Staff Updates

The main area of the homepage is allocated to Staff Updates. Here is where you can post a feature article, as well as an unlimited number of additional articles below the feature. This is a great place to post news items and announcements for your staff to see. To learn how to customize this section for your organzation, read the Customizing Your Rock Homepage section below.

Metrics

Below the articles in the Staff Updates section you'll see the Metrics section. This section displays Active Records, Active Families and Active Connection Requests. To learn more about these metrics and how to customize this section, see the Configuring the Metrics on Your Rock Homepage section below.

Quick Links

You'll see a Quick Links section on the right side of the screen. This is a great place to organize links that your organization uses most often. Some churches have used this section to provide links to:

• The online catalog for ordering office supplies
• Referral lists for counseling and pastoral needs
• The organization's webmail site
• Project management tools the organization uses like Basecamp or Asana
• Facility management tools like ServiceU
• Common Forms

Active Users

Under the quick links section you will see two sections that list active users on the internal and external website. This allows you to see who is active on the site. Clicking on the name will take you to their Person Profile page.

Administrator Checklist

After install you will see an Administrator's Checklist on the homepage. Don't worry; only administrators will see this block. The Staff Updates block below it will greet a majority of your colleagues.

The Administrator's Checklist block gives you a list of things you'll want to complete before you get too far along in your deployment of Rock. Once you've checked all of the items off, this block will disappear, but not forever… After an update there may be additional configuration steps required before you're able to use a new feature. These steps will show up in this block after the update. Think of it as an old friend who shows up in your hour of need (not like your old college roommate who only shows up at the worst possible times.)

Be Creative

Don't limit yourself to what was provided out of the box. While we'll be providing new blocks for you to add to your homepage (like staff anniversaries and birthdays), you can get started today with some simple, but powerful, tools. Below are some ideas to help get the juices flowing.

Customizing Your Rock Homepage

To customize and update your Rock homepage, go to
Tools > Content > Internal Communications - Homepage.

From here you can edit existing or add new content items in the Edit Content Channel Item screen.

Configuring the Metrics on Your Rock Homepage

Rock ships with three areas of metrics ready to display on your Rock homepage: Active Records, Active Families and Active Connections. Active Records is the number of active person records in the database. Active Families is the number of active families in the database. Active Connection Requests is the number of active connection requests in the database. We've supplied these metrics—which update weekly—as a way of getting you started. You can customize this section and select different metrics by editing the homepage block settings.

Org Chart

Under the Intranet section you will also find a page for configuring an Org Chart. This is simply a group viewer that is specifically configured for helping you develop an organization chart. It's often helpful to have an org chart in Rock that you can use to configure access to parts of the application or for use in configuration. If you don't think you'll need this you can simply hide it from the navigation by setting the Display When setting to Never under Page Properties, or delete it.

Keyboard Shortcuts

In an effort to speed up your interaction with Rock, we've added several keyboard shortcuts. Let's take a look at what's available:

For Mac users, press Ctrl + Opt and the letter key of the shortcut you want to perform.

Entities

The word "entity" is used to describe the classification unit of different types of data in Rock. For instance People, Groups, Financial Transactions, Locations, Pages are all different entities in Rock. If you’re familiar with databases, entities are very similar to tables. In fact, most entities in Rock have an associated table in the database.

You might be asking, "Why do I need to know this?" For the most part, you don’t have to know a thing about entities to successfully use Rock. But, you will see the term in many of the configuration screens so it’s good to know what it is.

Defined Types / Defined Values

Many of the configuration items in Rock are made up of a list of valid values. Think about the Marital Status of a person. While we could have made this a textbox where anyone could type in the marital status of a couple, in today’s world, that could be a disaster. You’d probably get a million different answers to that question. Instead, it's better to provide a list to limit the options to those that make sense to the organization.

The "valid value" concept is prevalent in numerous areas (Record Status, Phone Types, etc.) Instead of creating separate screens and logic for each of these, we came up with the concept of Defined Lists. These lists are made up of values (Defined Values) that you get to configure to match your organization.

Change Password

This is where the logged in user can change their password. Simple enough.

Communication Templates

This page allows the current user to access communication templates which they are permitted to edit. You might find it convenient to lock certain templates down, security-wise, to only allow a single user to edit them; they can edit those templates here even if they don't have access to the "Communications" page on the Admin Tools menu. For more information on templates, read through the Communicating with Rock documentation, and if you'd like to know more about building templates, don't miss the Email Template Survival Guide.

Merge Templates

This page allows the current user to view, add and delete personal merge templates. Merge Templates are covered in the Merge Document section of this manual. In general though, templates which a user uploads here will not be available for use by other people.

Following Settings

This page allows the current user to customize their Following Settings. You can read more about these features in the Person & Family Field Guide

Following

This page allows the current user to view their current following list (the list of people and other items they have chosen to follow). You can read more about these features in the Person & Family Field Guide

Configuring Checkr

The first option for running background checks on individuals is Checkr. Once configured, Rock will default to using Checkr for background checks on individuals who have never had a background check run. You can easily set which program you want to act as default, however, which we'll look at shortly. First, though, let's look at the steps to take to set up your Checkr account.

Step 1: Sign-up

The first step in the process is to sign up for a Checkr account. To do this, we'll actually start from your rockrms.com account. So log in at www.rockrms.com, and then click on the menu in the top right corner with your name on it. Click on "My Account". Beneath your profile image and biographical information on the left side of the page, you'll see any organizations your account is associated with. Click on the organization you wish to set up with Checkr. Beneath the organization logo and list of members (again on the left side of this new page), you'll see a section labeled "Checkr Account". Click the Create New Checkr Account button. (If your organization already has a Checkr account, click the Use Existing Checkr Account button instead). Once your account is set up, your organization page in the Rock RMS site will update with an Account ID and Access Token.

Step 2: Setup Webhook Inside Checkr

The next step is to set up Webhook inside Checkr. This tells Checkr where to send updates when background checks are complete. Begin by logging into your Checkr account at dashboard.checkr.com, then navigate to Account Settings > Developer Settings.

Type your Rock URL appended with /webhooks/checkr.ashx in the Webhooks URL field, select Live, then click Add. Finish by selecting the subscriptions shown in the above screenshot.

Step 3: Configuration

Now that Checkr is active, it's time to link your account to Rock. Go to the Checkr screen located at Admin Tools > System Settings > Checkr, and enter your Access Token from the Rock RMS website in the Checkr Access Token field. Click Save. The Background Check Types list is automatically downloaded when you enter the access token. If you want to download an updated Background Check Types list, click the Update Packages button.

Checkr is now active by default in Rock. You can view Checkr's status in the Background Check Providers screen, located at Admin Tools > System Settings > Background Check Providers.

(The Access Token should already be filled in for you at this point, since you provided it on the Checkr configuration page)

The final step is to set your background check provider to Checkr if it isn't already set to default. To do this, click the Enable as Default button in the Checkr Background Checks section of the Checkr screen. Now you're ready to use Checkr to perform background checks on individuals.

Note the Enable as Default Background Check Provider button. This button allows you to set Checkr as your default background check provider.

Viewing Checkr Requests

You can view all of the requests that Checkr has processed in the Checkr screen. This list is provided to help you see what's being processed at a high level. As you'll see soon, it's much easier to see the results of a specific background check request from the workflow and Person Profile pages.

Configuring Protect My Ministry

The second option for background checks is Protect My Ministry. Below are the steps for setting up and configuring this provider in Rock.

Step 1: Sign-up

The first step in the process is to sign up for the Protect My Ministry service. To do this, start at the Protect My Ministry page under Admin Tools > System Settings > Protect My Ministry.

Should you choose to register for a new account, click the Register For An Account button. You'll be taken to the following page on the PMM website to complete the registration.

After completing the registration, come back to the Rock PMM page and enter in the username and password you created. You will then be taken to the Protect My Ministry Detail Page.

Step 2: Configuration

Once you've entered your PMM account information, you will see the details of your account.

Important:

The Result Webhook setting will be populated automatically using your Rock Public Application Root Global Variable. However, this can be changed here if needed. This address MUST be secured using SSL/TLS (must start with https://).

Know that you can't simply change the http:// to https:// here, though, without having a valid SSL/TLS certificate installed and your web server configured properly. Google is your friend if you need help obtaining and installing a certificate.

You'll now want to configure the packages that are tied to your account. The most popular packages have already been made available to you through the integration. Each package has a brief description that outlines its specific merits.

There are several configuration settings for each package. Let's look at each setting and what it means.

• Package Name This is the PMM name for the package. It must be an exact match to what's in their system, so please don't change it unless instructed to.
• County Criminal Default County Depending on your state it may be recommend that you provide a county on your request. If so this will be the default county to use if one is not present on the address of the person you're checking. You can find out if your state needs this county using this map from PMM.
• Use Home Address for County Criminal Again this will depend on the state you live in. If your state is recommended for the county search, you will want to enable this option.
• State Criminal Default State This is the default state to use when doing a state criminal request. This option is defaulted to the state that is most common in your database, but feel free to change it.
• Use Home State for Statewide Criminal This setting determines if the state from the address should be sent.
• MVR Jurisdiction Code This setting determines jurisdiction to use for MVR (Motor Vehicle Records) searches. You can select your area from the list provided. (this is only needed for MVR type searches).
• Use Home State for MVR Search This determines if the state from the home address should be sent for the MVR search. (this is only needed for MVR type searches).

While you can add new packages using the settings above for the most part, the packages provided should meet all your needs. You may need to edit some of the configurations to meet the recommendations for your state. This decision centers around whether you should be doing a state or county search. PMM provides a map to help you determine what is best for your area.

Viewing Protect My Ministry Requests

From this same screen you can also view all of the requests that have been processed. This list allows you to see what's being processed from a high level perspective. However, it's much easier to see the results of a specific background check request from the workflow and Person Profile pages. We'll talk about that next.

Background Check Administrators

Background Check Admins have access to complete details of background checks and the ability to approve or deny them at several points in the process.

Before you get started, you'll want to configure the person or people who will be included in this security role under Admin Tools > Security > Security Roles > RSR - Background Check Administration.

Processing Requests

Several different organizational needs kick off a background request workflow. For instance, you may be looking to hire a new staff member, complete the screening of a potential volunteer, update existing person profile records or transfer a staff member or volunteer into a new position. At any rate, whatever the reason, it is usually a staff member who first needs to start the request for a background check.

To see if an individual has had a background check done, go to the Person Profile page and look under the Extended Attributes tab.

Every logged in user will be able to see either a Yes or No in the Background Checked field. Background Check Admins can also see three additional fields, and have editing privileges.

1 Background Checked:

Will have the checkbox either checked or empty.

2 Background Check Date:

Will have the date the check was completed, if applicable.

3 Background Check Result:

Will show either Pass or Fail.

4 Background Check Document:

Will have a complete PDF of the background check results, if a check has been completed.

How It Works

The Lifecycle Of A Request

1

A staff member will initiate a request.

2

The request will be sent to notify the individuals in the 'Background Check Administrators' security role.

3

If the request is denied, a notification will be sent to the requestor, who can then update the request and resubmit it or cancel the request.

4

If the request is approved, it will be submitted to your organization's background check provider to be processed.

5

If the background check comes back as 'Pass', Rock will update the Person Profile page with pass/fail results and a PDF copy of the full report. The requester will also be emailed an update of the completion.

