispel any rumors that might exist on that front. And we'd love the opportunity, if you've heard an anecdote that, let us know so that's something that we could address directly at the source and just help clarify anything that might be unclear in that area. But we definitely wanted to just state here in recording that that certainly is not the case and will never be. And on another topic, believe it or not, it is summer, especially here in Arizona, it is heating up. And John, I believe you might have some ideas about how the community could spend their summer planning. Yeah, so at the change of a season, it's a good time to reflect on how you want to maybe grow. And so this summer, we have a special mission for you. Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to level up this summer. So alright, agents, let's see what our mission is going to be. Now, whether your church is one of those churches that kind of slows down at summer, or maybe your church is one of those that you're actually laughing at me right now because it's so chaotic with all the VBSs and camps, it doesn't matter. You have a window here to set some new goals and to level up. I think when the seasons change, so should our goals. So , we're not here to guilt you. We're not here to add more grind to your life. But what I would say is , why don't you spend just two nights a week to invest in one of the most important things on the planet? You. Because summer is a perfect time to back off and take a look at some new things. So I have some ideas for you. All right. Sometimes you just need some ideas. And pick one, maybe two, but let's just start with one. And I'm gonna give you a series of them, because there's all different types of people in the community. So mission possible one might be what I call SQL intelligence. So maybe SQL is one of those things you've always wanted to learn. Maybe now is the time to do it. So open up some SQL tutorials on YouTube. They're so easy to learn SQL on YouTube, and SQL is really a pretty easy thing. You don't have to become a genius by the end of summer, but why don't you just learn how to make maybe a quick, easy select statement? So between YouTube and the built in model map within Rock, which tells you all the tables and all their fields, explore some of the inner workings of SQL. Again, you don't have to come out being a SQL genius, but maybe just level up a little bit. Or maybe you already know SQL. Maybe it's a time to lean into some new functions that maybe you don't know about, or to find new ways of making your SQL perform faster. Now might be the perfect time this summer to spend just a couple hours a week leveling up on that. Or maybe you want a different mission. Mission two, lava operations. Now maybe you're new to lava and you've never used lava. Well, is the time to learn it. It's one of the most powerful tools to make you a superhero within Rock. So don't let it sit unused, get in there. A good way to start, if you just wanna start with something simple, download the free Lava Tester plugin and just start playing there. Start with something easy, something super trivial. There's a whole channel in Rocket Chat for Lava. You can even ask somebody, hey, what's something what's a quick, easy way to get started within Lava? I'm sure somebody will help you out. Now you might be sitting here thinking, well, I know Lava pretty well. Well, do entity commands? Maybe now's the time to just kind of level up your your Lava and learn entity commands. Or maybe you're thinking to me , gosh, entity commands, that's so simple. Well, do about the new entity search filters in version 17, and how they can be used with entity commands? If not, maybe give that a try. There's documentation on that. Or maybe you're , I got all the entity commands. What about the modify entity command? That's pretty new. That's in a plugin right now, but it's coming to core. It's actually on the pre alpha server. So if you wanna play with it right there, this summer might be the time to learn that pattern. Perhaps you're saying, well, I know that one too. Maybe the best thing for you to do is to learn some new patterns within Lava. any programming language, and Lava's a very lightweight, easy programming language, there's different best practices that you can do. So maybe you should learn some best practices the rigging pattern. There's a whole Rock Rx session on that, so you can learn about the rigging pattern. Okay, so some of you , I know all this still too. So , how else can I level up my lava? I'm probably at the top. Well, no one's ever at the top. Perhaps you should invest, you should create or invest in some of your own best practices. Maybe you should invent some best practices. Remember, the rigging pattern didn't invent itself. someone had to think it up. And when someone thought it up, then they share it, and now, hopefully lots of people share it. But what? There's an infinite number of other best practices that have never been considered, and you might just be the person to come up with it. If that doesn't float your boat, maybe you could build some lava short codes to simplify some things in your environment and to make your life a little bit easier. And just remember, you're never done with a lava short code until you share it as a recipe. All right, well, maybe those aren't floating your boat. How about mission three, recipe drops? Maybe you're being called to sharpen your skills and write some recipes. Remember, writing a recipe is not just for the other people. It's actually for you too. When you have to sit down and write something, it