Roundtable update & clean data learnings

Back in January I announced that we were going to start a weekly Roundtable for clients to discuss topics of interest.  The idea was to create a collaborative learning environment for clients and our staff.  We admitted up front that it would be an experiment and that we would be learning as we go.  I thought you might want an update.

In general, conversation between end-users, the support team, and developers is always a good thing.  Looking at problems through three different lenses commits everyone to a position of constant improvement.  Our end-users are getting new ideas and sharpening their ministry effectiveness.  Our support team is getting new perspectives and ideas to help others.  Our developers are developing lists and tweaks to further enhance software useability.  We've already coded several of these. 

Each week we've had 12-18 clients on the Zoom meeting along with 3-4 of our staff team.  The topic of interest to those in the meeting the first 7 weeks was "how to keep your data clean".  We recorded all of these and put them into a podcast format. A summary of each episode is provided along with a chapter list to quickly navigate to specific topics discussed.  Click this button to see it.

Here is a quick summary of related topics from episodes 2-7 that relate to the mundane but important tasks for keeping data as clean and effective as possible.

• Episode 2 - Identifying, Archiving & Deleting People
  • Criteria to identfy people to remove
  • Using an Archive/Delete group
  • Run a report to delete people in the group
• Episode 3 - Merge and Deceased
  • How to use the merge features.
  • How to best handle deceased members.
• Episode 4 - Member Attributes and Groups or Email Lists 
  • How to combine, edit and organize member attributes.
  • How to use First, Goes By, and Legal names.
  • When to use attributes, group or email lists.
• Episode 5 - Church Member Types and Member Settings
  • Why and how to combine church member types.
  • Cleaining up other member settings.
• Episode 6 - Group Profile And Registration Settings
  • How to clean up group profile questions.
  • How to synch rosters and re-use groups.
  • How to organize registration attributes.
• Episode 7 - Group Views And Browse Groups
  • How to use group views as a dashboard and registration summary.
  • Use of other groups features like leader links and notes.
  • Ways to use website integration options and Text-to-Church.

Last Thursday we started a new topic series on using Workflows.  If you want, check out Episode 8 to see how Brad Murphy is using this feature to follow up his digital connection cards and to send out preparation for Easter texts.  

If you can't make it on Thursdays, use the Podcast videos and the Facebook Forum to stay in the loop.  I'll keep circling back to the blog as well to share what we're learning.