6

If the check comes back with a status other than 'Pass' the workflow will notify the individuals in the 'Background Check Administrators' application group to review the results and determine if the background check should be passed or failed. The results will then be emailed to the requester.

Workflow

The background check workflow has eight possible activities. Like many other aspects of Rock, it's customizable. You may find that you'd like to configure your background checks a little differently for your organization. For instance, you could add a step to the process after a staff member requests a background check that notifies a volunteer to provide their own social security number.

To review or modify the workflow configuration, go to Admin Tools > General Settings > Workflow Configuration > Safety & Security > Background Check. For more details on workflows in Rock, see Blasting Off With Workflows.

Location Descriptors

When you create a location, you can define several location descriptors: street address, latitude/longitude point and geo-fence.

• Street Address: This is pretty obvious, the street address of the location.
• Latitude / Longitude Point: The lat/long point is simply the latitude/longitude of the location on the map. You can set this by either providing an address and allowing Rock to convert it to a lat/long (assuming a Geocoding Service is configured) or you can reference the point using Rock’s location picker.
• Geo-fence: A geo-fence is a virtual perimeter for a real-world geographic area or boundary. Geo-fences are used by Rock to define things like regions for groups and to power future mobile applications like check-in.

Types of Locations

There are two types of locations in Rock. Let’s take a look at each and see how they are used by Rock.

Address Standardization and Geocoding

Your attendees' addresses are very valuable, so it's important that they are formatted correctly and validated through the USPS database. Also, in order for these addresses to be used with the latest mapping technologies it's important to convert them into latitude and longitude points through a process called geocoding. Fortunately, Rock makes both of these tasks simple.

As addresses are entered into the system, Rock can send them to one of many online services to standardize and geocode them. These services will ensure that:

• Addresses are formatted correctly (e.g. fix upper / lower case issues)
• Items like Streets, Avenues, West and East are abbreviated correctly
• Zip+4 is researched and added
• Latitude and longitude are added to your addresses

You can set up these services under Admin Tools > System Settings > Location Services. There you will see a list of services that Rock supports. Not every service supports both standardization and geocoding.

Email Settings

The configuration items you provided during the install can be updated under
Admin Tools > Communications > Communication Transports > SMTP.
Email is sent from Rock using a communication transport. Think of this as a delivery service. Just as you might pick between sending your package via UPS or FedEx, Rock gives you options when sending out your emails. Currently, the only transport that is complete is the SMTP component (more to come soon).

Sending bulk email is difficult in today’s age of spam and spam filters. Simply configuring an ISP or Internal Exchange Server is not enough if you want to be sure that all of your messages will make it to their intended recipients. To do that, you need to make sure your DNS has proper SPF and Domain Key records and monitor that you are not on any blacklists. Even for the largest organizations, this can be an overwhelming task.

Wherever a problem exists, a new service will be created to help solve it and that has certainly been the case in the area of email deliverability. With the importance of email and the complexity of getting your environment right, it makes sense for most organizations to outsource the sending of their emails. These services specialize in getting it right and the pricing is fairly reasonable. Rock ships with the Mailgun transport, but you can check the Rock Shop for integrations with other transports such as SendGrid.

These services do require some minor changes to your organization’s DNS settings, but they walk you through the process online to make it easier.

Security Roles

The basic access control unit is the Security Role. While you can provide security specific to an individual, it's often overly tedious and problematic to define security access down to the individual. Using Security Roles is much more flexible and less prone to error.

Having a well thought out strategy for security roles is critical. Too simple and your users might have more rights than they need; too complex and security will be difficult to maintain. We've worked hard to build a foundation for you to build from in this area. We strongly recommend you look over the default security roles and reading their descriptions before you start setting up your staff and users. You can find these roles under Admin Tools > Security > Security Roles.

Permissions

Wherever you see the you can manage the security of the item being displayed. This will bring up the Security Editor show below.

1Actions

The first thing you’ll see is a tabbed list of the security actions available for the item. Normally these will be View, Edit and Administrate. You will set permissions for each of these actions.

2Item Permisstions

The Item Permissions list the specific permissions defined for the item. If there are no specific permissions set for this particular item, the permissions will be blank. Instead, security is being inherited from its parent. But now we’re jumping ahead...

3Inherited Permissions

Most items don’t have permissions of their own. They inherit their permissions from their parents. For the most part, you’ll only add Item Permissions when you want to increase the security of the item. This is a very powerful concept. It keeps you from having to constantly and consistently tweak the security of each item. It also allows you to change the security of an item and let the change trickle down to all of its children.

Verifying Permissions

There may be times when you want to view a quick snapshot of a person's effective security permissions. You can do this in the Verify Security block, found in Admin Tools > Security > Inspect Security.

1 Person

This field is where you search for the person whose security permissions you want to view.

2 Entity Type

This field is where you select the entity type you are wanting to verify. For example, if you want to view the security on a page, select 'Page'.

3 Entity ID

This field is where you enter the Integer ID or Guid of the entity you want to view. For example, if you want to view the security of the external homepage (which has the Guid of '1'), type "1" in this field.

4 Security Permissions

This is where Rock displays the list of security permissions for the person based on the search criteria.

5 Unlock Security

This button allows you to quickly unlock security permissions.

This snapshot view allows you to do a couple of handy things.

First, it allows you to view the source of a person's effective security permissions. If, for example, someone should have acccess to a particular page or funtion but doesn't, the Verify Security Block allows you to quickly view where the Deny rule is coming from. Keep in mind that the security permissions of particular entities (e.g., pages, groups, etc.) not listed here may cause additional limits to the person's access.

Second, and perhaps more importantly, it allows you to restore your own permissions when you accidentally lock yourself out. Don't be embarrassed; it happens to everyone. The Verify Security block allows you to quickly unlock your access without having to go into the database. Simply click the button.

Questions About Updating

Do I have to update to the latest version?

Depending how often you update, you may see several updates available. You don’t necessarily need to update to the latest and greatest version. You can update to any version you wish. Doing so will install all of the previous updates to that point.

Can I skip a specific update?

No, updates are cumulative so you cannot skip over a specific update or patch.

Duplicate Finder

The duplicate finder routinely goes through your database looking for records that could be duplicates. When it finds possible matches, it scores them and lists them for you under Tools > Data Integrity > Duplicate Finder.

1 Confidence:

Indicates the likelihood that this is a duplicate record.

2 Name:

The first and last name of the individual.

3 Record Count:

The number of possible duplicate records for this person.

4 Modified:

The date and time the duplication record was modified. This is another data point to help you determine if a record is a duplicate.

5 Created By:

The person (or possibly application) that created the duplicate record. This helps determine how the duplicate may have come into existence and which data point might be more accurate.

Clicking on a row will take you to the duplicate detail screen.

The top row represents the source record and the rows below represent possible duplicate records. If any of these rows are duplicates, you can select them and select the fa fa-users in the grid footer to merge them. Each record has a series of buttons to the right. These buttons perform the actions defined below.

• Opens the person profile page for this individual in a new window.
• Tells Rock that this record is definitely not a duplicate to the record above.
• Tells Rock that there is currently no way to be sure if this record is a duplicate of the one above. This will keep Rock from showing it as a possible duplicate until more information is available to help determine its true status.

If you're uncertain whether two records are duplicates or not, you can simply decide not to do anything yet. As more data is added to the records, Rock will update the match scores to reflect a more accurate prediction.

Detail-minded folks might be interested on how the percentages are calculated for duplicate records. The out-of-the-box logic compares two records based on a points system. Points are awarded based on the following factors:

• Email Match (4pts)
• Partial Name Match (First 2 characters of the first name plus full last name) (1pt)
• Full First Name Match (3pts)
• Full Last Name Match (3pts)
• Suffix Match (4pts)
• Cell Phone Match (4pts)
• Non-Cell Phone Match (2pts)
• Address Match (2pts)
• Birthday Match (3pts)
• Gender Match (1pt)
• Campus Match (1pt)
• Marital Status (1pt)

A percentage is then calculated by comparing the number of points scored to the total possible points.

Reports

There are several cleanup reports that have been created to help you identify records that need your attention. Feel free to add your own reports here. Each of the reports that ships with Rock is documented below.

Workflows

Workflows can be set up to help automate the process of data integrity. Feel free to add your own. We've outlined the ones that come with Rock below.

Location Editor

The location editor allows you to edit and clean locations in your database. Because there are so many locations in your database (think every address) the list will only show items that match the filters you provide. A common use for this page is to edit the geocoding for a specific address. There is a filter to show you addresses that are not geocoded.

Once you select an address you can chose to view its details and edit it. Below is a view of the edit screen.

Photo Requests

When new photos are submitted by the organization's members they will be displayed here to ensure that they are appropriate. You can read more about the photo request in the Person & Family Field Guide.

Merge Requests

If a person selects people (person records) to be merged but they do not have security access to complete the merge a merge request will be created and listed here. By default, you will not have security access until you are listed on the Merge People page with read rights.

Data Automation Settings

Rock ships with the Data Automation job, which automatically updates person and family records. This makes things a lot easier for you. The job settings are configured on the Data Automation screen, located at Tools > Data Integrity > Data Automation.

• Reactivating individuals who are currently inactive.
• Inactivating individuals who are currently active.
• Updating which campuses families are associated with.
• Moving adult children to their own families.

Updates are made to records when the Data Automation job runs. Out of the box, the job is configured to run every Tuesday morning, but you can change that time to what works best for your organization. Also, note that the job is active by default, but the four types of data automation listed above are disabled by default. The updates run automatically once the settings are enabled.

OK, now that you have an overview of the job, let's take a closer look at the four types of data automation included in the Data Automation Settings screen.

PBX CDR Records

A PBX, or Private Branch Exchange, is a telephone system in an organization that switches calls between people in that organization on local lines while allowing them to share a number of external phone lines. In short, it allows Rock to talk to the phones within your organization. PBX CDR Records downloads phone call detail records for the calls made on those phones and stores them in interaction tables. This valuable data helps you map the real-life relationships that exist within your organization. It also allows you to use click-to-call technology, where Rock places your calls for you with the click of a button.

You'll need a plug-in to let Rock talk to your phone system. You can write your own, or you can use one of the plugins available in the Rock Shop, such as Digium Switchvox. Additional PBX plugins will be added as this technology becomes more widely used.

Rock Update

Updates are one of Rock’s best features. Many systems require tedious updates. And many times only the vendor can complete them. Not so with Rock. When an update is made available, all you need to do is visit this screen. Details will be provided about the updates available. When you’re ready, you simply click the Install button. Rock will then download and install the updates for you. How easy is that?!

Global Attributes

Global attributes are the basic configuration settings that are used to customize Rock. Each has a default value that you can override. Many of these were set for you during the installation process. Below is a list of the core settings and descriptions.

Defined Types

Defined Types are settings that are specific to a certain feature. In the list, you’ll find settings for Check-in, Giving, Marketing Campaigns, Metrics and People. Each of these will be discussed more in sections relevant to each feature, but let’s look quickly at how you can edit these settings.

Each Defined Type can have multiple values (cleverly called Defined Values). To edit the values for a Defined Type, simply click on the item in the grid you want to edit. You will then be taken to a new screen where you can edit its values.

Group Types

The Group Types screen is used to add new types of groups and modify those that already exist. These settings are discussed in detail in the Rock Your Groups guide.

Campuses

If your organization has several sites you can manage them here. Check out the 'Campuses' chapter to see the various options available to you.

