As Far As I Can Tell

Moving...

2006-11-19T21:52:00.000-07:00

I'm moving this blog over to a TypePad address. Please use the address below in the future:

http://blogs.churchcrosstalk.com/jonedmiston/

Hyperic: Open Source Management Platform

2006-10-30T20:20:00.000-07:00

I stumbled across Hyperic, an open source management tool, while reading ComputerWorld the other day. As I do often, I dog eared the page for later investigation. Tonight I was going through my piles and visted their site. This tool looks like an awesome find! Reading through the capabilites I'm really impressed. I can't wait to get some time to dig into it! The product appears to have a great architecture. They also have a good open source/ support model that gives hope that they'll be around for a while.

As a developer I'm very interested in their cross-platform SIGAR API for agents. I'm thinking some cool Arena functionality could seen in the future replacing the current reliance on WMI (yuk...).

HTML E-mail

2006-10-02T22:12:00.000-07:00

To get any kind of attention in e-mail today you have to be using HTML/CSS. The problem is each e-mail client provides a varying level of support. Below are a few links that provide guidance to ensure your HTML e-mail displays the way you envisioned it.

Screen Capture

2006-09-27T20:55:00.000-07:00

If you're looking for a free screen capture program check-out FastStone Screen Capture. I've been wanting a screen capture utility for a while but never wanted to shell out money for SnagIt. FastStone has most of the features of SnagIt but it's free.

I came across this utility from Chris Tingom on the Brain Fuel blog. I highly recommend his blog. He has great recommendations on both websites and tools.

Great Ad

2006-09-19T22:54:00.000-07:00

For those how missed MinistryCOM... here's a great ad one of the presenters showed. Very funny...

New Creative Activity

2006-09-19T22:18:00.000-07:00

Today we, the Communications Team, did a new project in our staff meeting to help boost our creative juices. We each went through a pile of creative ads and individually answered the following questions, then shared the results with the team.

What is the product?
What is the message?
How did the advertisers creativity in coming up with the message?
How could we use the same process to help promote the church and the value of a relationship with God.

Here's an example:

Product: Land Rovers

Message: With our product you'll be able to learn the back country better than the natives.

Creative Technique: Show a 'learned person' being schooled by a owner of your product. This goes back to a concept of not focusing on 'how your product rocks' but instead 'how you'll rock with our product'.

How we could apply it: OK, these may not fly but you get the point.... Show a member instructing a yoga guru on peace, or a monk on scripture....

What's more important than the initial output of ideas is the creative process that was used by the advertisers. Product -> Attributes of Product -> User better person because of the product attribute. Then, incorporating these processes into our everyday thinking.

We came up with quite a few ideas many of which may turn into actual projects (this is not one of the best, but it's one of the only ones I have in front of me right now...). I'll post more in the coming weeks. If this one sparks an idea, post it in the comments.

It's also important to point out that this process doesn't just help the creative types (i.e. church communications). IT folks can use these same techniques too. I'll post an example of that soon also.

What's Slowing Down Your PC

2006-09-10T21:53:00.000-07:00

Found this interesting post on what makes computers slow down over time. Some findings are pretty basic (i.e. installing 1000 fonts), but some findings are surprising. For instance installing Photoshop CS slows down your system by over 5%. Net 2.0 runtime almost 9%. VMWare Workstation almost 11%.

Read more about the tests and results.

Textures

2006-09-07T21:40:00.000-07:00

Here's a souce for great (free) textures for your next design project.

Texture King

MinistryCOM Slides

2006-09-07T15:05:00.000-07:00

Here are the slides from my MinistryCOM presentation for those who would like a copy.

Download

How Many Copies of Star Wars Do You Own

2006-09-03T22:21:00.000-07:00

I've always thought George Lucas was a genius at getting people to buy what they already have. I mean how many different copies of Star Wars has the guy released (individual movies, trilogy, trilogy THX, trilogy special edition, etc., etc., etc.). It just never stops. Tonight I was looking at samples of the clean up he did to The Empire Strikes Back (pretty cool), when I got to thinking about HD-DVD's. Guess he's got another chance at our walets...

