***This does require that you have the Workflow Launcher Plugin By Southeast Christian Installed on your version of Rock. It is a Free Plugin.

eRA can be a powerful tool for your staff to identify backdoors in your ministries, places where people drop off and slowly disappear from the Church without your staff ever knowing! Inspired by the team at Church on the Move, we built a process to get a 'Backdoor' connection built that is triggered by changes in eRA status. 

We want to shine a light in the crowd for our staff and show them where they can have relational moments with people who may be going through something or don't feel seen by our church. 

eRA is the Estimated Regular Attender features that come built into Rock. Per the Rock Manuals: "There are actually two recipes for determining an eRA. The first determines how one becomes (enters) an eRA, the other determines how one exits from being an eRA.

Criteria for Becoming an eRA

Have given at least 4 times in 12 months, once being in the last 6 weeks

(or) have attended at least 8 times in the last 16 weeks

Keep in mind that every giving transaction counts toward eRA. So, if a person gave twice last Sunday and twice this Sunday, that counts as 4 transactions and the person will become an eRA." 

and 

"Criteria for Exiting an eRA:

Haven't given in over 8 weeks

(and) have attended less than 8 times in the last 16 weeks

(and) haven't attended at all in the last 4 weeks"

So given that you have solid giving and attendance data, you can use this tool to help give staff a spotlight! 

Here's how we did it: 

1) Build a new connection type called 'Backdoor' or whatever you want to call this process. To do this go to Connections -> click the gear icon -> and hit the plus button. 

2) Build a Connection Request Dataview with the following filters:

• Connection Type is 'Backdoor' 
• Connection State is 'Active' or 'Future Follow Up'

3) Build a Person Dataview with the following filters:

• eRA End Date greater than od equal to current date minus 7
• Not in a Connection Request Dataview (Choose the one you created in step 2)!

This dataview, will give you anyone who potentially has hit a backdoor and doesn't yet have a backdoor connection. 

4) Install the Workflow I have attached!

You will have to make a few changes to make it work:

• There is an action called 'Build Connection Comment' You may want to change this language for your staff, this is the notes that are added to a connection. 
• The most important change you need to make is in the attribute 'eRa Backdoor Connection', you will need to set this to match the new connection type that you have built. 

5) You will now have to connect all the pieces! You will need to add a Job. Go to Admin Tools -> System Settings ->Jobs Administration and then click add! This is where you must have the Workflow Launcher plugin installed. Choose the 'Workflow Launcher (Plugin)' Job Type and set the Person DataView as the Dataview selection and the workflow you installed as the target workflow.  The Cron Expression I use is: 0 0 22 ? * * * This will run every night at 10pm. 

You did it! Once the job runs it will start building connections. Make sure you have default connectors set so that those connections get assigned to staff! Also Staff training on this is super important. Because data is never 100% accurate on church engagement, you don't want your staff taking these connections as 100% true. Upon receiving these connections it would probably be helpful for you staff to do some research on the person's Rock profile to see what all they are participating in to see if contact is necessary. And even then, have the staff reach out and have a conversation that is general and more of a checkin/touchpoint and not "Hey we see you stopped attending."

Some examples of a backdoor connection getting built when a person is actually still attending: 

• The person doesn't have any kids that checkin on a Sunday but are in a group that takes attendance and the group leader stopped taking attendance. So the person is still attending, the leader has just impacted the data. 
• A family has started taking their kids into service with them and stopped checking them into the kids area, so they are still attending but eRA would change to reflect the lack of attendance data.