Recently, I created this video on getting familiar with Arena’s content management features. One of the best features, in my opinion, is the power Arena gives you to power your external website. I have to admit I was a little skeptical way back in the day with having Arena (then known as Solomon) drive our external site. It didn’t take long for David to convince me of its power though. All I can say is duh… Don’t make the same mistake it did. Start educating yourself on this now!

Here it is… enjoy… If you want player controls, first download the video and then watch it in the QuickTime player.

Nothing is more important than the safety of our children, right? Consider then checking your membership data against your states sex offender database. Even if you require background checks for volunteers who serve around children, you want to compare everyone in your database. It’s cheap (the AZ database is only $25) and fairly easy to do with some minor tech skills.

So what do you do with the results? We flag the records in Arena (set a note that displays largely at the top of the record), add a photo to Arena (if one already exists we leave it otherwise we add their ‘mugshot’) and ensure our security team is aware of their presence.

These individuals are as welcome as any other person in our church, God loves them as much as me. But, the safety of our children demand that we take extra precautions.

For information on getting the database for your state see the Department of Justice website. Arizona churches see the DPS website.

Update: A few people have asked for tips on doing the compare. Here’s what we did. We started by importing the file into a SQL table and then looked for matches on last name, zip code and the first letter of the first name. This produces some false positives, but we quickly ruled those out but looking at their full first name and addresses.

We get a lot of requests for reports… who doesn’t. Many of these reports can be easily written through the tools built into Arena. Others require custom SQL in order to meet the objectives. In creating these custom reports I always struggle with the number of joins I need to make to create them. David’s made some powerful views (like core_v_personList) and functions that summarize quite a bit of info, but even with these one still needs to join to quite a few tables. Lots of joins often means poor performance.

The other day while working on a new online mapping project I started summarizing a lot of data into two denormalized static views of our data. I call them the start of our data mart. The first table is a centralized view of our active families. It contains things like family name, head of house hold, number of children, contact info, if their in a neighborhood group, etc. The other is the same thing but on an individual level. We refresh these tables every night. The nice thing about these tables is that they are easy to query against and are drop dead fast, even without indexes, which we might add later. Below are the layouts of each table. If you’re interested in the SQL to create and populate them let me know. Some of the fields are custom to our church but if you have some SQL skills it’s certainly a start.

Well, it’s official…CCV has branched it’s Arena code this week. For those of you who we’re at the Arena Developer’s Roundtable, we’re not riding off into the sunset, we’re not mad, we just can’t be as productive as we need to be for CCV operating under the development procedures that Shebly/Arena needs in order to deliver a quality product to their customers. They’re processes are good and necessary for they’re mission, but they’re mission is not ours. So we branched our code…

Again for those of you who missed the conference, Arena has immediate access to all of our changes (in fact we still use their source repository server) and we still communicate regularly on our changes. David and I have also committed to blog regularly so you all know more about what we’re working on too.

So… the question came up what do we call what we’re working on. We (David and I) decided to call it ‘labs’. We like the fact that it still tied to Arena (because it is) yet gives it the expectation that not everything makes it out of the lab.

So that said… what are we working on? Well David will soon be posting on some of it (I’ll link to it when he does.) But on our road map is a self-registration (think children’s check-in registration) module so first-time visitors can register from home, updated person details page, small UI update and new mapping technology.

Here’s a very rough mock-up of the person details page to give you an idea of our thoughts.

We’ve been working hard at CCV implementing a steps based program to help people grow in their faith and understanding of who God is, and how to live like Christ.  It’s a really cool program!

From the communications perspective we’ve designed a cool package for the program, featured below.

To help our pastors shepherd people through these steps David and I worked together to build a Next Steps dashboard for each member.  Below is an example of what the dash board looks like.

Each step is represented using the standard icon.  If the person has completed the step it’s in color, otherwise it’s grayed out.  There is one special step, Foundations (the compass) where we want to make sure they attend all four weeks.  In the example above you can see that the individual missed the first week. 

An extra bit of functionality allows you to register the person for any upcoming class by clicking on the ‘Register’ text.  This brings up a pop-up that allows you to select from a list of upcoming dates.  Also if a person is already registered for a class the icon will have a small letter ‘R’ next to them.

How Does It All Work

The best part is how simple this all can be done.  We use Event Tags to store all of the class registrations.  The dashboard uses a very simple Arena module called ‘HTML From Stored Procedure’.  As the name implies it calls a stored procedure which outputs… yes… HTML which it then displays on the page (I feel stupid for having just written that.)  This is a VERY powerful concept.  If you know how to write a stored procedure and some basic HTML you can do some really cool stuff!

