Streaks Overview - Engagement

Before we get started, you should know we’re not finished with our work on streaks. We’re excited to show you what we have so far, but there are still a lot of features that aren’t quite ready just yet. Still, there’s plenty to see and do, so let’s dive in. Streaks takes attendance data to the next level by helping you find and analyze meaningful engagement patterns. So, what does that mean? Whether or not you’re into sports, you’ve probably heard people refer to a team or a player as being on a ‘winning streak’ or a ‘losing streak’, which just means they’ve won or lost several times consecutively. Streaks in Rock is similar, except we’re talking about attendance or, in a broader sense, engagement. The most basic definition of streaks is that it tells you how many times in a row someone engaged at your organization. But, even though it’s very cool to know that someone is showing up for their 16th straight weekend, that definition is insufficient because there’s a whole lot more Streaks can do.

Streaks Maps - Engagement

To truly understand streaks, you’ll need to understand maps, so that’s where we’ll start. These maps won’t help you navigate the globe, but they will help you navigate streaks like you’re the Magellan of Rock! We’ve already mentioned that streaks are used to find engagement patterns. Maps are what Rock uses to collect and analyze the data needed to find those patterns. There are three kinds of maps: Occurrence: The occurrence map defines when it’s possible to participate in something. This gives a framework for deciding if an individual has been participating regularly or not. After all, how can you tell if someone missed a meeting if you don’t know there was a meeting scheduled? Engagement: The engagement map tells you when an individual has or has not participated in something. In effect, you can think of it as a person’s attendance. However, it’s important to know that the engagement map isn’t just a fancy new name for attendance. The two share many characteristics but are not the same. Exclusion: In school you may have been introduced to the concept of ‘excused’ versus ‘unexcused’ absences. An excused absence is acceptable, but an unexcused absence might have negative consequences. The exclusion map is for tracking excused absences. Exclusions don’t prevent a streak from being positively affected by an attendance, but absences are ignored and don’t cause streaks to be broken. Exclusions can be provided for an individual or a location. Exclusions on locations can be used for events like snow days...

Welcome - Engagement

"Without continual growth and progress, such words as improvement, achievement, and success have no meaning." -Benjamin Franklin The ability to grow and adapt in an ever-changing world is a driving factor behind any successful organization. As individuals we also strive for growth, but you can only go so far on your own. At any level, growth requires engagement. That may sound straightforward on the surface, but successful engagement can be a very complex and long-term undertaking. It’s often better to break up complicated tasks into manageable pieces instead of trying to tackle everything at once. That’s why Rock enables you to approach engagement from different angles using three sets of complimentary tools. With Connections you can move people from being disconnected to being plugged in. With Steps you can lay out a walkable path to the top of the mountain. With Streaks you can monitor engagement patterns. This book will show you how the power of these engagement features can help ensure the growth of your organization and the individuals within it for years to come.

Streak Types - Engagement

The streak type tells the system where and when to look for streaks. For example, do you want to track weekend attendance at the Main Campus since it opened? Or do you want to track small group attendance at the West Campus starting six months ago? All that gets built into the streak type setup. A streak type also contains the people for whom you want to track streaks. To manage your Streak Types, head to People Engagement Streaks. From here you can see streak types you’ve already set up, along with some basic information about each. You can also add or delete streak types. We’ll start by reviewing what you can see on this page. We’ll explain the setup in the next section. Streak Types List 1 Name The name of the streak type is displayed in the first column. 2 Active A checkmark will appear if the streak type is currently active. 3 Frequency The frequency for the streak type (Daily, Weekly, Monthly or Weekly) is shown here for reference. 4 Start Date Every streak type requires a Start Date. The start date plays a major role in calculating streaks, so it’s important to keep track of it. 5 Enrollments The Enrollments count is the number of individuals enrolled in the streak type. Don’t worry if you’re not sure exactly what all of this means yet. What’s important for now is to be familiar with the page in general. We’ll get into the details in the next section....