No me.... even though I'm a fan, his Jedi mind tricks won't work on me...

What Will Jesus' Return Be Like

2006-09-01T21:53:00.000-07:00

Very cool video that puts Jesus' return in perspective.

Arena Feedback

2006-08-30T20:11:00.000-07:00

Tony Dye posted more feedback on Arena on his blog. My only comments are that the API is very powerful for those with .Net C# skills and this is only the beginning of Arena. There are so many other features/ideas to incorporate. We certainly have a ton of them at CCV, but I can't wait to see what ideas other churches come up with.

Should be an exciting time!

Questions?

2006-08-17T06:48:00.000-07:00

David's been posting a lot of good details about Arena. Check it out if you missed it. What questions come to your mind with what you've heard so far?

What is Arena?

2006-08-13T17:25:00.000-07:00

Reading through the various Arena posts I can see that perhaps we've never really discussed the scope of what territory Arena covers. I always like the way Tony Dye breaks out ChMS functionality and the diagrams he uses. For now though I'm gonna have to bore you with a plain old list.

What Arena Covers Today:

Membership Management - Basic tracking of membership information (name, phone, etc.)
Ministry Groups - Tracking of who is involved/serving where
Small Group - Who is involved in small groups and automation of the registration process.
Check-in - Probably one of Arena's coolest features is the check-in component which allows for a flexible/themeable interface.
Event Calendar - Provides a event calendar feature that both coordinates the inputing of events as well as their display to the public.
E-mail Communications - Provideds an interface for sending personalized bulk e-mails.
Marketing - Facilitates the promotion of events and announcements both on-line (website) and off-line (bulletin).
Sports - Allows churches to manage their youth and adult sports leagues including the display of schedule information on the public website.
Prayer - Allows for the collection, approval, and praying over requests.
Website - Provides full content management functionality alone with helpful website components like polls, photo albums, classifeds, business directories, etc.
Metrics - Allows for both automated and manual collection and display of church metrics.
Reporting - Provideds a user interface to create custom reports and also reports based on SQL statements.
Phone Campaigns - Allows for the management of calling campaigns to confirm membership information and allow for small group registrations.
IT Assets - Can discover and poll computer inventory information using Active Directory and WMI.
Active Directory Sync - Can sync contact information from Arena to matching Active Directory records.
Administration - Provides very powerful administrative tools to allow you to customize how Arena works for you.
(probably many more that I missed, I'll probably will have to update this over the next few days as people remind me of more features...)

Soon to be completed features:

On-line registration
Contributions

Cool Excel Trick

2006-08-13T09:55:00.000-07:00

Here's a cool little Excel trick I know I'll be using soon.

Link

Church Websites

2006-08-08T16:56:00.000-07:00

Looking for some inspiration for your next website upgrade? Check-out ChurchBeauty.com for some cool looking sites.

David's Got a Blog!

2006-08-07T08:01:00.000-07:00

David, our Senior Developer now has a blog! Check it out for the latest details on Arena.

We're In

2006-08-07T07:59:00.000-07:00

OK... for the last week my wife and two boys have been moving into our new house. Glad that's over! I've also had the joy of painting 1800 feet of the house. Last week was such a busy week that in fact not even the PC has been reconnected. I'm a bit embarrassed by that fact...

More Info on Neighborhood Plans

2006-07-29T17:20:00.000-07:00

I was responding to dstone's request for more info on our neighborhhod plans. Instead of responding using a comment I decided it would be better to make a new post...

We're currently finalizing the plan for a Jan 07 roll-out but right now the thoughts are to sub-divide the 5 mile radius around the church into nieghborhoods by subdivisions (similar in size to the parcel picture below). Each neighborhood will have a one neighborhood leader (some will be staff others proven lay leaders). Each of these neighborhood leaders will have 3 sub leaders. One will be focused on win/outreach (setting up events, motivating members to build relationships), one on training (getting neighbors into small groups), and one on send (getting people invloved in neighborhood or community service projects).

