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Overview - Universal Search
The first thing that you'll need to enable Universal Search is a search provider. All data in Rock is stored in a SQL Server relational database. Relational databases are great for storing and retrieving large amounts of data stored as records, but they're not so great for doing full-text search. Rock's Universal Search feature relies on a different type of software for hosting the search. We currently support two options: Lucene and Elasticsearch. Lucene Provider Lucene is your go-to for universal search because it requires no additional software to use. Just activate and you're done. Elasticsearch Provider Elasticsearch is an open-source search index used by many of the largest websites including Netflix, eBay and the New York Times. It's free to use but does require that you have the ability to install software on your server. We provide a guide to installing Elasticsearch in the appendix of this guide. If Lucene is the recommended provider, you might ask, "Why would I ever need Elasticsearch?" Good question! Elasticsearch allows you to pass the overhead of indexing and searching to another server. It's also the recommended approach if you are running in a clustered environment. For most organizations, however, it is overkill. Understanding How Universal Search Works Rock is made up of numerous types of data called entities. Entities are things like Person, Group, Group Member, etc. Universal Search supports indexing the following entity types (more could be added in the future based on community response). Site Person Group Content Channel Item...
Specifics for Entities - Universal Search
Person The person entity is pretty basic. Once enabled, all individuals in the database will be sent to the index. You can add specific person attributes to be indexed as well (Admin Tools General Settings Person Attributes). When you add/delete attributes to the index, you'll want to run a bulk load on the Person index to ensure they are available right away. Otherwise, you'll need to wait until the bulk re-index happens that night. Don't forget; bulk loading is done from Admin Tools General Settings Universal Search Control Panel. Security Warning Be careful when indexing person attributes because attribute security is not available in Universal Search. Business Businesses don't have their own entity. In Rock business actually share the Person entity (which makes sense when you consider how businesses relate to things like giving). In Universal Search we do break them out, so they look like a separate entity to allow you better filter options (sometimes you want businesses in your results; sometimes you don't) but when it comes to setting up indexing and settings, remember that they share with people. Group When you enable groups to be indexed, you may wonder why nothing is displayed. Before groups are displayed, you'll need to configure which group types you want added to the index. You can configure this with the Group Type Editor (Admin Tools General Settings Group Types). Once you enable a group type, a call will be sent to immediately start bulk updating the groups (no extra steps required...
Communication Templates - Email Template Survival Guide
You'll find that you'll often send the same types of emails over and over. Instead of re-creating the styling over and over it's smart to create email templates as a starting point. Rock comes with a number of ready-to-use templates, but you can create your own as well. A list of available templates is located in the Communication Templates screen, located at Admin Tools Communications Communication Templates. You can also access this screen from your Person Profile screen by clicking Login Status (top right of the page) My Settings Communication Templates. Communication Templates From this screen, you can modify existing templates or create new ones. You can also see which templates work with the Communication Wizard and which work with Rock’s previous communication tool, the Simple Email Editor. Creating a New Communication Template OK, let's get started creating our first email template. For this example we'll create a reusable email template for promoting up-coming events. To create a new template, click the + button in the Communication Templates screen. On the add screen, provide a name and description for your template. Spend a minute describing your template and when it should be used. Also, providing a Template Preview Image will make it easier for you to find the template later. In the Email section, complete the sender and subject fields, and add any attachments you want included in the template. Click Show Additional Fields for more options. Now you're ready to enter in the body of your email. Remember, this...
Using Analytics Source Date - Business Intelligence
Working with the calendar in reporting can be difficult. Different months have different numbers of days, there are leap years to account for and individual weeks can cross months or years. Getting year-over-year or quarter-over-quarter calculations is especially challenging given these factors. That's where the Analytics Source Date table can help. Analytics Source Date Table The Analytics Source Date table ships with Rock and contains a row for every date from about 100 years ago through to about 100 years from now. So whatever date you're looking for, there should be a row in the table for it. Using the different properties of the Analytics Source Date table provides ways to approach dates and date-related data that would be much more complicated, and less performant, if you had to do all these calculations yourself. It's a powerful tool that you'll find yourself using more as you get more familiar with it. Many properties for each date are listed in the table. One that you'll want to be aware of is the DateKey property, which can be used to link the Analytics Source Date table to a variety of other tables throughout Rock. For instance, the MetricValue table has a property called MetricValueDateKey which provides the date associated with a metric value in a format that can be used to join to the Analytics Source Date table's DateKey property. Besides MetricValue, other tables that have a Date Key property you can use to link to Analytics Source Date include: Analytics Tables...