Tags

Tags allow you to categorize any entity (person, content channel, etc.) into groupings based on a descriptive label. The default entity is Person, but you can literally change it to any entity you want. The possibilities here are endless, and the results can be super beneficial to your organization. You add and modify tags in the Tags screen, located at Admin Tools > General Settings > Tags. Select whichever entity type you want from the Entity Type field dropdown. Tags are discussed in detail in the Person and Family Field Manual. As an administrator, you will be responsible for the classification of organizational and personal tags. Only administrators can create an organizational tag and convert a personal tag to an organizational tag. Only those with tagging rights can add security to tags.

Workflow Configuration

Rock is built on top of a powerful workflow engine. These workflows can be configured using the screens found in this section. Creating and configuring workflows is covered in the Blasting Off With Workflows guide.

Workflow Triggers

You can configure a workflow to be launched whenever an entity record is changed or deleted. See the Blasting Off With Workflows guide for more information on configuring these triggers.

File Types

Rock can be made to store and manage several different types of files. These include things like images for marketing campaigns, label templates for check-in and the pictures of individuals that display on the Person Profile page. These files can be saved in different storage types. The two main storage types are:

• Database: The files are stored as BLOBs (Binary Large OBjects) in the database. Database storage is a good solution for items that you’d like backed up with your data. Database storage is also a bit more secure since the files are stored in an additional layer of security in the database.
• File System: Files using this storage type are stored on the webserver’s file system. They are securely stored in a directory that cannot be directly linked to. This storage type is best for large files that might eat up your valuable database storage space.

Each file type can select which storage type to use. You can also specify if you would like to cache the file type to improve speed. Caching is especially useful when using storage types other than the file system since they tend to be a bit slower. Enabling the cache will store a cached version on the server to improve speed. Caching is also very useful when working with images. Rock has the ability to size images on the fly. While this is very powerful, it can impact performance, especially with large source images. When caching is enabled, though, the resized image is cached, so the resize is not required in the future until the image is updated.

Named Locations

This configuration screen allows you to define specific locations with a name. You will want to use this to define your campuses, buildings and rooms. These Named Locations can then be used with configuring groups, check-in, etc.

Devices

The devices screens are used to manage devices that interact with Rock in some way. Today this is primarily used to help manage check-in kiosks, but in the future we hope to add support for all types of devices.

Schedules

Several features require the configuration of repeating schedules. For instance, check-in needs to know your church’s service times to be able to configure the time check-in should start. These screens allow you to create these schedules.

Attribute Categories

Everything stored in Rock can have attributes added to it. For example, we can add numerous attributes to a person that match what is important to your organization. In an effort to keep this from becoming unmanageable, you can group your attributes into categories. These screens help define these categories and provide some basic configuration for each.

The first step in adding a category is to filter by the data entity you wish to work with. The default, and most often used, is Person. For each category you can provide a description and also give it an icon to use on the Rock screens.

Prayer Categories

The prayer features use categories to help organize and classify prayer requests. See the Raising Up Prayer guide for more information on configuring prayer features.

Person Attributes

This screen allows you to manage the person attributes you have configured in the system.

Person Profile Badges

Badges are simple icons that express details about a person’s involvement or activity with your organization. Examples of badges would be baptism or attendance rate.

Merge Templates

This is where you will manage the systemwide merge templates. You can find out more about merge templates in the Merge Documents chapter of this guide.

Group Requirement Types

This page allows you to manage the group requirements for your organization. You can learn more about group requirements in the Rock Your Groups guide.

Signature Documents

This page allows you to house templates for documents that require signatures, such as registration forms. Click the button to add a new document. You can learn more about digital signatures in the Digital Signatures chapter of this guide.

Universal Search Control Panel

This screen allows you to configure the Universal Search settings. To learn more about Universal Search, see the Universal Search manual.

Attribute Matrix Templates

The Attribute Matrix Templates screen allows you to create a dynamic layout of multiple field types of your choosing. Like a spreadsheet, the matrix is made up of rows and columns. You can use Lava to customize the fields, but what's provided out of the box will likely fit most of your needs. Keep in mind that attribute matrix templates aren't reportable (yet), but this powerful tool allows you to dynamically populate pages with just about any information you want. For example, you can create a matrix of phone number attributes, then customize a page to display those numbers on the fly. Creating an attribute matrix is a two-step process. First, create your template in the Attribute Matrix Templates screen, then configure the page to display the matrix. You can learn more about page customization in the Designing and Building Websites Using Rock guide.

Tag Categories

This screen allows you to view and configure tag categories. To learn more about tags, see the Tags chapter of the Person & Family Field Guide.

Routes

The routes section lists all of the routes, or URL page names, in use for both the internal and external pages of your site. To learn about routes and how to create your own, see the Designing and Building Websites Using Rock guide. Some routes come preconfigured in Rock. The ability to edit these system routes is limited, but custom routes you create are fully editable.

Sites

The sites section lists all of the websites that are running off of your set-up of Rock. Rock initially comes configured with three different sites:

• Rock Internal: The internal site used by the organization’s staff to manage people and groups, and to manage the system in general.
• External Website: The primary portal for those outside the organization.
• Check-in: The site that is used for the check-in system.

You can add as many sites as you wish. For instance, the site that Spark Development Network uses to manage Rock has all of the sites above plus two additional ones. One hosts the Spark site (sparkdevnetwork.org) and the other hosts the Rock site (rockrms.com). Notice that each site looks different and unique from the outside, but shares a common set of data and configuration.

See the Designing and Building Websites Using Rock guide for more information on configuring new sites in Rock.

Block Types

Every page in Rock is made up of several blocks. These blocks are the core unit of functionality. You might be familiar with the HTML block on the homepage, for example. For the most part, everything on the screen is a part of one block or another. These screens list all of the various types of block available.

Page Map

While most of the configuration of a page can be completed right on that page, there are times when it’s difficult to navigate to a supporting page if it isn’t shown in the main navigation. This screen lists all of the pages defined in Rock in a simple tree display to help you get where you’re going.

Content Channel Types

Rock's dynamic content capabilties are a cornerstone of its content management system (CMS) feature set. The Content Channel Types screen is where you will define the data structures for dynamic content. You can read more about these tools in the Designing and Building Websites Using Rock guide.

Content Channels

The Content Channels represent the actual data that is defined for use by the CMS tools. Again much more information on these tools can be found in the Designing and Building Websites Using Rock guide.

File Manager

The File Manager allows users to upload files and manage directories on your Rock host server. More information on this tool can be found in the Designing and Building Websites Using Rock guide.

Themes

Rock comes preconfigured with several themes, all of which you can customize using the Theme Styler. You can also get creative, though, and design your own. All themes, both system and custom, will be listed here, and you can access the Theme Styler for each from this page. To learn more about Rock themes and how to design your own, see the Designing and Building Websites Using Rockguide.

Short Links

You can create short links for the internal and external pages of your site either from this screen, or by clicking the button in the admin tool bar. All of your short links will be listed here. See the Designing and Building Websites Using Rock guide to learn more about creating and managing short links.

Lava Shortcodes

Shortcodes are a way to make Lava simpler and easier to read. They allow you to use a simple Lava tag in place of a complex template written by a Lava specialist, which means you can do some really powerful things without having to know how exactly how everything works. Rock comes with some Lava shortcodes preconfigured, but you can create your own. All of your shortcodes will be listed on this screen. To read more about shortcodes and how to author them, see the The Long & Short on Shortcodes manual and the Lava guide.

Font Awesome

Font Awesome is the easiest way to add icons throughout Rock. There is a free version already linked to Rock that is ready and available for use. You can optionally upgrade to a Pro version for more icons. Follow the Building Websites manual for details about installing Font Awesome Pro.

Cache Manager

The Cache Manager lets you manage the information cached on your Rock server(s) through the use of cache tags. Cache tags work a bit like Personal and Organizational tags, except in this case you're tagging types of information. Using the Cache Manager, you can then tell Rock to clear the cache of information based on those tags. There are two sides when it comes to configuring and using the CacheManager: the more user-friendly web person side, and the more technical, IT person side. Let's look at the web person side first.

Clear Cache by Tag

From the Cache Manager screen you can add and view cache tags, clear the cache by cache tag, view cache statistics, clear the cache by type and configure the Redis backplane.

The complete list of cache tags, as well as their descriptions and number of items (called Linked Keys) currently cached by each tag are listed in the Cache Tags section of the screen. To clear cached items by a particular tag, click the button for that tag. (Note: clearing the tagged items from the cache will not change the associated linked key number.)

Add Cache Tags

Click the button to add a new cache tag. Tag names must be all lowercase with no spaces. Once created, they are stored as a defined value of the Cache Tag Defined Type and cannot be deleted. (Note: cache tags are stored as a defined value for the Cache Tag defined type.)

Current Cache Statitstics

The Cache Statistics section of the screen displays the statistics for the cache type selected in the Cache Types field. Here's a breakdown of the stats provided:

• Hits – The number of times something was looked for and found in the cache.
• Misses – The number of times something was looked for but not found in the cache.
• Adds – The number of items added to the cache.
• Gets – The number of cache requests (i.e., the total number of hits and misses).
• Clears – The number of times a clear was performed on the cache.

Clearing Cache by Type

You can clear the cache of the item types specified in the Cache Types field by clicking the Clear Cache button.

Configure Redis Backplane

A cache backplane is used when multiple servers are running Rock and the cache in each server needs to be kept in sync. If your organization isn't using a load-balanced web farm, do not use Redis. Redis will slow down the respone time of the cache.

Click the Redis Backplane Settings button to view the current Redis configuration. If Redis is configured, the panel expands to display the settings. If Redis is not configured yet, click the Edit Settings button.

1 Enable

Check this box to enable Redis.

2 End Points

Add or remove Redis end points in this field, using the standard Address:Port format. The address can be a name or and IP address (e.g., 192.168.100.5:6379, where the default port is 6379).

3 Password

If Redis is set up with a password, enter it here.

4 Database Number

Enter the Redis database number here. It is possible to run multiple databases with Redis. Because Redis uses a zero-based index, the default database number is 0. If Redis is not being used for anything else, this number should be 0.

Changes to the Redis Backplane Settings require Rock to be restarted. Clicking the Save button will restart Rock, causing it to be offline for a few minutes. (Note: because an invalid or unavailable Redis backplane will cause Rock not to run, invalid or unavailable configurations are not allowed.)

When Rock is back online, it will display a read-only version of the Redis configurations. Rock will try to establish Redis connections to the end points. End points that connect are highlighted in green when Rock displays the results. End points that fail are highlighted in yellow.

When Redis is enabled, the CacheManager screen will update with a summary of available endpoints. If all are available, a green All Redis end points are available message is displayed. Otherwise, a yellow label with the ratio of unavailable servers is displayed.

                            <add key="EnableRedisCacheCluster" value="false" />
                        

Assigning Cache Tags

A new Cache Tag setting has been created and can be configured on the following block settings:

• ContentChannelView
• ContentChannelViewDetail

To access the Cache Tags settings, open the block settings of a page in your external Rock site and click the button. The cache tags created in the CacheManager screen are displayed in the Advanced Settings section of the screen. Select the tag(s) you want to assign and click the Save button. Any number of tags can be assigned.

Cache Tag settings is also available on and tags can be assigned from the following block properties:

• HtmlContentDetail
• GroupListPeronalizedLava
• InternalCommunicationView

User Accounts

While you can find a specific user’s accounts on their Person Profile page, you can see a list of all user accounts on these screens. This helps determine which person is tied to a specific account and see the general login activity.