I love working on projects like this with David.  Within a few hours we can roll-out functionality that allows us to see our membership in new ways and literally saves hours of administrative work.  With his speed in SQL/C# and my love of hacking in Photoshop it makes for a great 1 – 2 punch (in my humble opinion).  Also props to Cameron Smith for the great ‘Next Steps’ design that I butchered in PS : )

There’s been a lot of discussion recently about how to match duplicate records in Arena.  Especially duplicate records that are created by those registering on one’s website.  The other day while doing a screenshare with Austin Spooner from New Covenant Bible Church on our first time visitor process I think we may have stumbled on a big ah ha! 

While navigating through our site he asked what some of the items were in our navigation.  Of especial interest was our ‘CCV Clean-up Reports’.  When showing him these I walked him through how we process our web prospects.  The ah ha moment was the realization that this is not configured out of the box and most likely not covered in the documentation.  Watch this screencast to see our process.

Let me know by commenting if this makes sense.  Seeing this does the process seem easier?  If so David has offered to do another screencast on how to configure this setup.  Let me know…

Keith posted a good question to my last post on Arena.  He asked why CCV didn’t release what is now called Arena as open source.  It’s a fair question.  I started to post a reply comment, but the more I wrote, the more I thought it deserved a full post.  What can I say, I’m long winded…

Note the views here are my own and not necessary those of CCV (or Arena for that matter).  Just my option….

We seriously considered releasing our software as open source, in fact many of us closets to the writing of the code really were pushing for that.  But our leadership team, of which I am a part of, really wanted to make sure we kept the main thing the main thing, that being reaching the Phoenix valley for Christ.

I had to admit to them that even if it was open source it would take us quite a bit of time to make the product installable for other churches and supportable.  For every line of code that we write there’s a couple of lines of documentation, support forum posts, installation scripts, release notes, etc. that must go along with it.  That complexity is an unfair burden to a church that does not want to be a software development company. I respect the focus of our leadership team. 

So the next logical choice was to partner with a software firm that could make Arena a solution for others.  They spent a lot of time and effort making the product installable and easier to support.  For example there were a great many settings that could only be set through SQL.  They wrote nice UI for all of it.  They also extended the framework API so other churches could extend Arena in any way they would like without having to change the underling source.  I always used the analogy the when we had Arena it was like a formula one car, powerful, but requiring a knowledgeable full time crew.  Shelby has turned it into a Corvette.  Still powerful but much easier to maintain. 

The folks at Arena also provide a support and operations function for the product.  All of this costs money which they are entitled to charge for.  Currently, they are targeting larger innovative churches.  Much of this is due to the fact that it runs on site and some form of IT support is required.  I hope that sometime in the future they make a hosted version for smaller churches.  But for now it makes sense to service a single target.  

I should note that CCV remains committed to help every church that calls upon us..  Our senior pastor reminds us often of our duty to assist all churches.  I take several calls each week from others either looking for insight on Arena or even just asking for a advice on picking a membership system.  These calls are the highlight of my day.  Through out the last couple years I meet so many new friends through the Arena community and various conferences.  It’s these friendships that keep David and I going through the challenges that we face.

Hope this provides some background as to the history of our software projects at CCV and our commitment to help others.

Jeremy, from Shepherd of the Hills, asked for our document types and promotion categories.  Thought I’d post them up so anyone who wanted them could grab them.  Sorry if you’re not an Arena customer and this bores you…  but maybe you should be a customer….

Document Types

Contribution   
Miscellaneous
Birth Certificate
Promotion:Flash Image
Shared Document
Biography
Promotion: Flash Image 452×236
Promotion: Plasma Image 1024×768
Promotion: Plasma Image 852×480

Promotion Topic Areas

All Church
Baptisms
Bookstore
Business Directory
Cafe & Coffe bar
CCV Goodyear
CCV Scottsdale
Classifieds
Employment
Events Page
Flash: Events Page
Flash: Home Page
Giving & Finance
Home Page
Homeschool
In The Know: All Church
In The Know: Bookstore
In The Know: Edge
In The Know: Men
In The Know: Missions & Outreach
In The Know: Neighborhoods
In The Know: Personal Ministry
In The Know: Prayer
In The Know: Quarterlife
In The Know: Senior Adults
In The Know: aLive
In The Know: Sports
In The Know: Women
In The Know: Youth
In The Know: Youth Sports
Leadership Institute: Internships
Men: Edge
Men: General
Men: ROCK
Mission Trip
Missions & Outreach: Church Plants
Missions & Outreach: General
Missions & Outreach: Mission Trips
Missions & Outreach: Missionary Locations
Missions & Outreach: Prison Ministry
Missions & Outreach: Project Bulembu
Neighborhood Ministry
NONE
Personal Ministry: Benevolence
Personal Ministry: General
Personal Ministry: Hospital Visitation
Personal Ministry: Life Training
Personal Ministry: Support Groups
Plasmas
Prayer: General
Pre-Marital
Resources
Senior Adults
Sermon Series
Serving
Sports: General
Sports: Softball
Sports: Zone Fitness
Staff
STARS: Cheer
STARS: Football
STARS: Football Home Page ONLY
STARS: General
STARS: Soccer
Starting point
Training
Weddings
Women: General
Women: Grow With Me
Women: Teen Moms
Young Adults: Alive
Young Adults: General
Young Adults: Quarterlife
Youth: 3-5 Years
Youth: Birth – 2 Years
Youth: CLICK
Youth: General
Youth: Grade 6
Youth: Grades 2-3
Youth: Grades 4-5
Youth: High School
Youth: Jr. High
Youth: K-1

A few people have inquired for a bit more information on how we use Arena to drive our plasma screens.  Below is a diagram showing the basic architecture.