The information system component of the plan will be used to track information about what events are going on in the community and assisting the leaders of the neighborhood coordinate their strategy. The mapping technology will help the leaders see where our membership are within their neighborhood. It can also provide some limited information about those that do not attend the church through the assessor data. We're limiting this data to address and owner name.

Another ministry concept is to garantee that at least one of members builds a relationship with every person in the neighborhood. Based on our size and the initial maps this shouldn't be too hard if we can motivate / inspire our members to the plan. Once a good relationship is built then each member can share the gospel. The system may also be used to help ensure everyone is reached (no one is left behind) and also to ensure that no one is overly bothered if they initially tell us they are not interested in future activities.

Adventures in Asterisk

2006-07-27T19:38:00.000-07:00

We've been fooling around with Asterisk (the open source PBX) after hours. Personally, I'm tried of having to buy expensive proprietary handsets for our current Nortel Option 11c. I'm also not excited about buying a new (and expensive) VoIP system that most likely is not using open protocols (SIP).

To date we've installed Asterisk on an old P3 and connected two VoIP phones (one Linksys and one Polycom). So far so good. I'm impressed with how easy it's been so far (that said connecting two SIP phones isn't that hard). So what's the next step?

Our plan is to install Asterisk on a P4 (doing that as we speak) and work to integrate it with our Nortel through a T1 channel (step by step guide here). The goal is to stop the bleeding on new Nortel handsets by rolling out VoIP phones to IT (aka eating your own dog food).

Right now I see this all as a bit risky so we're moving slowly. But if it works the reward will be worth the extra time (plus it reunites me with my first love Unix well Linux but close enough...)

Asterisk's features are just plain cool. We've even played with a C# interface that could allow us to tie it into our membership system. Phone rings small window appears in lower corner of PC with caller-id and basic member info and next steps. Other features are just too numerious to list...

Thanks for the kick in the pants!

2006-07-26T20:04:00.000-07:00

Thanks Jason for the kick in the pants to get back to blogging!

They moved and they didn't tell you?

2006-07-26T19:49:00.000-07:00

I know it probably never happens at your church, but at ours it happens quite often. Seems as though the church is often the last to know about new addresses. But here's a solution! The post office keeps a database of change of address requests called NCOA (National Change of Address). There are services that allow you to upload your membership names/addresses and they will report back those how have moved (with a forwarding address).

I checked out the process by sending in 13K of our addresses. The results netted 1,300 changed addresses. Cost ~ $50 (yep that's all). The next project (actually probably a few down the list) is to integrate this in with our membership system in some way. For this batch test I used Melissa Data.

Some lessons learned:

Great way to update membership
DO NOT automatically update people's addresses with the new data. I did some scanning and sampling and found a case of a person who did not move (someone else in the house had incorrectly filled out the USPS paperwork) yet was on the report. We're planning on using the info to send a mailing to the new address and ask them to confirm the new address (on-line or return mail).

We can finally announce...

2006-07-26T19:33:00.000-07:00

This week at the NACBA Shelby Systems offically announced that they have purchased CCV's membership system and will roll it out (generally available) as a commerical product starting January 1, 2007. The product will be named Arena. We been working on this deal / project since late December. We're very excited about being able to now talk about it publicly.

This really is a great thing for both CCV and Shelby. For quite some time we've been interested in sharing what we have with other churches but we did not want to take on the support issues. Shelby has a lot of bandwidth in the area of sales, support and development. This really is a great fit.

For more information see the Arena website.

Great Quote

2006-07-26T19:03:00.000-07:00

I love this quote:

“We have a ‘strategic’ plan. It’s called doing things.”
— Herb Kelleher, founder Southwest Airlines

I'm all for planning your work and working your plan, but too many people get so wrapped up about planning or worse yet talking about doing things and then never get anything done!

Parcel Power

2006-07-26T18:46:00.000-07:00

We're in the process of taking our neighborhood small groups to the next level. The outreach ideas that are being generated are very exciting. To support these ministry objectives we're taking our map technology to the next level.

