Next Steps
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 : )
Awesome. Simply Awesome.
Do you mind describing the icons to those of us who have no idea what a drop of water has to do with ministry?
The link below explains the Next Steps. We added one, Baptism, to the dashboard. That’s what the drop is for.
http://www.ccvonline.com/Arena/default.aspx?page=12691
Jon, we are looking at Arena very seriously. Everything I see, I like. However, I just got off the phone with a F1 representative who said that Arena required Shelby to work correctly. My understanding is that we can keep Shelby Financials and it will interact with Arena, but that all other Shelby modules are eliminated in moving to Arena.
This makes sense to me and is what I am being told by Arena rep’s, but I want to hear it from a church with first hand knowledge.
Can you help me with this?
The truth is it depends ; ) Yes you Arena can fill all of your needs outside of the financials (Accounts Payable, Receivables, GL, etc), it certainly does for us and others. There are some customers that are really tied to certain of their previous solution and find it difficult to move.
I think it comes down to are you willing to change some processes for a new software package? Arena is very customizable but at the end of the day every software package is different and when moving from one to another you have to be willing to make some changes. In fact there often times is a value to these changes.
The cool thing about Arena is that you truely are limited by the technical capabilities of your church. ‘Out of the box’ Arena can do some pretty cool things, but the sky is the limit if you have the skills.
Hope this helps…
-Jon