sharpens your understanding of what you're doing. And it also, if you're me, forces you to polish out a few of those little edges that perhaps you didn't care enough about, but if you're gonna share it with somebody else, you don't want them to see them. So when you write a recipe, it's a good time to learn it better, but also to polish all the rough edges. And so go ahead and write some recipes for other people. Not only does it help you, but it also helps the community. If that one doesn't float your boat, mission four is feature unlock. I guarantee you there's at least five or six features that you've been meaning to implement, but just never had gotten a chance to get around to. So maybe this summer is your time to take again, a few extra hours to figure out one of these new features and to get it implemented. Not quite sure where to start? Well, I got some lists for you too. You could choose notifications. That's one of the most underutilized tools within Rock. I've said it a million times on the podcast. Or perhaps you're not using ERA. Well, if you're not using ERA, shame on you. You should. Peer networks, that's a fairly new one. Maybe you could research peer networks, understand how they are used, and then explain it to your staff. In all these features, it's not just about you learning them, it's about implementing it and training. Or what about personalization segments? Have you had a chance to look at that yet? If so, are you using them with adaptive messages? Maybe, maybe not. And the last one, the learning management system. Come on, now's the time to learn the learning management system. Get version 17 installed on your server, or for some reason you can't do that, no excuses, you got the pre office server. It's actually only refreshed every three weeks now, so you have more time to have your stuff survive. So again, with these features, learn it, implement it, train your team. Then and only then is your mission complete. Speaking of LMS, maybe you should create some LMS content. Oh, So that's a great you could build an LMS course for your team. What better way to show your team how the power of LMS than to make a LMS training for them. Mean, they're gonna have to use it. And as they start using it, they're gonna understand it better. Do you need a topic for that? How about this? We're gonna switch movies for a second, Inception. Oh. Make a learning management session on how to use learning management for your staff. Boom, there you go. It's all there. While they learn Rock, they'll learn LMS. And bonus, they'll actually think you're a genius. Okay, so learning management was mission five. Mission six is communication ops. I don't know what your role is in the church, but I guarantee one thing. Your primary role is communicator. It doesn't matter if you're a programmer or if you're the senior pastor. Our first role in any career is communication. And we don't really give it enough focus. So maybe you don't want to take the technical track this summer for your mission, but maybe you want to take more of a softer skill. And communications is always something every person can level up in. So maybe it's working on writing. Clear writing means clear thinking. If you wanna make sure you have a well reasoned idea, write it out. The top organizations on the planet are focused on writing. If you go to Amazon, they're a writing culture. If you go to thirty seven signals, they're a writing culture. And why is that? It's because writing is one of the best ways to make sure that you fully understand something. And it's a really great way to get other people to engage with that. So working on your writing, make sure that it's clear, concise. There's plenty of resources out there to do that. There's a great one I just listened to even this week on a podcast called Lenny's Podcast, kind of a crazy name. But one of my favorites, Wes Cow was on and she was talking about how to write concisely. It was great. Or perhaps maybe writing, written communication is not what need to focus on, but maybe you need to work on your presentation skills. Believe it or not, during the summer, sometimes staff trainings and staff meetings are a little light on content, and maybe it's the perfect time for you to step in and suggest a topic that you could present to the staff. Now, some of you are probably freaking out and that's okay, but this is a perfect time for you to get out there. The only way to get better at presenting is to present. And this might be a perfect time to do that. And if you do that, you're gonna be perfectly well placed to give that RX presentation that the community is just dying to hear. So get out there, improve your communication. All right, I'm giving you lots of options and we're gonna keep going. Maybe mission seven is styling recon. Oh. Maybe you're working on some lava and you're pretty good at lava, but let's just be honest. Your lava looks bad. when people see the markup that you're putting on the page, it's not that great. Level up. There's tons and tons of great resources on UX design, UI design, CSS, get out there, learn it. Learn about the Rock Utility classes. We have a whole webpage that's focused right there on those Rock Utility classes. And it's super easy. Just literally copy and paste the code from those pages onto your page and just see it. And once you see it, just start modifying it. It's really easy. Don't wait until you have a need for it. Just start playing, start to get understanding it, and it becomes second nature to you over time. When in doubt, just make things look other things in Rock. There's a lot of other