Security Roles

Security roles are used to lock down features and data in Rock. While you can configure Rock at the user level (allow and deny specific users), it's much easier to assign people to roles and then base your security off of these groups. This adds consistency to your security model, which leads to fewer mistakes. The security role screens allow you to manage your roles and add individuals to them.

REST Controllers

One way you can build applications that extend Rock is through a technology called REST (REpresentational State Transfer, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Representational_state_transfer). If this seems Greek to you, don’t worry. Most developers are familiar with it. The screens in this area help document all of the REST APIs that are available to you. From these screens you can also secure the REST API to ensure only authorized applications can access the data.

Audit Information

Most changes to the Rock database are tracked in a special audit table. The information in these tables is presented in the screens of this section. This is a helpful tool for you to see what changes are being made and by whom. You can also use these logs to write custom SQL reports or create custom jobs that take action after certain changes.

Entity Administration

Entities are specific types of data. A person is a type of entity. So is a group, an email communication and a financial transaction. For those of you familiar with databases, an entity is like a table in your database. (In fact most, but not all, entities do have a corresponding table in the database.) These sets of screens allow you to view and configure all of the entities in Rock.

There are only two configuration items that you need to worry about. The first is whether the entity is "common." Common entities are shown at the top of the list when you need to select from a list of entities. Rock has preconfigured Groups and People to be common, but you may wish to add more (especially if you start adding custom entities of your own).

You can also add security to entities to help protect the data they contain. For instance, we have configured the Financial Transactions entity to only be viewable by those in the finance security roles. This is especially useful when it comes to using the reporting features of Rock. The security you define here will be used by the reporting engine to ensure that only authorized individuals are allowed to access sensitive data.

Authentication Services

Rock can be configured to allow several types of authentication during the login process. Let’s look at them more closely.

• Database: This is the most common authentication type for most organizations. This stores the user's username and password in the database. The user's password is stored in a one-way encrypted format so it cannot be retrieved by any means.
• Active Directory: If your organization uses a Microsoft Active Directory for network logins, Rock can use it to authenticate your staff. To enable this service, you will first need to activate it and provide the address of a Domain Controller server along with the Domain Name of your network. Then, you'll then be able to configure Active Directory logins for your staff under the Security tab on their Person Profile pages.
• PIN Authentication: This authentication service is primarily used in the Check-in Manager to provide a quick way to authenicate on touch devices. This authentication only requires a username made up of numbers.
• Facebook: You can also enable the use of an individual's Facebook account as authentication to Rock. This makes their life a little easier when they have one less password to remember. In order to enable this, you will need to configure a Facebook application.
• Google: This authentication provider allows guests to use their Google account with Rock.
• Twitter: As you can probably guess... yes, you can use Twitter as an authentication source.

REST Keys

When writing applications that use Rock's REST API you will need to use keys for authentication. These keys can be set up and configured here. See Rock's developer documentation for more information on using REST keys in your applications.

REST CORS Domains

Writing secure web applications requires that all domains that use your server's REST API be authorized using Cross-Origin Resource Sharing (CORS). You can define these allowed domains here.

Inspect Security

The Inspect Security screen does just what the name implies: allows you to quickly verify a person's security settings. It also allows admins to "pop the trunk" on their own security settings when they lock themselves out of Rock. (It happens sometimes.) To read more about verifying permissions, see the Security Settings chapter of this manual.

Person Signal Types

Signals are discreet flags that can be assigned to a person to bring attention to a matter. As with most aspects of Rock, signals are highly customizable. They can be used to flag anything from security concerns to high-level lay leads to anything and everything in between. Check out the Person Signal Types chapter of the Person & Family Field Guide to learn more about this powerful feature.

Cloning Security Role Groups

To save you time (and possibly a headache), you can clone security role groups. Cloning allows you to make a copy of an existing group along with all of its security settings. (Note: Group members are not copied over to the new group.)

Cloning groups is a quick and easy process. Simply choose the group you want to clone in the Security Roles Group List and click the button. The name of the group will be appended with the word “copy”. Click the Edit button to change the name and description of the group, and make any further changes to the group’s settings. Click Save. When you return to the Group List screen, the newly-cloned group will be listed among the other security roles.

Communication Templates

You'll find over time that you often send the same types of emails and SMS messages over and over. When you see this pattern consider making a communication template to help simplify these tasks and improve consistency.

System Emails

Rock defines several email templates that are used by the system for specific needs. Some examples are the emails that are sent when someone forgets a password or a confirmation message when an account is created. You may want to change the look or wording of the emails to better match the brand and voice of your organization. This is the place to do so.

Communication Mediums

When you send a new communication from Tools > New Communication or from the bottom of any grid that contains a list of people, you can select to send either an SMS message or an email. Each of these are communication mediums. You can configure the settings for each medium from these screens. This is where you can set the Email transport to use normal SMTP or a bulk delivery service like SendGrid. This is also where you can configure the SMS channel to use Twillio to send the messages.

Rock is powerful because of its customization possibilities. Here, you can add additional communication mediums. For example, it’s possible that in the future a new medium might be created to push content through an organization's mobile app. Once this new medium is written (by either a third-party or the core team), it can be simply dropped into Rock and worked by using configuration from these screens.

Communication Transports

We mentioned services like SendGrid, Twillio and SMTP above in the Communications Mediums section. These delivery options are called Transports. They are what take the message contents and make sure that they get to the recipients. Each has a set of configuration options specific to its needs. For example, the Twillio transport requires an account SID and a token to tie into your account. These settings can be provided using these screens.

Like channels, new transports can easily be added over time, from either the core Rock team or third parties.

SMS From Values

This menu item is a hotlink to the SMS From Values defined type. This defined type helps you configure the SMS environment. See the Communicating With Rock guide for more information on SMS.

Safe Sender Domains

This menu item is a hotlink to the Safe Sender Domains defined type. This defined type defines the domains that can be used to send emails. If an Email communication is created with a From Address that is not from one of these domains, the Organization Email global attribute value will be used instead for the From Address and the original value will be used as the Reply To address. This is to help reduce the likelihood of communications being rejected by the receiving email servers.

Photo Request

These pages allow you to send and administrate requests for photos from your community. You can find detailed instructions for these tools in the Person & Family Field Guide.

System Email Categories

This page allows you to create and manage categories for your system emails.

Communication Queue

The Communication Queue is where communications that are pending approval or have failed to be sent are stored. Ideally, you'll never see anything listed here; but if you do, you'll know something elsewhere in the system needs attention. Communications in the queue can be filtered by future communications, communications pending approval, and communication type (email or SMS). While the Communication Queue doesn't require any configuration, the Send Communication job settings will affect what may end up in the queue. By default, the Send Communication job waits 30 minutes before sending any new communication to prevent any sending overlap for communications requiring approval. You can use the Communication Queue Alert job to send an email notice to specified recipients when a communication is sent to the Communication Queue. The Send Communications and Communication Queue Alert jobs can be configured by going to Admin Tools > System Settings > Jobs Administration.

Communication List Categories

The Communication List Categories page is where you can view, edit and create new categories for use with communication lists. Communication list categories can be used for a number of powerful functions, from segmenting communication lists to allowing communication recipients to subscribe and unsubscribe from lists. To learn more about communication list categories, see the Communicating with Rock manual.

Communication Lists

This page allows you to view, modify and add communication lists to be used with the communication wizard. To learn more about communication lists and sending communications, check out the Communicating with Rock manual.

Communication Template Categories

This page allows you to view, modify and add communication template categories. To learn more about the communication wizard and communication templates, check out the Communicating with Rock manual.

Check-in Configuration

These screens help manage the setup of your check-in configurations. These settings are discussed in detail in the Checking-out Check-in guide.

Named Locations

This configuration screen allows you to define specific locations with a name. You will want to use this to define your campuses, buildings and rooms. These Named Locations can then be used with configuring groups, check-in, etc.

Also available under Admin Tools > General Settings > Named Locations

Schedules

Several features require the configuration of repeating schedules. For instance, check-in needs to know your church’s service times to be able to configure the time check-in should start. These screens allow you to create these schedules.

Also available under Admin Tools > General Settings > Schedules

Devices

The devices screens are used to manage devices that interact with Rock in some way. Today this is primarily used to help manage check-in kiosks but in the future we hope to add support for all types of devices.

Also available under Admin Tools > General Settings > Devices

Check-in Labels

The check-in process can be configured to use several formats of printed labels. These labels and their configuration are managed using these screens. The Checking-Out Check-in guide also covers the creation and configuration of these labels.

Ability Levels

This is a short-cut link to the Ability Levels defined type. Also available under Admin Tools > General Settings > Defined Types > Ability Levels

Label Merge Fields

This is a short-cut link to the Label Merge Fields defined type. Also available under Admin Tools > General Settings > Defined Types > Label Merge Fields

Search Types

This is a short-cut link to the Search Types defined type. Also available under Admin Tools > General Settings > Defined Types > Search Types

Using a Merge Document

You'll notice at the bottom of most grids there's a button that looks similar to . Pressing this button will take the contents of the grid and make it available to import into a merge document.

1 Count

Shows you how many records will be merged into the document.

2 Show Data Rows

Shows the first 15 records that will be used for the merge.

3 Show Merge Fields

This is a cheat sheet of sorts to help you create a merge document for the data provided.

4 Merge Template

The template to use for the merge document.

5 Merge

This button will initiate the merge process.

That’s it! Pretty easy, no?

Administrating Merge Templates

Merge documents are created from templates. Some merge templates will be used by everyone; others, though, can be limited to a specific role or person. To help keep the list of merge documents from getting out of hand, we’ve created the ability to define global templates and personal templates.

Global Merge Templates

You can set up a list of merge templates that are accessible to everyone in the database under Admin Tools > General Settings > Merge Templates.

Security can be added to templates on the Merge Template Detail block. Security settings are enforced whenever a merge document is created.

Personal Merge Templates

You can set up a merge document for your personal use on your My Settings page (found under the dropdown in the upper-right corner of the screen).

From this screen, you can select your own personal templates as well as any you have access to based on security roles or direct assignment.

Creating a Merge Document

As mentioned previously, Rock currently supports two different merge document formats: HTML and Word. Below we cover how to create a merge document for each format.

Word

The most common document format is Word. Creating these documents is actually pretty simple. Before we jump in it's important to talk about the two strategies for merging using Word.

The first strategy is to create a Word document where the whole document acts as a template for each record. This is most common for things like letters.

With this type of document you can simply open Word, type your letter and then add in the Lava where you want the dynamic text to show. Note that you have access to most of Lava's capabilities in Word. So things like {{ 'Now' | Date:' MMMM d, yyyy ' }} will place in the current date and time.

The second merge document strategy is for occasions when you want more than one record to be displayed on a single page. This is often the case for tasks like creating mailing labels. When creating these types of documents you add a {%Next%} code when you’re ready to move to the next record in the list.

Rock will automatically figure out what strategy your document is using so there is no extra configuration.

HTML

You might be wondering, "Why would I ever want to use HTML for a merge document?" At first blush it does seem a little odd. HTML, however, is a great tool for incorporating rich media into a format that can easily be printed. It’s often the best choice when you need to print a report that requires showing maps (easy to display using Google's static map API) or person photos (links to their photo in Rock).

Creating an HTML merge document is simple. Let's take a quick look. Below is a quick example of some HTML/Lava that will present a list of people with their photos (this assumes that the merge document is passed a list of people).