Welcome - Wi-Fi Presence
They say knowing is half the battle. For organizations, keeping track of individual engagement is critical, especially when it comes to knowing when an individual is physically present at a particular campus or site. We may have to infer what their presence at that site means—are they visiting the coffee shop or engaging in an event?—but the fact they’re there means something in terms of engagement. Rock’s Wi-Fi Presence, powered by Front Porch, is a powerful tool in helping determine who is on site. Let’s take a look at how it works. Front Porch Account You'll need to have a Front Porch account set up in order to use Wi-Fi Presence.
Customizing Your Captive Portal - Wi-Fi Presence
Rock ships with sample Captive Portal pages configured out of the box. You can find them under Admin Tools CMS Configuration Pages. These are provided as samples, but feel free to use them as your default pages. If you asked ten people how a Captive Portal should be configured, you’d get ten different answers. Luckily, you should be able to meet each of these goals with the settings available in Rock. For the purpose of discussion, we’ll start with the most heavy-handed approach and work our way down to more permissive configurations. Required Login By adding security to require a login you can, in effect, ensure that you know every individual who is connecting to your network. You could also choose to enable social media authentication, which provides additional information about them. You would still need the Wi-Fi Welcome block to set the MAC address and redirect to the Front Porch service, but all of this would be behind a login. Captive Portal Registration The next approach is to use Rock’s Wi-Fi Welcome block right out of the box. With the default settings, this block looks like the figure below. Captive Portal Block As with all Rock blocks, the styling is totally in your hands and there are a ton of block settings to configure this to your heart’s content. Let’s take a look at each of them. Captive Portal Block Settings 1 Name You can edit the name of the block here. 2 MAC Address Parameter This is the...
Front Porch Concepts - Wi-Fi Presence
While the configuration of Front Porch is outside the scope of this document, it’s important that you understand how their configuration applies to Rock. Let’s look at some of their terms. Zones Zones are defined in Front Porch as one or more access points. This allows you to create areas of your environment that are as large or small as you’d like. Each zone will show as an Interaction Component that Interactions will be assigned to. Sessions A new session is created each time a device comes onto your network. There’s quite a bit of configuration around how sessions are tuned. Let’s take a look at some of them: Minimum Session To Track - This value, in minutes, determines how long a device needs to be on the network in order for a session to be created. This helps keep the drive-bys from becoming a session, which would then be added to Rock. While there’s no right answer, Front Porch recommends making this value be 33-50% of the program event you’d like to track. Session Timeout - The amount of time before a session will timeout for inactivity. Polling Interval - How frequently to process records and (when necessary) poll the Wi-Fi controller for new information. Some Wi-Fi controllers push session data while others require polling. For more information on Front Porch configuration see: https://manager.frontporch.cloud/support.
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...
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...
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....
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 –...
Rock Web Farm - Hyper Scaling Rock RMS
Large organizations soon reach the point where a single server will no longer be able to support peak loads. When this happens, the need for a server cluster becomes evident. Clusters, however, add several unique challenges, and their implementation must be approached with a healthy amount of planning and strategy. The goal of this chapter is to provide an organization with best practices on how to implement a server cluster in a Rock environment and to cover the web farm features built into Rock. Architecting Your Server Cluster Scaling Directions You have two directions when it comes to scaling your environment. Scaling up, sometimes referred to as scaling vertically, means that you increase the size of your server by adding additional CPUs and memory. The other direction is to scale out, commonly described as scaling horizontally, which is to add additional servers to your environment. Scale Up Scale Out Components of a Rock Cluster There are four major components of a Rock cluster. The following diagram outlines these components with further details below. Components of a Rock Cluster 1 Application Gateway The application gateway’s primary job is to direct traffic to the web server cluster. It ensures that requests are load balanced over the various servers in the cluster. It also ensures that if a server goes down, that traffic is re-directed to other servers in the farm. The type and configuration of these gateways will vary depending on your cloud provider. For those using Azure, we recommend using the...