Add New Streak Type - Engagement

Adding new streak types may look like a simple task because there aren’t a ton of fields. While it’s true that the setup is simple, don’t take it lightly. Before you start, it’s best to have a plan in mind for why and how you want to use the streak type. In this example we’ll be tracking streaks for our “ASU Student Group”, a small group that meets weekly on Saturdays. Everything related to the group has already been set up. In fact, the group is already well-established and has been meeting regularly for a while. They weren’t taking attendance in Rock at first but started a few months ago. With that backdrop in mind, let’s add a new streak type for this group. Add New Streak Type 1 Name Provide a name for the streak type. For our example we’re just using the name of the small group. 2 Active Set the streak type to active or inactive. 3 Description You can optionally provide a description for the streak type. 4 Start Date The start date controls how far back in time the streak type can look for data. In this example we used 8/1/2021, so engagements from July 2021 or earlier won’t be included in these streak calculations. 5 Sync Linked Activity If this is enabled, then additions to a person's attendance or interactions (based on the Linked Activity) will cause a matching update to the person's engagement map. The reverse will also happen, where adding to a...

Streak Type Detail - Engagement

After saving your new streak type, you’ll be brought to the streak type detail page. You can also access this page by clicking on a streak type from the list (see Streak Types). We’ll look closely at the detail block before moving down the page to check out the list block at the bottom. Streak Type Detail Block 1 Streak Type Information Along the left side of the block, you can see most of the settings for the streak type. These are shown for reference. You can edit or delete the streak type using the corresponding buttons at the bottom of the block. 2 Achievements Clicking here takes you to a page where you can view or edit Achievements for the streak type. See the Achievements chapter below for instructions on setting up achievements. 3 Map Editor This button will take you to an edit page that allows you to modify the occurrence map. We’ll explore the map editor in the Occurrence Map Editor section below. 4 Exclusions This button will navigate you to a page that allows you to add location exclusions. We’ll cover the details in the Location Exclusions section. 5 Rebuild Clicking this button deletes streak data and rebuilds it from attendance or interaction records. Because rebuilding deletes data, be sure that's really what you want to do. However, you might want to Rebuild (i.e., build) as part of your initial setup. The impacts of rebuilding a streak type are described in the Streak Type Rebuild section....

Streak Enrollment Detail - Engagement

You can access the Enrollment Detail page either by clicking on an existing person from the enrollment list block, or after manually adding a new person to the list. In the prior section we added Ted Decker with an Enrollment Date of 8/1/2021. After clicking Save we’re brought immediately to Ted’s Enrollment Detail page. Enrollment Detail Page - New Add 1 Enrollment Date The date we selected when adding Ted to the list is shown here for reference. It’s important to remember that every individual in a streak type can have a different enrollment date. 2 Streaks Ted is showing zeros for Current Streak and Longest Streak. That might be fine, but we have group attendance data showing Ted has been participating regularly for months. Ted’s attendance isn’t reflected here because we manually added him and are (at this point) manually maintaining his streak data. 3 Rebuild We mentioned the Rebuild button on the Streak Type page earlier. The button here is very similar. You’ll see what it does in the Individual Rebuild section. 4 Engagement Map Similar to an attendance record, you can use this editor to indicate when an individual has or has not engaged. If you use the Rebuild button, this map will be updated to match Ted’s small group attendance data (see Individual Rebuild). It’s blank now because we’re building Ted’s streak manually (see Manual Tracking). 5 Engagement Exclusion Map Here you can manage exclusion dates for an individual. For excluded dates, absences are ignored and...

Streak Type Rebuild - Engagement

We’ve already covered streak types, but we didn’t go into detail on what happens when you use the Rebuild feature. Now that you’ve seen what rebuilding an individual’s enrollment looks like, you can apply those concepts to rebuilding the streak type. Let’s go back in time to when we first added our new streak type. As a reminder, this is how the page originally looked before we added Ted: New Streak Type 1 Start Date Note the 8/1/2021 start date because it’s about to change. 2 Enrollments There are no enrollments currently. Remember, we’re going back in time to before we manually added Ted, so this is a clean slate. 3 Rebuild We’ll use the rebuild feature to enroll individuals into the streak type according to attendance data. Streak Type Rebuild Occurrence and enrollment map data will be deleted and rebuilt from attendance records if you rebuild the streak type. Any changes you made to the occurrence map or to individuals’ enrollment maps will be lost. After clicking the Rebuild button you’ll notice several changes. Streak Type Rebuild 1 Start Date The rebuild process changed the start date to 3/28/2021. This is the earliest week that attendance data exists for the small group. 2 Enrollments Three people were automatically added to the enrollments list. These individuals were selected because they have attended the small group at least once. 3 Streaks The Current Streak, Longest Streak and Engagements counts are based only on attendance data. 4 Enrollment Date Each person’s enrollment...