<html>
    <head>
		<title>Group Roster</title>
		<link rel="stylesheet" href="https://maxcdn.bootstrapcdn.com/bootstrap/3.3.5/css/bootstrap.min.css">
	</head>
	
	<body>
	    <div class="container" style="margin-top: 100px">
			<div class="row">
			    
				{% for row in Rows %}
					<div class="col-xs-6 clearfix" style="margin-bottom: 24px; min-height: 200px;">
						<div class="pull-left" style="margin-right: 24px; width:20%;">
							<img src="{{ 'Global' | Attribute:'PublicApplicationRoot' }}{{ row.PhotoUrl }}" style="width: 100%; border-radius: 100px;" />
						</div>
						<div class="pull-left">
							<h1>{{ row.FullName }}</h1>
							{{ row.Email }} <br />
							{% for phone in row.PhoneNumbers %}
								{{ phone.NumberFormatted }} <small>{{ phone.NumberTypeValue.Value }}</small> <br />
							{% endfor %}
						</div>
					</div>
				{% endfor %}
				
			</div>
		</div>
	</body>
</html>

Note a few things in the code:

• Line 4: We link out to a hosted version of the Bootstrap CSS file. This provides an easy way to get a default set of styles.
• Line 11: Now we simply run through each of the rows that were passed to us.
• Line 14: Inserting a photo is simple! The PhotoUrl property for a person even returns a generic image if the person doesn’t have a photo.

As you can see, creating HTML merge documents is easy. Here are a few additional tips:

• Adding map images to your merge documents is also fairly simple. Use the following links for more information:
  • Google Maps API
  • Static Map Helper
• HTML merge documents are usually printed. While most people think of HTML as an online-only file format, it actually does have several print capabilities like page breaks. Here are a few links to point you in the right direction:
  • Styling for Print
  • CSS Page Breaks

Warning if you are using Cloud Flare

Enabling Scrape Shield with Cloud Flare will block email addresses in HTML merge documents. If you are using this service it will need to be disabled.

SQL Command

The SQL Command page is very powerful, but should be used with great caution. Rock is built on top of Microsoft’s SQL Server database. While for most people this is a detail they don’t need to know, at times administrators may want to type in a SQL command to get direct access to their data.

The SQL Command block allows you to type in a SQL command and have it execute directly in the database. When used with a SELECT command, the results of your query will be displayed in a grid below the command.

You can also enter UPDATE and DELETE commands if you wish. In order for them to work, you’ll need to flip the Selection Query toggle as an additional fail-safe.

External Applications

We've worked hard to make as much of Rock available through a web interface as possible. Some functionality, though, requires interaction with devices like check scanners (which don’t work through today’s web browsers). Other times there are situations, like creating giving statements, where the processing of a request could take awhile to complete. In these cases, we’ve developed Windows applications to run on your desktop. These applications can be downloaded from the links provided in this section.

Sample Data

When you're just starting out, it's helpful to have some sample data to play with. Or perhaps you'd like to create a training environment for teaching your staff. Either way, adding a standard set of people, families and groups is a breeze with Rock.

The Sample Data block is a one-step way to import a consistent set of sample data. You'll recognize many of the names from the examples in the Rock documentation. Free free to run the import repeatedly to keep time-sensitive data like attendance current.

Location Services

Knowing the location of those who attend your church can be very powerful. In order to do this, you need to be able to convert an attendee's address (3120 W Cholla St Phoenix, AZ 85029) to a latitude / longitude point (33.590795 , -112.126459). To do this you’ll need to run your addresses through a geocoding process. Rock will handle all of the work. All you need to do is provide a geocoding service to handle the requests. Rock has a couple of services for you to pick from. More information on geocoding can be found in the Locations Section of this document.

Similar to the geocoding services, you can also send your addresses through a standardization process. These processes can fix the following for your addresses:

• Fill in any missing items (555 W Main to 555 W Main St)
• Fix any case issues (555 w main st to 555 W Main St)
• Standardize elements (555 West Main Street to 555 W Main St)
• Append Zip+4 info (85383 to 85383-3622)

The standardization process helps increase the quality of the addresses in your database. More information on address standardization can be found in the Locations section of this document.

Entity Attributes

This configuration section can help you define additional Organizational Attributes. For the most part, you should not need to do this unless you are writing your own code to run inside Rock. To add an Organizational Attribute, simply create a new attribute that is not tied to an entity. (This really is what an organizational attribute is.)

By now you know about attributes and the power they bring to Rock. In fact, they are more powerful than you realize. We’ve already discussed how attributes can be attached to any type of entity (person, group, etc.) In more complex scenarios, you can actually attach them to an entity with certain criteria. Say you only wanted an attribute to be on a group if it is of the type Serving Team; you could configure that using these screens. Most organizations will never need to get this advanced with their configurations, but it’s good to know that it can be done (if needed).

Search Services

Rock’s Smart Search box at the top of every page allows you to search for people and groups using various criteria like name, phone and email. These screens allow you to manage these search types. For the most part you’ll want to leave them set as is, but you can inactivate one if you find it is not helpful in your situation. A key concept is that you can write your own search services with some custom coding. If you do, they will appear on this list for you to enable and configure.

Jobs Administration

While much of Rock works through the interaction of individuals within the system, there are times when you’ll want to run functionality in the background. Examples of this might be some cleanup or updating of data in the database. These background tasks are called Jobs and can be managed and scheduled through the screens in this area. More details on jobs can be found below.

Data Filters

Data Filters are an integral part of Rock’s reporting strategy. Hopefully you’ve already read about them in the Taking Off With Reporting guide. At a high level, data filters allow you to narrow down your view of data by providing specific criteria. These filters can be enabled, disabled and secured in this set of screens. Like many things in Rock, you can develop your own Data Filters that can be managed here.

Data Transformations

Once you’ve filtered your data, you can add a transformation to it before it is displayed. Say you've filtered to see only children who have attended twice in the last two months, but you really want to display information about the parents of these children. A transformation (in this case the Person Parent Transformation) would convert the child data to parent data. You can manage these transformations here. Just like with filters, you can also develop your own transformations.

Data Selects

Data selects are used in reporting. When you create a report, you provide it with a data view to act as a filter. You also add columns to your report. Many of these columns will be attributes of the person or group. You can also choose to add some powerful dynamic columns. These dynamic columns are managed and secured from this screen.

Exception List

Errors are a fact of life. Some errors are the result of bugs in the software. Despite all of our work to eliminate bugs, some will sneak by us. Exceptions can also occur when blocks and pages are misconfigured. While you can set these errors to be emailed to you under the General Settings > Global Settings > Email Exceptions List, you can also view the history of these errors here.

Exceptions are shown in the order they occur. Instead of showing you every error in a large list, we have grouped them by type. This helps you determine how often an error is occurring.

Protect My Ministry

Rock provides a seamless integration with Protect My Ministry to provide reliable background checks for your organization. See the Background Checks chapter for specifics on this integration.

File Storage Providers

Under the Admin Tools > General Settings > File Types section we discussed file storage providers. These providers help Rock manage the saving and retrieving of files to different storage media. The two default storage types are Database and File System. Under the File System configuration you can change the default location for file storage. For the most part, you can leave these settings as you found them.

Financial Gateways

Financial gateways allow Rock to move money from individuals’ accounts to the organization. Information on these gateways and their configuration is discussed in detail in the Rock Solid Finances guide.

Category Manager

The Category Manager allows you to add categories for any entity type in Rock. Think of it as your one stop shop for any category. To help simpilify the process be sure to use the entity type filter.

System Configuration

This screen allows you to change some technical configuration settings of Rock. For the most part you should never need to worry about these settings, but we have provided this screen to help you change these settings if needed. Each of the settings is discussed below.

• Time Zone: During the install you should have set your time zone. If you need to change it, you can do that here.
• Max Upload File Size: For security reasons, webservers limit the maximum file size that can be uploaded. This helps to limit the impact of denial of service attacks. Rock has set the default value to 10 MB. If you need more you can update the size here.
• Run Jobs In IIS: By default, Rock’s job engine runs on the webserver. This setting allows you to disable this in order to run jobs as a Windows Agent. See the Jobs section for more information on this topic.

Application Groups

Several features in Rock rely on storing information on people. For instance when you use the photo request feature, Rock needs to track who has uploaded a photo, whose photo needs to be verified and who has opted out of getting future requests. Instead of writing tons of custom code to do this we've chosen to create a reusable group type called Application Groups. These groups are listed here for administrator access.

Background Check Providers

These screens allow you to configure different background check providers. You can read more about Rock's background check feaures in the Person & Family Field Guide.

Merge Template Types

Rock allows you to have several different merge template types (think 'HTML', 'Word', etc.) You can manage these provider types with these screens.

Note Types Settings

Rock allows any entity type (People, Financial Batches, Prayer Requests, etc.) to have notes attached to it. In fact it even goes further to allow different types of notes on a single entity. These screens allow you to set up this powerful feature. You can read more about these features in the Note Types chapter of this manual.

Following Events

This section allows you to define new Following Events. You can read more about these features in the Person & Family Field Guide

Following Suggestions

This section allows you to define new Following Suggestions. You can read more about these features in the Person & Family Field Guide

Universal Search Index Components

Universal Search allows you to search multiple types of data at once in a full-text manner. In a sense, it's like Google for Rock. To learn the ins and outs of Universal Search, check out the Universal Search guide.

Calendar Dimension Settings

Business Intelligence is a buzz word for tools that allow you to quickly analyze data and present actionable information to leaders. In large organizations, these tools usually are separate from the normal day-to-day systems, but in Rock we’ve simplified the process and built the tools right in. The Calendar Dimension Settings screen is one piece of the configuration process. To read more about BI and learn how to configure settings for your organization, see the Business Intelligence chapter of the Taking Off With Reporting manual.

Spark Data ^(v8.4)

Spark Data is a feature in Rock which manages paid services that are offered by Spark Development Network. This allows us to offer services to you, often at lower costs than if everyone had to go set up their own service individually, and without forcing you to compound the number of bills, accounts and API keys you have to keep up-to-date.

Initially, this includes the National Change of Address service, but more services will be added to this list over time.

To begin with Spark Data, click the Sign-up Now link and you'll be taken to rockrms.com/sparkdatalink. If you don't have a rockrms.com login, you'll need to create one. If prompted, choose which organization you want to turn on Spark Data for. You will then see a page similar to this:

1 Credit Card

Your organization will need to have a credit card on file for any services you request.

2 Spark Data Key

Once you've added the credit card and enabled the service, a Data Key will be generated and shown here. Copy this key; you'll need it in a moment.

Now you can return to your own Rock installation. Go to back to your Admin Tools > System Settings > Spark Data Settings page, and paste in the Data Key where prompted. If you'd like, you can also choose a group of people who you'd like to be notified about the success or failure of any Spark Data jobs. Click Save when you're done.

National Change of Address ^(v8.4)

The NCOA list is a list of address updates that the United States Post Office maintains, to reroute your mail to your new address whenever you move. But few businesses (or churches) want to comb through the entire list, looking for records they need to update. So services like we are using provide methods to access the data you care about far more easily.