Today we can view our membership using integrated maps in our membership system. The screenshot below shows the current functionality though it doesn't do it justice (you can roll-over the pins for member info and dyamically turn off and on different membership types).

This current functionality is great and has been very helpful, but there are a few limitations as we look to the future. The biggest is that it shows neighborhoods only in terms of our members. What about all the people that do not come to CCV? In many aspects (outreach) they are more important than those coming.

To take this to the next level we've worked with our county assessor's office to purchase GIS parcel maps of the neighborhoods in a 5 mile radius of the church. These maps also come with information about each parcel (address, owners name, etc). Using GIS tools from ESRI we've taken the parcel shapefiles and integrated them with layers of streets (from the department of transportation), school boundaries (from local school districts), water features (again from MDOT), and a few other layers from misc sources. We then matched our membership data to the parcel info and created the map below.

The image above is a screen shot out of ArcView. Shaded parcels represent those of our members and attendees. Using the interface you can select a parcel to get more information (owner, street address, membership info if any). You can also select an area and export a group of parcels for an instant mailing list.

A few quick lessons learned:

GIS data is fairly widely available for very reasonable rate (usually for the cost of duplication)
ESRI tools allow for some great integration with various datasources. They also provide very nice non-profit discounts.
There are some great open-source tools for publishing interactive maps (think AJAX) to the web.
While all this is not necessarily easy, it actually isn't as hard as it all might sound.

Costs of Unskilled Staff

2006-05-14T09:54:00.000-07:00

Found this in today's blog reading... very true:

"Kevin Young, managing director of SkillSoft says: “Our research was sparked by a recent Gartner report which claims that the untrained or under-trained desktop user will cost an organization five times more to support than a well-trained worker. This led us to thinking about how much pressure this must also put on the IT professionals who have to provide such support."

Original Article

C# Version 3.0 Features

2006-03-08T20:28:00.000-07:00

This blog post covers a few of the new features destined for C# 3.0.

Connecting to OpManager's Database

2006-03-05T12:37:00.000-07:00

We're happy users of AdventNet's OpManager product. One of the features I always wished it had was support for MS SQL Server. Recently, they released this as a feature. It's a bit on the expensive side but they have agreed to work with us on the pricing. That said... I'm not sure how much we'll really use it.... especially after I figured out how to open up their MySql database for network wide connectivity. This will allow us to query their database through our custom code... or even Access (yikes...). Anyway, if your interested here's how to change the configuration to allow access (for windows users).

Go to /AdventNet/ME/OpManager/mysql/bin in a command window
Type mysql -P 13306 -u root
This should take you to a mysql> prompt
Type use OpManagerDB;
Then grant all privileges on OpManagerDB.* to root@'192.168.0.0/255.255.0.0';
(note your IP range and subnet may be different. The example above opens it up for all VLANs on our network. Also the single quotes are required as it the ;)

That's it you're done. To connect to it install the MySql ODBC client and create your DSN (be sure to use the port of 13306 and user root w/ no password....)

More additional information:

Information on refining privileges:
http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.0/en/privileges-provided.html

Information on access control:
http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.0/en/connection-access.html

Google Sitemap

2006-03-02T21:04:00.000-07:00

Want to see you're site through the eye's of Google's webcrawler? Checkout Google Sitemap! To achieve the best results be sure to use the verify process. I'm looking forward to adding Sitemap XML technology to our content management system!

Gmail Disk

2006-02-22T19:32:00.000-07:00

Need a 2 gig Internet based storage area? Turn your Gmail account into a drive on your computer. It's a great way to move files from home to work.

galleon.tv

2006-02-19T20:57:00.000-07:00

I love coming across cool toys on the Internet... especially when they're free. Galleon is a utility that turbocharges your Tivo. Bellow are just some of it's features:

ToGo - allows you to send a show from your Tivo to your computer (currently you have to move shows from your PC, on you can send it on from the comfort of your sofa).
Music - allows you to play the music on your PC... but better than that you can access your iTunes playlist and much more (many more features than regular Tivo).
RSS feeds - allows you to read your RSS feeds from your Tivo.
E-mail - Yep... read your e-mail on your TV
And many many more...

