Architecture Overview

Transcription

1 Architecture Overview

2 Church Community Builder Architecture People 3 Groups 4 Attendance Groupings 4 Departments 4 Events 4 Facilities & Equipment 5 Check-In 5 Positions 5 Volunteer Scheduling 6 Needs 6 Processes 6 Forms 6 Messages 7 Mail Merge 7 Files 7 Contributions 7 Online Giving and Merchant Accounts 8 Chart of Accounts 8 Public Website Integration 8 System Settings 8 Admin Privileges 9 Implementation of the Church Community Builder Software 9 2 of 9

3 To get started, it is important to have a basic understanding of the Church Community Builder architecture. The architecture diagram (below) provides a high-level overview of how the major elements of the Church Community Builder software relate to each other and why it was designed that way. People We start with People because people matter. They form the hub of the Church Community Builder software. Each individual can be given a profile, where information about them such as name, address, and phone number is stored. In addition, the People feature captures essential information such as family relationships, spiritual gifts, an individual s ministry and serving passions, abilities, personal style, social networking, and other pertinent demographic data. Individuals have the ability to establish their own privacy settings to allow other users to view as little or as much personal information as desired. Also, a child protection feature hides children s information from all users unless they are specifically granted permission to access it. 3 of 9

4 Groups People are discipled in and connected through Groups, which is the other major hub of Church Community Builder. People can belong to any number of Groups, each representing a gathering of people who communicate or interact. Groups can be Staff, Elders, Third Graders, Steve s Bible Study any gathering of people with a common interest. It is important to note each Group has one, and only one, Main Leader, but can have any number of Assistant Leaders to help with leadership and administrative activities. In addition, Groups can hold Events, post Needs, and request volunteer Positions. Also, group member attendance can be recorded for Events, after the fact or through the Check-In feature. Moreover, Group Leaders can reserve Facilities & Equipment, such as specific rooms or projectors, for Events. Finally, the Group Promotion tool allows you to quickly and easily move individuals from one Group to another. This is typically used to move students up a grade, but can be used to move any group of people from one Group into another. Attendance Groupings Attendance can be recorded for every Event. After taking attendance, reports may be generated using Attendance Groupings. This is a handy way of gathering and reporting attendance on multiple Groups at once. For example, the Attendance Grouping could be Sunday Morning Elementary, and it would report all the Events from kindergarten through fifth grade on Sunday morning, while excluding middle school, high school, and Wednesday night Events. Departments Another organizing principle of Groups is Departments. This is helpful in creating groups of groups to provide a leadership hierarchy if needed, for information searching and sorting, and for ease of reporting. In addition, you can designate Department Admins to provide administrative functions for all Groups within a specific Department, independently from the rest of the Departments in the church. Events An often used feature belonging to Groups is Events. Events can be a single event, such as an Easter program, or recurring events, such as weekly Worship or Sunday School. Events always belong to a single 4 of 9

5 Group, which means each Event will be hosted, or owned, by a Group. However, you can invite anyone to any Event, regardless of whether they are in the Group. These Events drive the calendars within Church Community Builder each individual s calendar, the Group calendar, the Church-wide calendar, and the Public calendar. Facilities & Equipment Facilities & Equipment is a feature used to reserve rooms and/or equipment for events. You can build your list of resources and set them up to require the right level of approval(s) to meet your needs by enabling deconfliction, preventing inadvertent double-booking, providing room setup instructions, and ensuring adequate setup and cleanup time. You can even upload facility/room diagrams to help with room dimensions and layout, if needed. Check-In Check-In is a feature usually used in the children s ministry to take attendance and provide name tags to help ensure a safe, secure environment. When an individual is checked in, you are marking that group member as present for an Event. Check-In stations can be attended (Manned) or unattended (Self) using phone numbers, names, or barcodes for Check-In identification and label printing. Also, labels can be printed with unique security codes to provide identification for children and their belongings, such as a coats or diaper bags, as well as to provide a coded security/claim tag for parents. Positions Positions represent longer-term volunteer roles within the church. For example, there could be roles called Greeter or Usher, which might be positions on the Hospitality Team (a Group). Positions are connected to Groups and may be defined with specific criteria, such as gifts, passions, and abilities, in order to best match individuals to the position. In addition, Positions become the driving force behind Church Community Builder s Volunteer Scheduling feature. 5 of 9