Through Spark Data, we are now bringing the power of that service to your database. Why do you care? Well, when people move out of the city (or state), they will inform the post office, their credit cards companies, and even their magazines that they're moving. But they're rarely going to let your church know that they're moving. You might have seen their giving stop (if they were giving at all), but there's no other way to know that they actually moved, rather than being on a vacation. Part of keeping your data clean though, is making sure that old records are inactivated so you stop sending them information (keeping your newsletter list down to only active people can also help with deliverability issues). This service will compare all of the addresses in your system with the list of address changes. When a match is found, it will respond according to the settings you choose. Usually if they move in-town you'll just want to update their address, but if they move too far away, you'll want to inactivate them.

NCOA is configured through the Admin Tools > System Settings > Spark Data Settings page - refer to the above section and make sure you've got Spark Data enabled before moving on.

1 Enable

Check this box to allow NCOA service to run. The entire process of checking your addresses can take up to a few hours; once you've started the process be sure to not disable this setting before the it completes.

2 Agreements

You'll need to accept the TrueNCOA terms of service, and acknowledge that the cost of uploading your addresses for comparison is $50 each time. Most churches choose to run this quarterly or yearly, which would translate to $200 or $50 a year, respectively.

3 Person Data View

Choose a Data View which contains people whose addresses you want to check. You don't want to check the addresses of records which are already inactive, for instance, or you'll be tracking every time they move indefinitely, even years after they've left your area.

4 Minimum Move Distance to Inactivate

Set how many miles away from their previous address people have to move before their records are automatically inactivated. In larger cities, as few as 30 miles would sometimes be sufficient to assume they are no longer attending, while more rural areas might need a much higher limit.

5 Mark 48 Month Move as Previous Address

If someone is in your database who recently joined your church, you can use this option to add any address they moved from 19-48 months ago as a Previous Address in Rock

6 Mark Invalid Addresses as Previous Addresses

If the service finds that you've got an invalid address stored for someone, you can use this option to specify that address should be set as a "previous address" instead of their current address. That way, you're not losing the information but neither are you trying to mail them at an invalid address.

7 Inactive Record Reason

If a person's record is inactivated because of the distance they moved, you can specify which reason should be added to their record for why they were inactivated

8 Recurrence Interval

This setting governs how often the addresses for people in your dataview are sent out for checking against the NCOA list. Remember, every time this happens it costs $50, so budget according to your need for timely updates. If you only want to run this job manually, leave this box unchecked.

9 Save

As always, when you're done configuring the service, don't forget to click Save!

10 Run Manually

Once you have all of the setting configured, you click this button to run the job manually, rather than waiting for the job and schedule you set.

Once your NCOA job has run, you can view your Tools > Data Integrity > NCOA Results page. It will look something like this:

You can imagine that the list will probably get quite long, since it lists every family whose address was checked. So be sure to use the Filter Options to filter the records you're shown by their status, the date they moved, look for invalid addresses, or even target specific families by last name or campus.

Managing Your Campuses

You can manage your campuses from Admin Tools > General Settings > Campuses. There you will see a list of campuses that you can manage or add to. Selecting a campus will bring up the campus details screen.

1 Name

The name of the campus.

2 Active

As you bring new campuses online, you may want to add them as inactive until you have time to configure them and prepare for the announcement.

3 Description

You can use this field to provide a description for your campus. This might be something you display to your website guests.

4 Short Code

When you grow beyond two or three sites, it's common to develop a shorter naming convention to help you refer to a campus.

5 URL

The web address for the campus.

6 Campus Leader

The person placed in charge of running the campus.

7 Contact Information

The phone number and address of the campus.

8 Service Times

The service times for the campus.

Adding Attributes to Campuses

There are probably other bits of information you'd like to track about your campuses. Adding additional Attributes to campuses is simple. Just follow these steps:

1. Go to Admin Tools > System Settings > Entity Attributes.
2. Click the to add a new attribute.
3. Select the Entity Type of "Campus" and set up the attribute information. You do not need to add a value for the Qualifier Field or Qualifier Value fields.
4. After clicking Save, you can configure security on who can edit this attribute if you wish.
5. You will now be able to set a value for this attribute in the campus details page above.

Configuring a Job

You can change the configuration of a current job or add a new job under Admin Tools > System Tools > Jobs Administration. There you will see a list of currently configured jobs. You can click a job to modify the configuration or click the Add button in the grid footer to create a new job.

After you select to add or configure a job you’ll see the screen below.

1Name

Provides a concise description of what the job is doing.

2Active

Allows you to mark the job as active or inactive. (Note that not all of the jobs that ship with Rock are active by default. It's a good idea to check the active status on the jobs you want to run.)

3Description

Documents in detail what that job is doing and any background criteria that you may want to know in the future. Use this field to document all the details about the job.

4Notification Status

Defines when a notification email should be sent. Options are: Success – when a job finishes successfully; Error – when a job encounters an error; All – for both Success and Error; None – never

5Cron Expression

Defines when the job is run. Cron expressions are a concise schedule pattern. They can be difficult to write without help. We recommend using the CronMaker.com website to assist you in creating these expressions.

6Notification Emails

A comma-separated list of emails for the job; used when a notification needs to be sent.

7Job Type

Selects the type of job to run.

8Job Settings

Each job type will have a set of configuration items. In this sample, the RunSQL job defines the SQL statement that you want to run when the job executes.

Under the Hood of the Jobs Engine

By default, the jobs engine runs on the webserver under the IIS webserver's context. By default, IIS will shut down if no requests come in for a page. This will mean that your jobs may not execute late at night if no one is visiting your site. To mitigate this problem we created a special Job Pulse job that is set to run every 30 seconds. Its only purpose is to load a special KeepAlive.aspx page. Doing so keeps IIS alive at all times.

Care and Feeding of Rock

Just like car engines, sometimes databases get messy and need a tune up. Rock comes with the Database Maintenance job configured to do just that. Running on a set schedule, this job rebuilds database indexes that need tuning. It does the work so you don't have to. Because this job comes ready out of the box, you don't need to do any configuring. You can view the details and configuration options, though, by opening the Database Maintenance job from the Jobs List, located at Admin Tools > System Settings > Jobs Administration.

Adding Notes to a New Entity

Let's say your finance team asks you to be able to enter notes on batches. Your first response might be that you'll have to find a developer to add that functionality. That in itself is a pretty cool option...right? The fact that you have a system that you can extend to meet any need...cool! But in this case you can play the part of the hero (that is the name of this guide, remember?) and configure it yourself.

Any entity detail page is a candidate for adding notes. Looking at the address for the page will tell you which entity you can attach the note on. If the address has BatchId=X then the note can be on the batch entity. Let's walk through the steps of adding notes to the batch detail page Finance > Batches > Batch Detail.

1. Once you’re on the batch detail page, add a new Core > Note block to the main zone (see the Designing and Building Websites Using Rock for details).
2. Edit the block settings of this new block. There are several possible configurations so look through the list. The key, however, is setting the Context Entity Type to be Financial Batch.
3. Reload the page for the block settings to be enabled. You should now see an empty note block.
4. The last step is to add the note type under Admin Tools > System Settings > Note Types. You can add a note type from the bottom of the grid. Be sure to set the entity to Financial Batch.

After following these steps your batch screen should look something like the one below.

Adding Multiple Note Types to a Single Entity

When you add a note to a person on the Person Profile page you are adding a generic Person Note to the person entity. What if you wanted to be able to add a new type of note to a person? Say for instance your organization has a hospital visitation team and they want to have their own notes that stand out from the default ones. Developer needed...? Nope! You got this. Let's walk through the steps of adding this new Hospital Visitation note type.

The first step is to add the new note type under Admin Tools > System Settings > Note Types. From the bottom of the grid select the Add button and the new type modal will be displayed.

1 Name

The name of the note type that will be used in the various input screens.

2 Entity Type

The type of object/entity the note is for. In this case the note is for an individual, so we'll select Person.

3 Icon CSS Class

This is the icon to display next to the note.

4 Colors

These color options allow you to control the look of your new note. You can use hex colors (such as #0000FF for blue) or use the color picker to use a color wheel to choose a color for each of the three parts of the note: the background color, the font color of the note text, and the border color around the note.

5 User Selectable

This flag enables the note type to be selected from the note entry screen. There are times when you won't want a certain type of note to be selected through the user interface. Other note types may only be added through workflows or custom code.

6 Requires Approvals

Check this box if you would like someone to have to approve notes before they show up. For instance, you could use notes to allow people to leave comments on your blog. If you wanted these comments to require approval before they show up on your external site page, you would check this box.

7 Send Approval Notifications

If you are requiring the notes to be approved before they show up, you may want to notify someone that there has been a new note which they need to review. You can designate the person to receive these notifications by adding them to the "To" field of the Note Approval Email template in System Emails.

8 Allows Watching

This option will allow people to get a notification when a reply is made to a note; see the next section for more details.

9 Auto Watch Authors

This option will automatically notify the person adding a note, whenever someone replies to their note. See the next section for more details.

10 Allow Replies

If you would like people to be able to reply to notes with a note of their own, check this box. You'll be prompted for how many "replies of replies" are permitted.

11 Approval URL Template

If you want to provide an alternate page for your note approver to review notes, you can provide that address here. Otherwise, it will take them to the page where the note was added (and scroll to the note itself).

Once your new note type has been defined it's ready to be used. At this point you may consider adding security to it to control who has access to view and edit these notes.

Watching Notes

In the above screenshot that there are a few "Note Watching" options we only touched on. These bear a more detailed view, so let's cover them now.

On a note type, you can specify whether a note type Allows Watching. If it does, anyone who can view a note will be able to choose to watch a specific note using the menu on each note. They will then be notified of replies to any note which they are watching. You can also specify whether authors should automatically watch their own notes so they'll know if someone replies to their note.

But that's not all! There's a page in System Settings called "Note Watches". Here, administrators can see everyone who is watching a note, but you can also add new "watches".

You can specify either a single person or all members of a group to watch the notes you specify here, by selecting them in either the Watcher Person or the Watcher Group options. In this example, we've already indicated that we want this Note Watch to apply to Person notes. We can now either specify a specific person to watch for all notes on by picking them in "Watching Person", or we can instead choose a Note Type to watch - that will notify the person or group you specified as the "Watcher" whenever a note of that type is added to anyone. If you want to get very specific, you can select a Person AND a Note Type to watch; that will serve to only notify people of that type of note when they are added to that specific person.

You can also create exclusions to the note watch by un-checking the Watching option. For instance, if you wanted a group of your staff to be notified whenever a communication type note is added to anyone, you would specify that group as the Watcher Group, select Watching, set the Entity Type as Person, and select the Communication note type. But maybe you don't want them to know when someone said they contacted your senior pastor. In that case, you'd add a second Note Watch and select your staff group as the Watcher Group again, but un-check "Watching" and specify your senior pastor as the Watching Person. Now your staff group will not be notified of any notes added to your senior pastor's profile, but they'll still be notified of all other communication type notes added to other people.

All note notifications use the Note Watch Notification System Email template, so edit that template if you'd like. You can specify additional recipients of all notifications by adding them to the To field in the template, or on the Send Note Notification job itself. Note notifications will always be sent as a digest, and rather than sending one email for every single watched note reply, which could quickly overwhealm your inbox.

Setting Up A Digital Signature Provider

Digital signature providers create a reliable and legal way of gathering digital signatures. As it does with many other services, Rock allows multiple digital signature services to be configured. Out of the box it ships with support for SignNow, although others could be made available in core or the Rock Shop in the future.

Linking Rock To Your SignNow Account

With your Client ID and Client Secret in hand, you're now ready to configure Rock to talk with SignNow. Head to Admin Tools > System Settings > Signature Document Providers and select the SignNow Digital Signature Provider. That will bring up the screen below.