If your a Tivo user this is a utility not to pass up.

Adventures in VLANing

2006-02-09T20:01:00.000-07:00

Until recently our network has been a flat single VLAN (well except for our public wireless). With all the new additions we were really starting to stretch at the seams. A few months ago we set about to start a multiple VLAN project. With some help from some very qualified volunteers we landed on 20 different VLANs organized into 8 super networks. The super networks are VLAN categories that are easily to mask (i.e. in blocks of 8 leaving plenty of room for growth). Below are the various super networks and VLANs (represented by bullets) we came up with.

Resources SuperNet

Servers
Printers
DMZ
External Web Hosting
Backup
iSCSI
Internet
Management

Wireless SuperNet

Public
Private

Wired SuperNet

Wired Office
Trusted Wired (private ports)
Public Wired (public ports)

Voice SuperNet

VOIP

Facilities SuperNet

Environmental Units / Control
Security

Applications SuperNet

Check-in Systems/Printers/Registration
Point of Sale

Specialty SuperNet

Media

VPN SuperNet

VPN Users

We used the following criteria in deciding when to create a new VLAN:

Put the problem children in their own VLAN (i.e. printers or anything subject to creating ARP storms)
Resources that required unique security were put on their own VLAN. For example it would be nice to limit Internet surfing from our check-in machines. If they are all on the same VLAN this is easy to accomplish on the firewall.
Resource intensive resources were put on their own VLAN. The best example of this is backup traffic. In our case it will not only have it's own VLAN but also it's own media.
Resources that require high performance were given their own VLANs. In our case we made sure that all of our iSCSI and VOIP will be on it's own VLAN.
Network ports that are in public areas are also mapped to their own VLAN. Again, this is for security reasons.

The core switch in this network is a Dell PowerConnect 6024F layer 3 switch. We upgraded a few of our other switches so that they all support GVRP (used to broadcast out VLAN settings).

Like any plan I'm sure we'll be tweaking this over time. So far the roll-out of this project is going very smoothly.

So True It's Scary...

2006-02-06T22:24:00.000-07:00

Top 10 replies by developers when their programs don't work:

10. 'That's weird...'
9. 'It's never done that before.'
8. 'It worked yesterday.'
7. 'You must have the wrong version.'
6. 'It works, but it hasn't been tested.'
5. 'Somebody must have changed my code.'
4. 'Did you check for a virus?'
3. 'Where were you when the program blew up?'
2. 'Why do you want to do it that way?'

and finally ...

1. 'I thought I fixed that.'

Check-in System Part 5: Application

2006-02-06T19:15:00.000-07:00

Below is the screen flow of the children's check-in portion of our system. Remember from previous posts that the number, flow, and layout of the screens are all controled through an XML file.

Screen 1: Welcome Screen

This is the first screen parents see when they enter the room. Each room has a different theme animal (in this case a zebra). Below the theme animal is the room name, age range of the classroom, current number of kids checked in, and the time. The lion is our ROAR mascot. He's actually a dynamic flash file that when touched (it's a touch screen) roars. The kids love it... the teachers... well...

The parents have two options on this screen. They can scan their barcoded cards or press the "Check-in Using Phone" button.

Screen 2: Child Selector

If more than one child is found in the family for the age range of the classroom the parent is prompted to select which child they are checking in. In most cases there will be only one valid child for the room so this screen is not shown.

Screen 3: Service Time Selector

From this screen parents select which service(s) they wish to check their children in for. At CCV we emphasis worshiping a hour and serving a hour so many select both. If the earlier service has already started then this screen is not displayed. The number and times of the services is configured in the membership system.

Screen 4: Complete

This is the final screen that summarizes the check-in process. For many parents this is the only screen they see after swiping their card (if they are checking in for the later service and only have one child who matches the room).

Optional Screen: Phone Lookup

If the parent does not have their card they can select their family using the phone lookup.