6 Volunteer Scheduling Volunteer Scheduling is a feature that permits scheduling of individuals who fill positions to serve during a given work shift. For example, an individual serving as a Greeter or Usher can be scheduled to serve for a specific weekly Sunday service or services, as well as for other non-recurring events such as a Christmas service. The software will automatically send out an two days in advance of an Event to remind volunteers of their scheduled time to serve. Needs Needs are typically used for short-term items you want someone to provide once for example, potato salad at the life group dinner or winter jackets for the Homeless Ministry. Needs are owned by a Group and typically coordinated by the Group Leader or a group member. Processes Processes are one of the most powerful features within Church Community Builder. Processes help manage a person through a series of steps called Queues. In some cases, the person being managed through these Queues won t know they are in a Process Queue, such as a Visitor Follow-up / Assimilation Process. Each step along the way (thank-you card, home visit, phone call, etc.) can be assigned to the same person or a different person to complete. In addition, this feature helps by providing notifications via when it is an individual s turn to complete the next task. The Processes feature is a great management and workflow tool. Forms Forms can be used to capture more information or collect money; for example, when you are managing event registrations for the Women s Retreat or collecting support for missionaries. You can build forms with your unique questions, responses, and formats to support your ministry needs. When payments are made via Forms, they may be processed through the online giving portal on the church s public web page or processed through Church Community Builder if the user is logged in. Also, you can match the payment to an individual as either a tax-deductible or non-deductible payment. Finally, other important form information can be matched to an individual and stored in their profile. 6 of 9

7 Messages There are several ways Group Leaders and other designated individuals with system-wide or role-based privileges can communicate with their Group. First, the Send a Quick and Send a Message features allow you to quickly send an to a group of people. These can be sent from a variety of locations within the software, including a Group, a saved search, an individual profile, a form, or a Process Queue. In order to facilitate Group communication and discussion, group members may respond to a message by posting a comment to messages from the Group. Another feature, Twexting (a combination of texting and Twitter), allows Group Leaders to communicate with their Group in two different but connected ways. For those group members whose personal communication settings allow, a text message will be sent to the mobile number listed, and if a Twitter account has been connected to the Group, a status update will post to the Twitter page. Mail Merge The Mail Merge feature allows you to create and save both and print versions of a letter you wish to send to specific people. These saved s/letters can be sent from a variety of places, including a Group, an Event, a Process Queue, or a position. Files Church Community Builder allows you to upload files in a variety of places: Groups (including Group messages and Group schedules), Profiles, Mail Merges, and Forms. Individual files up to 10 MB may be uploaded to Groups, profiles, schedules, mail merges, and forms. Files attached to Group messages or s to scheduled volunteers are allowed up to 5 MB. Contributions Contributions are always linked to People. While many other software systems link financial transactions to a family, transactions in Church Community Builder are linked to a single person because transactions can be not only a tithe or offering, but also represent payment on a form, event registration, etc. Contributions can be given by traditional methods such as cash and checks, or contributions may be received through the 7 of 9

8 Church Community Builder software, through Online Giving, for example. Online giving is a method of receiving contributions via credit/debit cards or checking accounts, either as a one-time or recurring gift. Online giving requires a merchant account with a provider like BluePay. Online Giving and Merchant Accounts To enable Online Giving, you must have a merchant account with a merchant vendor who manages all the required interfaces and transactions between Church Community Builder, the church s bank, the giver s bank, the giver, etc. In short, the merchant vendor is a one-stop shop for credit, debit, kiosk, mobile, and/or ACH gifts (one-time and/or recurring), depending on the services offered by the third-party merchant. Chart of Accounts When a transaction is created, it is always linked to a specific chart of accounts category, which will support how you manage your church finances. These are all revenue accounts. Church Community Builder is not a General Ledger/Accounting tool; it is a donor management tool. Public Website Integration Public website integration is quite easy with Church Community Builder. In fact, we provide the code to link a variety of items to your public website, such as Forms, calendar Events, Group search, the login box, and Online Giving. You can use our code to get quick and easy integration, or you can write your own code to customize formatting and style. You can even leverage our Application Programming Interface (API) services to query custom data and publish it exactly the way you want. The API, a tool that allows you to query the database directly and export that information to other applications, is not represented on this chart. System Settings System Settings allow you to tailor the Church Community Builder software to your church s unique needs. For example, System Settings allow you to brand your Church Community Builder site with a color scheme and moniker that fits your church s culture and DNA. Some examples of branding other churches have used are The Exchange, The Loop, Engage, and Community Connections. Also, System Settings allow you 8 of 9

9 to establish default privacy settings for each new profile you add to your database. Of course, people may adjust their own privacy settings after they log in for the first time, but the defaults are usually set at a level to encourage community among logged-in users. In addition, there are a number of pulldown menus that allow you to customize your site, using your terminology in fields for People, Groups, Events, Positions, and Contributions. To further customize, a number of Custom Fields are available to store unique sets of information. Finally, the System Settings allow you to create a list of account categories to track your giving and pledge campaigns; these account categories would likely match the accounts in your financial accounting software. These categories can also be enabled for online giving (with a merchant account) so people can choose specific categories for their contributions. Admin Privileges Because you assign a login and password to anyone in your Church Community Builder site, it is important to know how to make sure the right people have access to the right information. Administrative privileges allow you to provide the right levels of access to information in your site on a need-to-know basis Implementation of the Church Community Builder Software As a guiding principle, we recommend configuring several important system settings and implementing People, Groups, and Events as a strong foundation before moving to other aspects of the Church Community Builder software. For example, if your primary goal is to implement Check-In, that requires you first have people (as leaders and members) in a Group. The Group Leaders would create an Event, and that Event would belong to an Attendance Grouping. Even if child check-in is the most urgent priority, these other elements become precursors to that feature s working successfully. 9 of 9