Achievements - Engagement

"What you get by achieving your goals is not as important as what you become by achieving your goals." -Henry David Thoreau With Achievements you can define goals that are measured against things like engagement and interaction data. For instance, you may want to recognize when a person has attended services three times in a row in a single month. You could wade through the raw data looking for that kind of pattern, but Achievements will do that for you automatically. Before we jump in too deep let’s define a few terms for you. Achievement Type: Each achievement type represents a specific goal and defines what a person (or any entity) must do to reach that goal. You can have several types of achievements to track different kinds of goals. Achievement Attempt: When a person tries to meet the goal of an achievement type, an achievement attempt is created for the person. Depending on how the achievement type is configured, a person can have one or many attempts. If the achievement type’s goal is to attend services three weeks in a row, then an attempt will be created the first time a person attends a service. Achievement – Successful Attempt: An attempt is successful, and the achievement is earned, if the person meets the conditions of the achievement type. So, if the goal is to attend three services in a row, then the person will have successfully attempted the achievement after they’ve attended their third consecutive service. Closed Attempt –...

Group Attendance - Rock Your Groups

Whether you're following the leadership principle of inspect what you expect or you simply want to keep a pulse on the health of a group, the group attendance feature can simplify the process of gathering participation details of your group members. Configuring a Group for Attendance Before a group can take attendance, its group type must first be configured to enable attendance tracking under Admin Tools General Settings Group Types. From here you should select the group type you'd like to configure check-in for. Under the Attendance / Check-in tab enable the setting Takes Attendance. While this one setting is all you need to enable the attendance features, there are a couple of other settings that help improve the attendance tools: Group Schedule Options: While a group schedule is not required to take attendance, having a schedule will simplify the attendance entry because it will guide the user to enter attendance on those dates when the group meets. Schedule Exclusions: While each group can set its own schedule (including exclusion dates) you may want to set exclusion dates for every group of this type. This is especially helpful when using the simple schedule option where you only specify the day of the week and the start time for a group. Adding these group type schedule exclusions helps to keep email attendance reminders from being sent. Send Attendance Reminder: This checkbox will enable the sending of an attendance reminder email or text message to the group leader the day the group...

Check-in Celebrations - Checking-out Check-in

If you’ve accomplished a goal, you deserve to celebrate it! Check-in celebrations are a recognition the person sees (and hears) when their check-in results in an achievement being earned. This is a great way to track and encourage engagement at your organization. The check-in confirmation screen shows more than just a celebration when an achievement has been earned. The person can also see their history of earned achievements, and their progress toward the next time they will earn an achievement. Let's break down all the information below. Check-in Celebration Screen 1 Celebrations This area shows the achievements that were completed with the current check-in. In this example, Noah Decker’s check-in resulted in two achievements being earned and celebrated. 2 Check-in Confirmation The standard check-in confirmation displays information about the check-in (location, schedule, group, etc.). 3 In Progress Noah has earned a star for each time the achievement’s goal has been met. The last star on the end isn’t filled in because Noah is currently working toward earning that achievement. This happens because the achievement was configured with a Max Accomplishments Allowed set to 10. The screen shows that he has attended six out of the ten weeks needed to get the next star. 4 Earned Achievements The person checking in can see the prior achievements they’ve earned and how many times they’ve been earned (the number of filled in stars). This gives a history of their accomplishments. How a celebration is displayed is built into each check-in theme. Each core...

Connections - Engagement

Many of your organization's strategies are about helping people move from one state to another. Often this movement isn't a straight line, but more of a meandering path. When the path takes an extended period of time it's possible for people to fall through the cracks. This is where the Connections tool comes to our rescue. While workflows can be a great help by connecting people through automated processes, they can quickly become complicated and unwieldy in complex situations. The Connections tools provide a backbone that allows you to build advanced processes. As you'll soon see, workflows still play an important role in Connections but more so as an extension of the foundation instead of the foundation itself. But enough talk... let's see for ourselves what the Connections feature can do.