great resources out there. You can find PDFs that you can buy that are really densely packed with tips. Ask some of the graphic designers in Rocket Chat for some recommendations. Even in some of the Rx sessions, we've given out some options. Practical UI is one that comes to mind. I think it's a $100. It is the best $100 you'll ever invest. It is so feature rich and just insightful. Okay, you might also need to learn some more things about HTML or just CSS in general, and just realize there's, again, we have YouTube. We live in such exciting times, all of wisdom and all of knowledge is right in front of us. We don't even have to go to the library we used to in the old days. And then when we went to library, we just see old books. Or the final mission, intelligence acquisition. A good mission is all about intelligence. And what better time than the summer to read? There's a saying that not all readers are leaders, but all leaders are readers. So if you wanna be a leader, and you need to be, if you're in the Grok community, you have to be a leader. It's time to read. Now, of course, when we say read, podcasts are great, audiobooks are great. But at the end of the day, we should all tangibly physically read also. Remember, this is not school, so you can mark up your books, you should mark up your books. Your books, when you're done, should be underlined, starred, notes in the margin. Just pick a really great book and read it cover to cover. But don't just pick any book. that's such valuable time. There's so many opportunity costs. Make sure you get a great book, look for recommendations. And if you pick a book that you're not enjoying, or you don't think is impacting you, stop reading it, move to another book. It's okay to not finish a book. It's not okay to finish no books. So you can not finish the book you're not getting benefit out of, but you got to finish some books. And I would say, make a goal, if this is the mission you choose to pick, to read two books by the end of summer. It's a really easy goal. If you just do fifteen, twenty minutes a day, you can easily achieve two books. Now, might not enjoy reading, and what I would probably say? It doesn't matter. You need to read. You could even be perhaps me and be dyslexic and reading is difficult for you. It doesn't matter, I still read. I read slowly. True story and it's a little embarrassing, but we used to, when I was in college, I was dating my wife and for some reason we would go together to buy greeting cards every time we needed to be a greeting card and we'd read them together, right? Heidi's actually a pretty fast reader. I'm not, I am super slow. It was pretty embarrassing sometimes. sometimes she'd pull out one with a whole bunch of texts and I'm , Oh my gosh. Occasionally I would actually pretend that I finished and I didn't, because it was taking me so much longer to read it, but it's okay. Don't let that hold you back from acquiring really great knowledge. There's some studies in the past that said, well, some people are auditory learners and some people are visual, But some of the more recent studies are actually debunking that and saying that that's not as true as those initial reports were. And at the end of the day, I just don't think there's anything better than having that tangible physical experience with a book, underlining it, starring it, thinking about it. Especially when you compare that to what's some of the other options. Auditory at 2X. Right. I get it, the 2X thing, but it doesn't allow your brain time to comprehend it. It doesn't allow you to bring it into your brain, think about it, mold it, pull it, twist it. It's a great way to just maybe just be bombarded by data, but I don't think you can synthesize that. And I think reading gives us that opportunity. Yeah. Okay. I just want to say , this is something that shouldn't be optional. Your mission, should you choose to accept it? No, just accept it. You've got what it takes. And more importantly, this community and each individual in this community is called to do this. I want you to also know you're probably gonna be disavowed in this mission because we're gonna fail. When we try new things, we're gonna fail. So give yourself permission to make mistakes. If you're doing some that technical things, give yourself permission to not get it figured out the first time. If there's not some hair left on the desk from pulling it out after you're done, you probably didn't do it right. And every person who's taking that journey ahead of you has done that. The only difference is they've made it through and you'll make it through if you want. I can't tell you how many times I wanted to just put my head on the desk and just bang it hard. And sometimes you have to throw yourself a little pity party and move on. So give yourself that permission and know that it's gonna be, they say, a dip. You're gonna start out well and you're gonna hit a dip. Don't give up. Success is only to those who make it through the dip. Success isn't people who avoided a dip, it's unavoidable. Also too, don't tackle too much, but don't wimp out. Don't not do this. Here's what I want to say. If Tom Cruise can strap himself to the outside of an airplane for a movie, and do it over several takes, I'm sure you can take a few hours over the course of the summer to empower yourself for your own good, but also for God's kingdom. I mean, really think about that. Think of all the stunts Tom Cruise has done to give us a movie. Can't we take a few hours and invest in ourselves to level ourselves up, but also to empower that through God's kingdom? I'll leave