1

Ensure that you Activate the provider.

2

Enter in your SignNow username and password.

3

Enter the Client ID and Secret from the email you received.

4

The API Sandbox should be set to No. This is a development setting that should not be enabled.

5

Finally, check the webhook address. This is the address on your Rock server that the SignNow service will call when a document is signed. We've configured the address to use your organization's external application address.

At this point Rock and SignNow will be able to communicate with each other. The next step is to configure document templates that will be used in the signing process.

Document Templates

You can think of Document Templates as Word templates that you configure to send to individuals for their signatures. When they sign, a document will be created with their signature embedded. You'll create a template for each type of document that requires a signature (e.g. Summer Camp Waiver).

There's a bit more to templates than just a Word document. For instance, you'll also need to configure where in the document the user must sign. You'll create these templates on the SignNow site. Let's walk through the creation of a new SignNow template.

Once you're logged in, you should see a screen similar to the one below. From here you'll want to click the Upload Document button from the very top. This will allow you to select a Word or PDF document to upload. The file you select will then appear under the Documents tab.

But…wait… we wanted a template right? That's true. We'll convert our document to a template by selecting More > Make Template. After providing a name, you'll see your new template under the Template menu item.

Next, we'll add the signature location to the document. Technically, you don't need to do this. You could be done here, but if you don't specify a signature location, the signer will be able to sign anywhere on the document. This can be a bit confusing for some, so it's best to identify the location for them. To proceed with adding the signature location, click on the template name. This will take you to the template editor. Here you can add the signature location as well as any other fields you would like to collect.

To add the signature location, simply click on the document where you'd like it to appear. Don't worry; you can drag the location to a precise position after clicking. Now you'll see that there is a concept of roles. Roles allows you to have several different people sign documents in a specific order. Rock only supports a single role so just leave the default of Signer 1. Select Done and your template is ready for signing! Well… almost… one more step.

Now that your document is created in SignNow, you must set up a Rock signature document template that links to it. Let’s do that next. Start by navigating to Admin Tools > General Settings > Document Templates. From here you can add a new template.

1 Name:

The template name in Rock.

2 Description:

Allows you to enter in additional information about the template.

3 Digital Signature Provider:

The service you'll be using for digital signatures.

4 Template:

Rock will go out to the service you're using and pull down a list of templates that you have configured. You should see the template you made above in this list.

5 File Type:

Rock will download each of the signed documents and store them. This file type allows you to configure how you'd like them stored.

Anatomy of a Digital Signature

Before we jump in to see digital signatures in action, let's look at what makes up a digital signature in Rock.

• Signing Document: We've already briefly discussed the concept of document templates and documents. Each digital signature will produce a signed document.
• Applies To: Since the documents that go out for signatures can often be for minors, Rock separates out the person that the document applies to and who is assigned to sign the document. In the case of a camp waiver, the Applies To field would be the child going to camp.
• Assigned To: The Assigned To field represents the person who has been assigned to sign the document. In the camp example, this would be the parent or person who completed the registration. We'll look at these fields in more detail as we discuss how event registration and groups works with digital signatures.

Digital Signatures and Event Registrations

One common use for digital signatures is with Event Registrations. With this feature, you can enable a signature request to be sent after the completion of a registration. Let's take a look.

You can define the signature document that is required for an event registration on the registration's template. You can find this under Tools > Event Registration and then by selecting the registration template you wish to configure.

Once a registration of this type is completed, digital signature requests will go out for each registrant. The logic for determining the Assigned To and Applies To is as follows:

1. Applies To: Will always be the registrant of the registration. A signing request will be sent for each registrant.
2. Assigned To: This is a bit more complex. If the registrant is an adult, then the Assigned To will be the registrant. If the registrant is a child, the Assigned To will be the person completing the registration.

You can monitor the results of the digital signature from the event registration detail screen. From this screen you can not only resend signature requests, but also see the completed documents.

When using digital signatures with registrations you can select to have the signature captured during the registration process (after entering each registrant) or wait to have the signature request emailed after the registration. When using in-line signatures the document will be embeded into the registration form (sample below).

Digital Signatures and Groups

You can also use the digital signatures with groups. Let's see how that works.

You'll notice a setting on a group that allows you to require a signed document. Selecting a document template type here configures this feature. When it is set, each group member will be sent a signature invitation when they are added to the group (current group members will also get this invite). Since signatures can take some time to receive, Rock will warn you of group members with missing signatures by placing a small red signature icon next to their name on the group member list.

Selecting a person with this warning will allow you to resend the signature invitation.

Managing Signing Requests and Documents

OK, so now we've seen how to create digital signature templates and how to send requests for signatures. Let's wrap it up by looking at how you can manage the signing requests and documents.

To manage signing requests and view signed documents, navigate to General Settings > Signature Documents and select the document template you wish to view.

1 Document Template Detail:

From here you can edit the template details.

2 Documents:

Next you'll see a list of document requests for the template. Note that the name of the document is a combination of the source and the person's name. The source is either the group name or registration instance name.

3 Completed Request:

Note that this first request has been completed. You can click the document icon to see the signed document.

Manually Editing Documents

You can manually edit/add new signed documents by clicking the add button on the Document Template Detail screen above. If you'd prefer to manually edit one, you can do so by clicking the document row.

1 Document Name:

The default here is a combination of the source and the person's name. The source is either the group name or registration instance name.

2 Document:

If you'd like to upload a manually signed document you can do so here.

3 Document Key:

This is the unique identifier of the document in the signing service. You should not need this, but we provide it in case you need to work with the service on an issue.

4 Last Invite Date:

This is the date that the last invitation to sign was sent.

5 Last Status Update:

This shows you when the document's status was last updated.

6 State:

The current status of the document. If you set the status to cancelled, the request will be canceled in the signing service.

7 Applies To:

The Applies To setting refers to the person for whom the document is created. For example, in a camp waiver, the Applies To would be the child going to camp.

8 Assigned To:

This setting denotes who should be signing the document. In the camp example, this would often be the parent of the child.

9 Signed By:

This field is only used for signed documents that are entered manually. While Rock knows the person to whom the request was sent, the Assigned To individual, we don't know who actually signed the document. To get this information you'll need to view the document and read the signature.

10 Resend Invite:

If the document has not been signed yet the Resend Invite button will be visible which will allow you to resend the invite.

Document Signature Invite Emails

The formatting of the invite emails will vary depending on the signature service. Below is an example of the email for SignNow. Note that there isn't a lot of customization available. We've highlighted the parts that are custom to Rock.

Digital Signature Job

The digital signature feature in Rock relies on a single system job, named Process Signature Documents, to help Rock manage the digital signature process. This job performs three tasks:

1. Sends invites to new group members in a group that requires a signed document.
2. Downloads any signed documents from the service that are still marked as Sent in Rock. The webhook should update the status immediately but the job will double-check its work.
3. The job will also send out reminders for requests that have not been signed. The job has settings that allow you to modify the configuration, but out of the box it will send a reminder every five days until there have been three emails sent (the first invite email counts as one, so a value of 3 represents the initial invite plus two reminders).

Active Directory

Many organizations already have a Microsoft Active Directory (AD) infrastructure in place for their employees to log into the network, email and other resources. Rock can use this as an additional authentication source once configured.

You can setup Rock to use your Active Directory under Admin Tools > Security > Authentication Services > Active Directory

1

Be sure to activate the security service.

2

2. Provide the server name of one of your Active Directory Domain Controllers.

3

3. Configure the AD Domain on the server to authenticate to.

Once the service is configured, you're ready to create logins in Rock. Active Directory logins can't use the normal Rock registration process. Instead you must add the login manually to the user on the Person Profile page.

Facebook Authentication

Password fatigue is a common problem with sites that require registration. In fact, a recent study found that 92% of shoppers abandon a website rather than go through the process of recovering a lost or forgotten password! However, if the website has a social media login option, they are 65% more likely to return. The same study showed that a majority of users prefer Facebook as their credential of choice. Luckily setting up a Rock website to use Facebook authentication is quick and easy. Simply follow these steps.

Now that you've enabled Facebook login, when someone logs in using Facebook they will see a screen similar to the one below that links their Facebook account to your server.

When an individual's Facebook account is used for the first time Rock will apply the following logic to attempt to match the Facebook account to a Rock record.

1. If a person record can be found with the same First Name, Last Name and Email, the login is attached to this record. As an extra bonus, if no photo exists in Rock for this person their photo from Facebook will be added to their record in Rock.
2. If an exact match could not be made, a new Rock record is created using the information from their Facebook account. The record status of this new individual is set to "Pending" so they will show up under the "Pending Individuals" report Tools > Reports > Data Quality > Pending Individuals.

When a user logs in with Facebook, and we create a new person, we will pull following information from Facebook when creating that person:

• First Name
• Last Name
• Email
• Gender

Whenever they log in, we'll also do the following:

1. If person does not have a photo in Rock and they do in Facebook, their Facebook photo will be added to Rock.
2. Their Facebook Media Link will be updated.
3. Any of their friends that have also logged into Rock using Facebook will be added as a Facebook Friend known relationship.

Google Authentication

With the popularity of Gmail, Google authentication is an attractive alternative for many guests. Below are the steps necessary for Rock to use your guests' Google passwords for authentication.

1. Visit console.developers.google.com/start and create a new project for your organization. If you already have a Google Maps API key, then you will want to use that project.
2. On the left hand of the screen expand the APIs and auth menu, click on the Credentials, and at the top of the screen click on OAuth consent screen.
3. Fill out this screen with your organization’s information. The information given here will be presented to your users when they sign in for the first time. A preview of the screen your users will see should be on the righthand side of your screen. You’ll want to include branding that your users will recognize and trust.
4. At the top of the screen click on the Credentials tab then click on the Add Credentials dropdown, select OAuth 2.0 client ID, and then select Web Application.
5. Under Authorized redirect URLs, you'll need to place the full URL of all of the login pages you configure to use Google authentication. For example, http://rock.rocksolidchurch.com/page/3 for the internal site. When you've finished adding URLs click Create.
6. You should be presented with a Client ID and a Client Secret. Note these values and add them to the Google service configuration under Admin Tools > Security > Authentication Services > Google.

Twitter Authentication

Rounding out the list of popular sites to use for authentication, we also support Twitter. The directions below will get you up and running quickly.

1. Visit apps.twitter.com and create a new app for your organization.
2. Give your app a name and a description. This will appear to your users, so make it recognizable. Also put in your organization's forward facing website URL, and in the callback URL field put the URL for your primary login page. This will be overridden but the callback URL field needs to have a value for the authentication service to work (for example: http://rock.rocksolidchurch.com/page/3). Click Create.
3. Navigate to the Keys and Access Tokens tab at the top and note the Consumer Key and Consumer Secret values. Add these to the Twitter service configuration under Admin Tools > Security > Authentication Services > Twitter.
4. In order for your application to connect Rock user accounts to Twitter accounts, you need to request elevated permission for your application to access email information associated with Twitter accounts. You can do this via this link https://support.twitter.com/forms/platform and select the I need access to special permissions option.