Scheduled Transactions - Rock Solid Finances
Many transactions occur once and then they're done. However, sometimes your guests will want to set up automatic repeating payments that run on a selected schedule (weekly, monthly, etc.). Rock calls these Scheduled Transactions. Administrating Scheduled Transactions You can view all of the scheduled transactions in Rock under Finance Scheduled Transactions. Scheduled Transactions From there you can choose a scheduled transaction to edit. Adding A New Scheduled Transaction Scheduled transactions must be entered from the individual’s Person Profile page. They can also be added by your guests on your external website. Scheduled Transaction Detail 1Status This displays the current status of the scheduled transaction. It is Active in the example, but you may also see values like Canceled, Completed, Failed, Past Due or Paused. 2Details Here are all the details related to this scheduled transaction. 3Change Account Link to change account allocation. This option is available for open batches only. When clicked, Rock displays the current account allocation and allows you the option to add and delete allocations. 4Cancel Schedule Button to cancel the scheduled transaction. Some financial gateways, such as Pay Flow Pro or NMI, allow you to edit scheduled transactions. In such cases, an Edit button is displayed here as well. 5History History of changes and edits to the scheduled transaction. 6Processed Transactions Listing of transactions that have been initiated by the schedule. Personal Profile Scheduled transactions can also be viewed on the individual's Person Profile page under the Contributions tab. See our Person and Family Field Guide...
Contribution Statements - Rock Solid Finances
When it's time to generate contribution statements, we've created some tools to make the process simpler. Since you may need to be able to both email and mail printed statements, the best file format will be a PDF, and we have just the tool for the job. Let's walk through the process of generating PDF statements with our statement generator software. Installing the Statement Generator Software Installing the statement generator software is easy. It does require a Windows machine running Windows 7 or better to run. It will not work with other operating systems. To install, follow the steps below: Download the setup application under Admin Tools Power Tools External Applications Rock Statement Generator. Run the setup. The statement generator setup is a breeze with just three quick screens. Using the Statement Generator Software Once you have it set up, it's pretty simple to operate the statement generator software. Start by launching it and logging in. Users must be a member of one of the groups below to log in with this software: RSR - Finance Administration RSR - Finance Worker RSR - Rock Administration First Time Use Please note that if this is your first time logging in, you'll also be asked for the web address of your Rock server in addition to the Username and Password. Be sure to use HTTPS and not HTTP. Login Screen If you need to change the Rock URL, you can do so from the Statement Generator screen pictured below by clicking the...
Text Giving - Rock Solid Finances
What could be more convenient than texting your financial gift straight from your phone? Text Giving provides a simple process, making giving via text quick and easy. Text Giving As pictured above, all a person needs to do is text the word “give” and then the amount they wish to donate. If they entered the wrong amount, then they can just text "refund" and it will be like the gift never happened. You can customize which keywords a person texts to donate or request a refund. The keywords are case-insensitive, so it doesn’t matter if someone texts “give” or “Give”. Similarly, the person can either add the dollar sign or not. If the amount is in the thousands, they can include the comma ($1,500) or not ($1500). Before a person can start Text Giving, though, they’ll need to register. We’ll walk you through the registration and giving process, and then show you how to set it all up. The Text Giving Experience Below we’ll look at what a person can expect as they go through the Text Giving process. It starts with a one-time registration each person needs to complete (or you can do it for them, more on that later). Going forward they can text a keyword and an amount, to give at the push of a button. Text Giving Registration When a person first texts a giving keyword to your SMS Pipeline they’ll get a response containing a link to the registration page. This is where people go...