you with this. One more Mission Impossible quote. This comes from Fallout. Hope is not a strategy. So don't hope to be better. Don't hope to tackle one of these options. That's not a strategy. Become intentional, create a strategy, and see it through. I believe in you, and so does someone much bigger than I believes in you. So just do it and just get it done. Level up, and that will put you in a great place for your attendance at RX. That's right. Wow, those are some great tips. And John, nobody can walk away from this and think, I have no ideas on how I might level up. That has been completely removed Yes, from the I tried to remove that excuse. Yes, you absolutely did. And if you get done with what you think is your level up activity and you didn't break a sweat, that was not it. Yeah. Exactly. You wimped out. Right. , the lessons I've learned the most from are the ones where they were the most painful at the time. So I'm not saying chase the pain, but I am saying if it didn't hurt a little bit, it's probably not a great lesson. I always say it a million times, growth and comfort can't coexist. Totally. If you had no uncomfortableness this summer, you probably didn't grow. And I just wanna reiterate, when you were talking about reading, I agree with you, the tangible book in hand and the underlining. For a while that used to bother me because I wanted to keep books pristine. But I've done a lot of reading about the connection between your brain and your hand. And there is a significant scientific actual difference between in learning comprehension and the kinds of things that rewire your brain in positive growth direction when you put a pen or pencil to paper and move your hand in time with the things that you're learning and reading. It is a scientific fact. So mark those books up as good for you. Yeah, the other thing too is if it's a good book, which I have a I I can think of 50 books that are just I amazing can reread that book in now fifteen to twenty minutes. Literally, I just have to reread just the underlines. And I've done that. I've gone through someone maybe was wanting a book recommendation, I'll just pull a book off my shelf that I think is the right one. And I'll just read my underlines. I'm , yep, this is the right one. Yep. I've learned though, don't lend those books out. A lot of times books don't come back, when it was underlined, it was worth 10x. Right. The physical price of that book. So, I try not to lend out books that have been underlined. Yeah. Well, let me provide one more support option for you in your Level Up Journey towards the end of this summer and early fall. We have a lot of Rock classes opening back up that still have slots available. So if SQL or Lava or Rock Knowledge are on your list of things to do, we have the classes that can help accelerate that growth or propel that growth forward. Check those out on the community page. Make sure you sign up for the one that aligns with your mission possible goals. And it is not too late to become a Rock star. So as you're doing this, of course, do this for your own personal growth, but look at how you might be able to give back and help in the growth of other people as well. That is rewarded in many different ways in the Rock community that can result in Rock stardom. If you're a Rock star for the following year, which is announced at the conference, you get a special shirt, you get access to a special chat channel, we have quarterly meetups with the Rock stars. So a lot of really cool things in the Rock star status and it is not unachievable. Yeah, it's very achievable. And you said, you get a lot of benefits that chat channel, we put a lot of new things what's coming, little hints. They can see stuff for the first time earlier. We have quarterly calls. So they're really in the know. And we do that intentionally because the Rock stars are the leaders of the community. So we want to pour into them and communicate with them so that they can help us communicate further out. It's really, those are the top leaders in the community and there's perks to that. And come on, you said, you get a free t shirt. That could be enough and a chip sticker. That's true. So that's double win right Every year. Every year. It's t shirt and a chip sticker. Yes. Because being a rockstar is something you have to work toward every year. It is a continual effort. Yep. Alright. Also coming up with RX, we have two more quick announcements for you. One, the time is growing short to put your gold circle award submissions in. We have about a month left of that being open. So if you're thinking that you might get to it sometime, I will tell you those few weeks between now and then are going to go very quickly. So go ahead and get those submissions in now. And just know we have a the early bird ticket pricing is expiring at the end of this month. So this is the time to get your RX ticket. If you haven't yet, make sure you get the whatever it is you have to get out of the way and approval, a few things cleared off your plate, whatever it is, those registrations you'll wanna put in before the June. All right. Thank you so much for joining us and learning all about your mission for the summer. We hope you are able to choose exactly the right mission and find the resources to support that. Don't forget that consistency over time is the biggest indicator for growth. Thanks for joining us, and we look forward to seeing you at Rx in person. This episode of Rockcast is brought to you by Rock sponsor, Checkr, providers of integrated background checks. Connect with Checkr today at rockrms.com/sponsors.