Auth0 Integration

Auth0 is a single-sign on service that provides a layer of extensibility to your authentication strategy. Why would you need a service like this? Auth0 solves three primary needs:

1. It allows for a centralized authentication service outside of Rock. For most organizations centralizing their authentication inside of Rock is a great feature. Others, prefer to have all authentication reside in an independent service. This is often desirable if you have several other systems needing shared authentication and you don’t want to write Rock integrations for each.
2. The second scenario where Auth0 makes a lot of sense is enabling social logins. Out of the box Rock supports most of the popular services, but Auth0 supports orders of magnitude more.
3. Finally, if you need passwordless authentication (via SMS, email, etc.) or two-factor authentication Auth0 can provide that for you.

Enough talk, let's get Auth0 configured for Rock. The instructions below assume that you have an Auth0 account with the desired connections and administrative settings pre-configured.

1. The first step is to create a new ‘Client’ in the Auth0 administrator site. Select ‘Clients’ from the left-hand navigation to get started.
2. Give your client a name and select the ‘Regular Web Applications’ option.

   

3. The next screen will show ‘Quick Start’ options. It’s much easier to just fill in the settings so head over to the ‘Settings’ tab. Here you’ll find the ‘Domain’, ‘Client ID’ and ‘Client Secret’. Keep track of these as you’ll need them in the Rock configuration. On this screen you’ll need to provide the following settings:
   • Allowed Callback URLs – This is a list of Rock Login URLS that will be using Auth0. You can provide as many URLs here as you need, separated by a comma.
   • You can also optionally add logos for the connection. This will help the individual logging better understand what's happening.

   

4. Finally, you need to give your client some extra permissions. In the Auth0 manager head over to the APIs link then select the 'Auth0 Management API'. From the tabs at the top select 'Non Interactive Clients'. You should see your client listed here. Be sure that your client is 'Authorized'. Next select the down arrow to authorize specific scopes. You'll need to enable both the 'read:users' and 'read:users_app_metadata' scopes.

   

External Authentication Services

After activating the service in Admin Tools > Secrutiy > Authentication Services, open the login pages you wish to enable the authentication on (/page/207 for External Login and /page/3 for Internal Login), edit the Login Block Property, and turn on Remote Authorization Types for the services that you activated.

Configuring Person Tokens

Person tokens come preconfigured in Rock and can be found in the Global Attributes screen (Admin Tools > General Settings > Global Attributes). There are three Person Token attributes: Person Token Expire Minutes, Person Token Usage Limit, and Person Token Use Legacy Fallback. Click on an attribute to open its configuration settings.

The Person Token Expire Minutes attribute is the length of time the person token is valid, configured in minutes. The default setting is 43200, or 30 days. If you want the person token to be valid for a shorter amount of time, enter the value in minutes in the Person Token Expire Minutes Value field.

The Person Token Usage Limit is the default maximum number of times a person token can be used. By default the value is blank, meaning there is no limit to the number of times the token can be used. If you want to set a limit, enter a numerical value in the Person Token Usage Limit Value screen.

The Person Token Use Legacy Fallback tells Rock whether or not to use pre-v7 legacy person token settings if they come through the system. If the Person Token Use Legacy Fallback Value is set to No, those legacy tokens will be rejected. We recommend keeping the value set to Yes for a few months after updating to v7, just to be on the safe side.

You can also configure and read person tokens using the PersonTokenCreate and PersonTokenRead Lava filters. To learn more about how to use Lava for Person Tokens, see the Lava guide.

Now let’s look at how you put the person tokens to use by impersonating another user.

Impersonating Another Person

Impersonation is enabled in the Bio block settings of the Person Profile page.

To enable impersonation, select Yes in the Enable Impersonation field.

You can configure Rock to automatically take you to a different page when you impersonate someone. Typically you would want to set this to your public Rock site (see note below), but it can be any Rock site/page you desire. You set this page in the Impersonation Start Page dropdown menu.

Once you’ve saved your block settings, you’re ready to impersonate another person. To do this, search for the profile page of the person you want to impersonate, click the Actions button in the upper right corner of the screen, and select Impersonate from the menu options. Rock will take you to the page specified as the Impersonation Start Page, and you’ll now view the site as that person. Keep in mind this means you’ll only be able to see what that person can see based on their security roles and permissions.

Impersonation remains in effect until the browser session ends, you log out of Rock, or you click the Restore button in the admin toolbar at the bottom of the screen.

Phone Numbers

Post-install, Rock is configured to support only US-formatted phone numbers. When only one country is configured, the phone entry field looks like the example below.

This field can easily be adjusted to support other countries. Simply add country specific formatting fields to the Admin Tools > General Settings > Defined Types > Phone Country Code defined type.

Each new entry should have the following values.

• Value: This is the country code that is used when dialing the number
• Description: A short description of the phone formatting pattern
• Match Expression: This is a regular expression that is used to match the value you entered and apply the correct formatting to it. For instance a seven-digit number in the US would match the formatting rule 555-5555 while a 10 digit number would match to (555) 555-5555.
• Formatting Expression: This string is used to apply the formatting to the matched number. Each grouping of numbers is represented by a $#.

Once you add a second country, the phone number field will change a bit in look. You will notice the addition of a country code selection at the beginning of the input. The phone country code listed at the top of the defined type list will become the default country code, so in the screen shown above grab the hamburger grips to the left of each entry and drag them up and down the list as you desire.

Dates & Times

We believe the .Net framework that Rock is built on should handle the formatting of dates and times correctly across regions. If you find an area of Rock that shows a date and/or time in a US format, please let us know by opening a Rock issue. Before opening a request, be sure to check the server's culture setting. This can be found on the ‘System Information’ dialog access from the Admin Toolbox at the bottom of each page.

Currency

There really isn't any magic in Rock’s implementation of local currencies. Behind the scenes, currency is stored simply as a number. You can change the currency symbol displayed within the application under Admin Tools > General Settings > Global Attributes > Currency Symbol.

International Address Support

By default, Rock is set to accept and display US-formatted addresses. For most organizations operating inside the US, this will be the preferred configuration. Enabling support for international addresses is simple and remarkably powerful. Let’s take a look.

School Grades

Rock provides a customizable system for determining the grade/year an individual is in their education. You can read more about how this grade system works in the Person & Family Field Guide.

Strategies for Full Localization

Full localization, including the support for multiple languages, is outside of the scope of the Rock project. However, it is possible for someone to fork Rock's source and localize the code and database contents. If you are interested in starting an internationalized port let us know and we'd be happy to help share your work.

What To Do When Rock Won't Load

You make a configuration change and next thing you know Rock's not loading any longer. What should you do?! First, relax. A calm mind will lead to a quicker resolution while stress might only dig you in deeper. Here are some things you should try first.

SELECT TOP 100 *
  FROM [ExceptionLog]
  ORDER BY [CreatedDateTime] DESC                    
                

Check For Exceptions In The File System Log

When things are so bad that Rock can't even write to the database, we'll write the exception to a comma-delimited file on the web server's file system. The file is located at ~/App_Data/Logs/RockExceptions.csv.

Getting 500 Errors To Display

When all you get back from Rock is a server 500 error, you can modify your web.config to return a more detailed error message.

Two changes will need to be made before a detailed error will be displayed.

1. Immediately after the line <system.web> add a new line with this text <customErrors mode="Off"/>
2. Next you will need to comment out the custom error configuration. To do this, simply edit the existing comment from this:

   <!-- Add a custom handler for 404 errors to load Http404Error page.
   The Http404Error page will check to see if the site has a configured 404 page, and if so, it will then redirect to the custom page.--> 
   <httpErrors errorMode="Custom" existingResponse="Replace">
      <remove statusCode="404" subStatusCode="-1" />
      <error statusCode="404" path="/Http404Error.aspx" responseMode="ExecuteURL" />
   </httpErrors>
                           

   to this:

   <!-- Add a custom handler for 404 errors to load Http404Error page.
   The Http404Error page will check to see if the site has a configured 404 page, and if so, it will then redirect to the custom page.
   <httpErrors errorMode="Custom" existingResponse="Replace">
      <remove statusCode="404" subStatusCode="-1" />
      <error statusCode="404" path="/Http404Error.aspx" responseMode="ExecuteURL" />
   </httpErrors>-->                            
                           

What To Do Next

At this point, you should now have more information about what's going on behind the scenes. Hopefully you can to fix it from here. If not, you might try:

• Posting into the Rock Q&A. Be sure to include any error message you're getting.
• Posting on the Rocket Chat.
• Seeking help from a Rock consultant. You might ask in the Q&A section for a recommendation. We hope to build a rating system for external resources soon.

Caching

Rock uses a very sophisticated and fast caching sub-system. The cache greatly reduces the need to read from the database. Tuning this cache is so important to us that we even show the Cache Hit Ratio in the bottom admin bar. The good news is Rock's cache is VERY fast as it uses the server's memory. Unfortunately, it makes running on multiple servers somewhat difficult. How? Let's walk through an example.

Say you're running two Rock servers, A and B. While connected to server A you make some security edits. These edits are updated in the database and in server A's cache. Unfortunately, the original security settings are also in server B's cache and he has no idea they've been updated. So what's an admin to do? Well, we have you covered!

Redis to the rescue! Redis is a very fast NOSQL database that many large websites use to increase performance. Redis has two features that make it a great solution. The first is the NOSQL database. Many people use the Redis database for caching. The second feature is a messaging system that allows you to publish and receive small messages. Think of it as a chat room of sorts. Because Rock's in-memory cache is so fast, the architects decided not to use the Redis database. Instead, when enabled, Rock servers can use Redis to share when they update or flush their cache. If you think back to the chat room analogy, think of the servers as connecting to the chat room to send messages to each other whenever they update their cache. Pretty simple right?

Let's walk through how you can setup multiple Rock servers.

1. Install a Redis server on your network. Because Rock doesn’t use it for storing cache, it doesn't need to be a beefy server, but it should be reliable and always on. See the Redis for more information on the various server options available. Since Redis is open source, many free options are available. If you’re mainly a Windows shop you should consider using the Microsoft Redis server available at: https://github.com/MSOpenTech/redis/releases. It is recommended that you use the 3.x version of this server.
2. Install your Rock websites. Be sure that the same versions of Rock are installed on each server and that they use the same web.config. Each install of Rock has its own encryption keys located in the web.config. These keys must be the same on each server.
3. OK, we said the web.config files should match… except for one small setting. Be sure that only one of your servers has the RunJobsInIISContext setting set to true. Running the Rock jobs on two servers at once can lead to some interesting (read: bad) situations.
4. To enable the Redis caching notifications you'll need to set the EnableRedisCacheCluster setting to true in the web.config. You'll also need to set the RedisConnectionString to point to your Redis server. An example of this connection string would be redis.rocksolidchurchdemo.com:6379.

Inital Slow Response Times

Here's the scoop on slow initial Rock load times. Rock uses a database access technology called Entity Framework (EF). On first load (the very first page that's started when the application loads) it can take a few seconds for EF to check the database to see if any changes are required. Subsequent pages will load much faster. You will notice that once a page loads the second load of that page is super-fast. That’s Rock’s caching engine kicking it. So that's all fine and good until…

IIS's AppPools (think of it as the engine that powers Rock) need to be refreshed on occasion. By default this happens every 29 hours ( you should reset yours to always occur at a specific time, like 1am). When the AppPool recycles the whole EF start up happens again. For more information on configuring the AppPool see this blog post.

We'd recommend that you use an HTTP status tool like Pingdom to constantly poll your site. Not only will this notify you went it's down, but it will also be the first to load your page after an AppPool recycle.

Once Rock is started there is an internal keep-alive process to ensure your site doesn't go into a sleep-like mode. Once the initial page is loaded this process will ensure that Rock stays awake and responsive.