10,000 Foot View of Connections - Engagement

When we started to work on the Connections features, we were trying to solve a specific problem: connecting people who want to serve. As we progressed through the ideation process, we started to see that this specific problem was really a reoccurring pattern inside of an organization. What we mean is, these features could be used in lots of different ways. With that realization we made the tool to be configurable for many different types of connection processes. Out of the box it's configured for a single Involvement (fancy term for serving) process, but we encourage you to build your own connection processes. You're not on your own, though; we'll show you how later. In most connection processes the goal will be to take a person who wishes to be connected to a high-level Opportunity and walk them through a series of steps or activities until they can be connected to a specific group. This will make more sense if we look at an example. Let's consider the Involvement connection type. Connections Overview Connection Type Remember that you can create as many connection types as you want. Each type should represent a specific organizational process. Connection Opportunities Each connection type can have numerous opportunities. In the involvement type these opportunities would be the high-level ministry areas where someone might be interested in serving (Ushers, Greeters, Parking Lot, Children's, etc.). Connection Requests As people enter the connection process a Connection Request is created. This request could be generated by the individuals...

Working With Requests - Engagement

The connections tools can be found under People Connections. This page gives you an overview of your organization’s Connection Requests, grouped and summarized by each Connection Opportunity and Connection Type. This is typically how you’ll access individual Connection Requests for specific people, which you can view as either cards or in a list format, but we’ll get to that in a bit. First, let’s take a look at the Connections page to see what we have to work with. Request List 1 Color Key Each Connection Opportunity card has colored circles with numbers in them, and this key tells you what those colors mean. Hover your mouse over the circles in the key to see their description. Blue – Assigned to You Yellow – Unassigned Item (not assigned to anyone) Orange – Critical Status (e.g., person has not been contacted) Red - Idle (no activity in a configurable number of days) 2 Connection Type Configuration Click the icon to manage your Connection Types. Rock admins and those in the RSR – Connection Administration security role will have access to this. We’ll talk more about configuring connection types below. 3 Favorites You can “favorite” individual connection opportunities by clicking the star in the top right corner of the opportunity’s card. Favorited opportunities will automatically appear at the top of the page under the Favorites heading, so you don’t have to go hunting for the ones you work with most often. 4 My Active Opportunities If you turn this on, the rest...

Entering New Requests - Engagement

There are three ways to enter new connection requests. Let's look at each one in detail below. Self-Service Rock ships with blocks that allow you to create a self-service entry to the connection process. This has been pre-configured on the external website for the involvement connection type under Connect Serve. Opportunity Search Here you will see the search page for finding involvement opportunities. It allows you to filter by campus and also by various attributes about the opportunity (we'll show you how to configure these below). Selecting an opportunity will display its details. Opportunity Detail From the details page, the guest can then choose to Connect with the opportunity. This action creates a connection request. In the example pictured below, a custom attribute has been added to request "Begin Date" information from the individual. Connection Signup Page Connection Request Attributes To set up attributes for the connection request, go to Admin Tools System Settings Entity Attributes. Add an attribute with an Entity Type of "Connection Request". The attribute's configuration can be used by the signup block to control which attributes will appear. You have different options for controlling this. You can select specific categories to include or exclude. To set up categories for this, navigate to General Settings Attribute Categories and add a category with the Entity Type set to "Connection Request". That category can then be assigned to your connection request attributes, so they can be included or excluded in the signup block's settings. You can also use the...

Configuring Connection Types - Engagement

Out of the box Rock ships with a single connection type for Involvement. But that's just a starting point for all the options within connections. Let's walk through the configuration capabilities of the connections features to see what's possible. Connection Type Configuration The first step is to see a listing of all the connection types that have been configured in the system. You can see this screen by clicking the from the Connections page under People Connections. Connection Type List Selecting a connection type from the list pictured above will display the details for the type as well as a list of all the connection opportunities that have been defined. Connection Type Detail Let's start by looking at the configuration options available for a connection type. Connection Type Edit 1 Basic Configuration The first few items cover the basics like Name, Description, Active/Inactive and an icon for the type. 2 Days Until Request Considered Idle Setting this number determines how the red (idle) colored badges shown in the Connection Requests are totaled. 3 Connection Request Detail Page This setting only applies to older versions of Rock that aren't using the Connection Request Board block. You could use this to specify the page for viewing Connection Request Details for this Connection Type. As of Rock v12 this is no longer needed with the Connection Request Board because viewing Connection Request Details no longer takes you to a different page. 4 Enable Future Follow-up We discussed the future follow-up feature previously. It...