The images displayed on the plasmas are stored in Arena promotions.  Promotions now have the ability to store multiple images of varying sizes (see image below). 

Next we have a PC client (we actually use a Mac Mini) that runs a web browser in full screen mode.  The browser points to a special page on our website with a single Arena module on it.  This module is set to load all of the ‘Flash Images’ from a provided promotion category into a Flash movie.  This module has a couple of settings like the transition animation type.  We’ve found that Opera’s kiosk mode works really well for driving this.

The client is then connected via VGA or DVI to a video switcher which sends the signal out to each of the plasmas.

Want to see exactly what’s playing in our lobby?  Click here. This is the exact content that’s cycling through our plasmas (assuming their on).  Note that the images may appear slightly squished… this is to compensate for the 4:3 vs 16:9 difference between the switcher and the plasmas… not sure why we need to do this, but the video guys ensure us it’s the only way right now… : (

This same flash control can be easily resized and used on our website to increase the interactivity of your homepage.  You can also use this to drive plasma’s in various campuses across the internet.

The concept from this functionality came from the Northwest Airlines check-in counter at the Mempis airport.  Read the post. Guess it’s proof that inspiration is all around us.  Ya just need to keep your eyes open.

Special kudos to Jason for writing the module and Jeff for creating the wiz-bang flash code.

Arena really is a communication director's best friend.  How you say?  Let me try to explain as concisely as possible.

Reason 1: It's a full featured content management system

Many people don't know it, but Arena was created using the same free framework that birthed several other content management systems including DotNetNuke (DNN).  It includes the ability to:

Host multiple portals (here's a list of portals we use at CCV).
 

Use templates to inherit page layouts.  We have a great many templates at CCV.  Below is an example of one with the content areas highlighted.

Modules allow you to build pages with the functionality you desire.  Last count there were over 300 modules available with new ones created constantly by both the folks at Arena and the community of Arena developers at churches.

Each of these modules can be placed anywhere on a page and secured to allow everyone or only specific individuals to view / edit them.

For you external website one of the more popular controls to use is the advance text control.  This control provides a rich text editor for modifying text on a page.  Those with edit access can click a small pencil icon and start editing text on the page.  You can even configure the control to e-mail a web administrator to review the changes that were made.

There's many more modules especially designed for making your website as interactive as possible including, polls, photo galleries, etc.  I could go on and on about the features here, but I promised to be concise.

Reason 2: It allows your staff to easily enter events / promotions they want to promote.

Your staff can easily submit requests for promotions they would like to advertise to the congregation.  They can also choose in what topic areas they would like to cross-promote the event.

Reason 3-6: Arena drives many of the communications mediums.

Once promotions are inputted and approved, Arena can drive many of the mediums you use to communicate.  Including:

The bulletin… Screens are provided for those editing the bulletin to get the announcements that have been approved for each week in order of priority.  No more running around with sticky notes…

The website…  Approved promotions can will also be displayed on your webiste (and automatically removed when expired).

The plasmas… Yes.. Arena can even drive your plasmas.  There's a community module that allows your promotions to be viewed in a flash movie with many different Keynote like transitions.  See ours as an example. (Note: if ours looks a little squished it's because it is.  The plasmas stretch it back out to a 16:9 ratio… still working with our AV guys on this…)

Reason 7: Bulk E-mail and SMS

Arena allows the sending of bulk e-mail and SMS to any list of people you can think of… just write a report and click send…  E-mail's can be personalized with many different merge codes.

Reason 8: Newletters

Who needs constant contact when you have Arena.  You can build as many subscription based newsletters as you'd like.  We have several with as many as 9,000 people subscribed. 

Reason 9: Personalized Communications

One feature we just completed that will be rolled out soon to others is a personalized e-mail / RSS channel.  This allows attendees to come to the website and subscribe to only the topics they are interested in.  Each week they will receive a personalized e-mail (we call ours 'In The Know') with just the promotions they're interested in.  They can also choose to subscribe to a personalized RSS feed with these same promotions.  If you're interested try ours out.

The problem with writing a post like this is that I'll kick myself for the next 2 weeks as I remember other features I should have included.  So keep in mind there's more… much more…