Output:

Below is an example of the three reciepts that are printed. The first reciept shows the label that goes on the child's back. A few notes: The letters 'A' and 'P' signify that their are allergy and potty-training notes for the teacher to lookup. The small 18 in the upper right is the number of times the child has been checked into the system (a way for teachers to give extra encouragement to new visitors). The birthday cake tells the teacher that the child has a birthday coming up this week (the day of week is printed below the cake). These features again helps a large church like CCV feel smaller by helping to form closer relationships.

One thing that can't be shown through this blog are the sound effects and screen transitions. These are subtle but add an extra bit of wow to the app.

Check-in System Part 4: Cards and Codes

2006-02-02T19:36:00.000-07:00

To check-in parents have a choice of using a card containing a barcode which we call the 'Flash Pass' or their phone number. We intentionally did not call our card a check-in card because we want to use it for more than just checking in kids. In a large church to hardest thing to avoid is lines. Currently, our card can be used for check-in and also as a stored credit card (gift card) for our bookstore, coffee bar and cafe. In the future we hope to also use it in our library, volunteer check-in and other uses.

When a new family arrives they are given the registration form below. Once they complete it we enter their names and child ages into the system using a quick entry registration app (all other info is entered in the office during the week) and scan the barcode to link the family to the card. We then tear the registration form off from the cards along the perferation and hand the card portion (with FAQ) back to the family. The registration form has a copy of the barcode on it in case we need it.

The barcode on the card uses the Code 128-A standard. We found this scans much easier than the normal Code 39.

From a marketing and communications perspective we decided to use a picture of our campus. That way everyone is caring a picture of their church around with them in their wallet or keychain. I think this is an awesome idea, and I wish I could take credit for it, but it was our senior pastor's idea...

Check-in System Part 3: Kiosks

2006-02-01T19:42:00.000-07:00

We spent a lot of time researching what hardware platform to run our check-in on. We looked at everything including in-wall PCs, automotive PCs, thin clients, regular PCs, kiosk platforms, Symbol price scanners (they run on a Windows CE platform) and several others. Based on our application requirements we outlined the following needs:

Platform that supported Microsoft .Net
Enough performance to be responsive with screen animations
Touchscreen
Multi-media support (speakers)
Omni-directional barcode scanner - Omni-directional scanners are the same technology in use at grocery stores which allows the barcodes to be read at any angle or orientation (within reason) vs the bi-directional which is the technology in must gun type readers where you need to aim the code into the reader line.
Thermal printer

Another point that we stressed while looking for a platform is that it had to be somewhat innovative. We really didn't want to go with the standard computer w/ monitor and keyboard. In this iPod world people people a lot of emphasis on design and integration. That's not to say we're going to engineer our own unit and find a Chinese manufacture, but the system should be pleasing the eye and have a bit of a WOW factor.

After much time (and I dare say a little stress) we decided on the NCR EasyPoint 42. I ran across these units while shopping at a new Super Walmart. They were being used for the wedding registry and part of the self service checkout. The unit comes with a built in P4 computer, omni-direction barcode scanner, internal speakers, ELO touchscreen, mag stripe reader, motion detector and runs Windows XP. The best thing about these units is that all of the cords are contained inside the unit, only the power and network come out the back (I'm kind of a cord freak, just ask my co-workers).

These units can only be ordered through Instruments and Equipment Company (unless you're Walmart). They were very easy to work with both from a pre-sales and technical support perspective (with a project like this there's always engineering challenges). Based on our quantity they were able to give us a pretty good discount off the list price.

The EasyPoint can be ordered with an integrated thermal printer, but we decided to go with an external network attached Zebra LP 2844-Z printer.

There's cheaper printers out there (Dymo), but the labels for the Zebra are much cheaper. In the end the extra price spent on the unit will make up for itself in 6 months because of the cheaper supplies. The application is written not to care what type of printer is used (it simply prints to a local printer port) so we can change hardware easily in the future.

After four weeks of production use we are very happy with the platform. We're still working on our support procedures to ensure a quick response to an problem (i.e. what to do if a unit dies during services, how to quickly recalibrate screens, etc.) .