Placement Group Configuration - Engagement

An important part of the connection process is the selection of a group to place the person in when they are connected. The definition of these 'selectable' groups is highly configurable. Knowing all of your options will increase the power of your connections processes. Configuration Let's say for instance that we’d like our Children's connection opportunity to allow placement into three different serving teams. We'd also like the connector to be able to place them into groups as either a Leader or a Member. Finally, if they are a Member of the group, we'd like for the connector to be able to place them with the member status of Active or Pending. That's quite a list of requirements... let’s see how we can configure the Children's opportunity to do just that. You can set up placement groups in the Connection Opportunity configuration screen. Here you'll find a panel for setting placement group options. The screen below shows the configuration for the example given above. Placement Group Configuration 1Placement Group Configuration The first things we configure are the group types, roles and statuses that will be options for our placement groups. 2Group Member Role Next, we configure the one option for the Leader role and the two options for the Member role. 3Group Member Status Note that we configured two different options for the role of Member for the group type of Serving Team. One option allows for the Group Member Status of Active the other for Pending. 4Placement Groups With...

Connection Workflows - Engagement

On their own, the connection features are very powerful. Adding workflows to the mix, though, magnifies what you can do. Let's take a look at how you can set up workflows for your connections. You can define workflows for your requests for the connection type (in which case they will be applied to all requests in all opportunities) or for a specific opportunity. In either case the configuration is the same. Connection Workflows There are two basic items that you'll need to configure: Trigger: This defines when the workflow should be started. The options are: Request Started: Executed when the request is first started. Request Assigned: The workflow will launch when a connector has been assigned to the request. Request Transferred: The workflow will launch when the request has been transferred. Request Connected: Fired when the request is marked as connected. Placement Group Assigned: This workflow will be launched when a placement group is assigned. Status Changed: This workflow is launched when a status change has occurred. You optionally have the ability to limit this trigger to certain pre/post status values. State Changed: Like the status change trigger but this time for state. Activity Added: This trigger will be launched every time an activity is added to a request. You can also filter this to a specific kind of activity. The entity passed to the workflow will be the connection request activity. Manual: This workflow will be added to the request detail screen to allow the connector to manually execute...

First Steps for Steps - Engagement

Whether it’s getting kids to bed at night or getting ready for work in the morning, many areas of our lives require a series of tasks intended to achieve a single goal. Spiritual growth is no exception. With Rock’s help, you can guide your attendees through customized steps along the path of spiritual development. But before we dive too deeply into Steps, let’s take a moment to define a few terms and introduce you to some key features you’ll need to know. A Step Program is made up of individual activities and accomplishments called Step Types. If the goal is to reach the mountain’s summit, then the Step Program is the mountain, and the Step Types are the basecamps on the way to the top. Let’s explore these concepts further by looking at the program for Discipleship, which is available right out of the box. Once you understand this program, you’ll be able to change it or create an entirely new program to measure anything from your students’ spiritual growth to your volunteers’ progress through training programs, and more. Steps You can access your step programs under: People Engagement Steps. This is also where you’ll go to create new programs, which we’ll cover later in the Editing Step Programs section. Steps Page 1 Name The name of the step program. 2 Category Categories are a great way to group and organize your programs. You can view and manage step program categories from Admin Tools System Settings Category Manager using the...

Next Steps for Steps - Engagement

Now that we’re more familiar with the concepts of step types, step programs and step entry, we're ready to see how it all gets maintained. We'll start at the program level, and then move on to setting up individual step types. Editing Step Programs Let’s go back to the Step Program page to see how we can edit our programs. Clicking the Edit button lets you update the program and its configurable settings. Edit Step Program 1 Name Provide the name of the program. 2 Active Set the program to active or inactive. 3 Description Add a meaningful description of the program. 4 Icon CSS Class Choose the CSS icon to use for the program. 5 Default List View Select either Cards or Grid as the default layout for viewing Steps on the Person Profile page (see the Default List View section below for full details). 6 Category Categories help to group your related programs. You can view and manage step program categories from Admin Tools System Settings Category Manager using the Step Program entity type. 7 Step Type Attributes This is where you can create attributes that will be applied to each Step Type associated with this Program. These can be seen and edited when editing the Step Type. 8 Statuses This is where you'll set the different statuses, like 'In Progress' or 'Complete' for the program. We'll discuss this area in detail below. 9 Workflows Workflows and Step Programs are a powerful combination. We'll go into details on...