Welcome - Designing and Building Websites Using Rock
Rock RMS was conceived and built by web designers and programmers just like you. We understand that you might be a little hesitant about using Rock as your Content Management System (CMS). In fact, many of you are probably thinking that you won't use Rock as a CMS at all. Instead, you're considering integrating it to your current CMS using our REST API. We don't blame you. We thought the same thing years ago when we developed our first relationship management system. But we were wrong. Hopefully, you'll read this entire guide. If you do, we think you'll see the light too. But let's be honest right up front and address some of your top concerns. Your Top Five Concerns with Using Rock as a CMS Rock will never have all the features of my current CMS. Yep, you're right. We'll never be able to have every feature that your current CMS has. Although, they probably don't have every feature we have either. Rock makes creating powerful websites easy. We’ve stolen borrowed the best ideas from the top CMS out there. We've leveraged our years of experience building sites to create tools we’ve always wanted. We'll never be able to find someone who knows Rock; everyone knows xxxxx. We're working hard to establish an ecosystem full of vendors and freelancers who can help you. Not only that, but documentation like this manual makes it simple to quickly bring any web designer vendor up to speed. You should probably hesitate to...
Adding Content to Rock - Designing and Building Websites Using Rock
As you work on your site, you’ll want to add new pages. There are two ways to do this: through your external organization site, or through your internal Rock site. Both methods end in the same result (new pages with blocks and content), you just take different paths to get there. Each approach has its pros and cons. Creating pages from your external site allows you to view the pages as you’re creating them. Creating pages from your internal site allows you to create and configure pages faster as well as to easily see how the new pages fit into the overall site structure. Let’s start by looking at how to add a page from your external site. Adding a Page (External Site) To add a page from your external organization site, follow these steps: Navigate to the parent page that you want the new page to be under. Click the (Child Page) button from the Admin Toolbar. From the Child Page dialog, click the button to add a new page to the list. The Add screen will allow you to provide a name for your page and choose a layout. To configure the page fully you'll need to click on it from the child page list and then click its (Page Properties) button on its Admin Toolbar. Child Pages Dialog Add Page Dialog Adding a Block to a Page (External Site) A small part of your content management duties will be to add and configure blocks on a page....
Managing Content and Pages - Designing and Building Websites Using Rock
The Admin Toolbar is the gateway to a majority of Rock's content management features. This bar is displayed at the bottom of each page that the logged in person has rights to manage. It's always available at the bottom of the page, but it's hidden until you hover over it with your mouse. Admin Toolbar You can find the following buttons/links on the toolbar: - Block Configuration - Page Properties - Child Pages - Page Zones - Page Security - Short Links - Rock Information Page Load Time When we started to plan for Rock, we listed out our high-level goals for the project. One of these was "Speed as a Feature." For us that was more than just words, we wanted it to be real and measurable. One of the first features we added was the page load time in the admin bar. From that moment on speed was put in front of us on every page we loaded. We kept it there, not only as our contract with you, but also so you could measure your custom modifications. Block Configuration Clicking the block configuration button () in the admin toolbar will bring up a fly-out menu over each block on the page. Rolling over these menus will allow you to: Edit Content: This opens the content for the block to be edited and managed. Block Settings: This brings up a dialog that allows you to manage the block settings for the block. Block Security: This item allows you...
HTML Content Block - Designing and Building Websites Using Rock
The HTML Content block is one of the most powerful blocks provided by Rock. As someone who creates and maintains websites, you're going to love it. Let's walk through each of its features in detail. Basic Usage To edit an HTML block, click the icon in the Admin Toolbar at the bottom of the page where the block has been placed. Next, move your cursor over the (Block Fly-out) toolbar and select the (Edit) button. This will bring up the edit modal (shown below). This modal allows you to edit the contents of the HTML. You can also set a date range that the content is valid for. This is great for adding date-sensitive messages. The content will be displayed until, but not on, the second date. HTML Editor HTML Content Block Settings While the default HTML block settings are great for typical usage, you have a ton of extra options that you can use to do some really cool things. Like any block, to get to the settings click the icon in the Admin Toolbar at the bottom of the page and then select the button from the block fly-out menu. This will bring up the block settings dialog. Let’s look at each setting in detail. Editor Mode The HTML editor has two different edit modes: code and WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get). The code editor mode (default) gives you a very powerful and rich code editor that allows you to modify your HTML in a...
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