Check-in System Part 2: Requirements

2006-01-31T19:42:00.000-07:00

Before launching into the code for our new check-in system we spent a fair amount of time talking to our youth department and researching other systems on the market. We went into the youth department with the standard many-to-many approach (many kiosks all check in for several rooms). After the first meeting our youth department came back to us and said they did not want that but instead wanted one kiosk in each room. At first I admit I was resistant from the hardware cost alone, but their reasoning made sense. At CCV we have several rooms for each age group. The way most parents select a room is to lean in and 1.) look for the teacher they son/daughter likes best and 2.) look for the room where their child's best friend is in. In a large church where building relationships are key, having a machine dictate a room for a child seemed pretty cold. After talking the business administrator into it (with the logic it wasn't hard) we moved on to the coding process. Other requirements we finalized on were:

We wanted a single system that was flexible enough to check-in for children (parent check-in), teens (self-check-in), and adults (for classes and events).
We wanted an UI that we could customize without compiling.
Security codes for checking in and out kids (3 digit numbers to match kids to receipts)
Hardware agnostic (i.e. not tied to a particular barcode scanner or printer)
Be able to check-in using a card with a barcode or using a phone number.
Be smart enough to ask only the questions needed (i.e. if there is only one service time available to check-in for don't ask for a service time)
probably a few more that don't come to mind right now...

In the end we added several features that are not on this lists (many minor things like timing for when a check-in can begin and when it must end, the system will automatically engage and disengage the check-in process based on the internal clock). We also added the ability to have many kiosks check-in for a single room. We'll probably add many-to-many check-in in the next few months as we continue to roll it out in the upper grades.

Check-in System Part 1: Introduction

2006-01-30T21:00:00.000-07:00

Last year we decided to take the plunge and develop our own children's check-in system that integrated into our custom membership system. Our membership system is written in ASP.Net with C#. Our first decision was to write the check-in system as a Windows forms application. We also wanted it to be flexible so that we could use it to also check-in our youth (I'll talk about the differences in another post) and in the future adults (for classes and other events).

What our developer David produced in simple incredible! He always creates great stuff, but this is the crown jewel of internal applications. The software allows us to completly change the interface look, screen layouts, screen flows, printing (one label, 2 labels, n labels, design of the labels, etc.) and sound effects all through a XML file. This XML file is attached the attendence types (childrens, youth, adult training class, etc.) which is attached to locations. When the application starts up you select the attendence type from a list of available types for the room you are in. Which type you choose will decide how the application will look and how it will act. For instance the main screen of the children's check-in looks like this.

While the main screen of the youth check-in looks like this (remember this is the same Windows application, just the look changes).

In future postings I'll discuss:

Some of the ministry requirements that went into the system
The check-in cards that we used
Kiosk technology that we selected
More details about the application
The process of rolling out the system
Reporting features built into the system
Lessons-learned
Future features

MythTV

2006-01-27T22:06:00.000-07:00

I love my Tivo... but this looks cool... (good thing my Tivo doesn't have RSS capabilities like MythTV or it might see this posting...)

MythTV

Standardizing the Desktop

2006-01-27T19:35:00.000-07:00

We've been working hard to better standardize our desktops. All of our 120 desktops are Dell machines running Windows XP and we use Group Policy to control what we can but we want to take it to the next level. Our first step was to redefine our Active Directory OU structure. Before we had created OU's based on our org chart. We've now simplified it to just 'Staff Desktop Users', 'Staff Laptop Users' and 'Volunteers' (at least for user objects). I hope we can remove the desktop vs laptop differences soon.

Another key tool that we've used in our efforts is a product call Policy Maker from Desktop Standard. This tool provides extensions to Group Policy that allows you to standardize many more client features that regular group policy provides. My personal favorite is the ability to standardize folks Outlook signatures. You create a template in desktop standard and it merges the employee fields out of Active Directory for each user. No matter how many times we remind folks that signatures must follow a standard they still apply every font imaginable and use random quotes.

Policy Maker also allows you to move files and folders, modify the client registry, map drives and printers, control any setting in Outlook, Office, the Control Panel, and much much more. Another cool feature is that it allows you to filter settings by group membership, IP subnet, computer type (laptop, desktop), and many more. With this we no longer need OUs that map to our org chart. It also allows us to map printers depending on where you are. So if I'm in the office building (on its own VLAN) I can filter mappings to office printers or if I'm in the worship center I map others.

This functionality has really helped us in our check-in roll-out. Since we put all of our check-in systems in an OU we can now sync the newest code to the units each time the restart (always add new features and fixing minor bugs). It also configures several registry settings to standard the volume level, auto-login user, start-up shortcuts, desktop shortcuts and many other settings that are a pain to configure on each unit.

The only thing I don't like about the product is their licensing model. It's licensed per user at the OU level. Run out of licenses for an OU and in 14 days no custom settings. To update the license you need to send them a new XML license request. They then respond with a new license file you must import. This is a real pain in the beginning when you’re trying to figure the whole thing out. Once you get the hang of it it's not such a big deal. I guess I see their logic in the whole thing, but sometimes you just need to have a bit of trust and hope that the product and simplicity sells you more than you lose (my 2 cents).

Ethereal Saves the Day

2006-01-26T20:40:00.000-07:00

A few weeks ago we ran into some real problems with the network. Very slow ping times, dropped packets, etc. We were in the middle of a huge network upgrade (moving from a single subnet to 15 VLANs) so we assumed a configuration issue was to blame. After checking all the configurations we decided to fire up Ethereal and see what kind of traffic was traveling around. No more than 30 seconds into the trace we found the problem. The new core layer 3 switch was causing an ARP storm looking for (of all things) itself (or to be more precise it's out of band management port).

Before this event I had read quite a bit about Ethereal, but always assumed it would be hard to use. Not true! I found it very intuitive and quite easy to use. If you haven't already add Ethereal to your network toolbox!

Staring Again...

2006-01-26T19:32:00.000-07:00

After a 7 month break I'm back to blogging. The last few months have been some of the busiest of my life. Between taking on the additional role as the Director of Communications, leading a organization identity redesign project, rolling out a custom written children's check-in system, working through a Christmas series promotion plan, and working on a interesting deal with our custom membership system there hasn't been a lot of time for other pursuits (oh I forgot all the playing with my two little boys). I've been meaning to get back to blogging for sometime (I can't wait to share the results and lessons/learned from our projects), but the first post is always the hardest. And so it is complete.

Development Tool of the Year

2005-07-06T19:47:00.000-07:00

How many times you you been coding a business or data layer object and thought... "This is sooo repetitve there must be a better way." Well there is! CodeSmith is a template driven code generation tool. Now don't lose me... I know you heard code generation and are thinking this is some blue sky type of tool, but trust me this is the real deal. With it you can create templates using an ASP.Net like language (it's not limited to generating .Net code an ascii lanaguage is possible). This works best for highly standardized code like business objects and/or data layer objects. This week I downloaded the demo and created templates that read a SQL table and create a matching data layer, business object and all the standard stored procedures needed to do the basic create/reade/update/delete.
For basic objects I can run my templates and I'm off to the UI. Event for intermediate / advanced objects I'm light years ahead by the time I start modifing the code. Using it the past 2 days I bet I've easily saved myself 8-10 hours. This tool is a must for any coder! Check it out now.

Cleaning the Airwaves

2005-07-04T19:50:00.000-07:00

For months we've had two computer to compuert Wi-Fi SSIDs floating around the office. They'd come and go. Here one day, gone another. One was named 'hpsetup', the other 'WLAN-PS'. I didn't pay too much attention to either as you could not connect to them. The other day a friend of mine told me about NetStumbler, a free tool that allows you to pin-point rouge access points (APs). I downloaded it and went hunting. The tool is very cool. You lock into a desired SSID and then walk around. The signal graph constantly rises as you get closer to the AP. We found both in a matter of minutes. Each was a laptop that was configured to connect to the SSID we were searching for. Two minutes at each and the airwaves were clear once more. The office is ready for the new wireless network!