SK+Training+Report

toc Index of C3HUU SK wiki pages:
 * C3HUU SK main page
 * C3HUU SK User Guide
 * C3HUU SK Planning
 * C3HUU SK Users
 * C3HUU SK Web Training (here)

Trip Report on SK Classroom Training in NC 1Q2009

Summary
Servant Keeper (SK) features were summarized during a 3 hour morning session and covered in a second, more detailed 3 hour afternoon session in Greensboro on Wed 25March2009. The morning session gave a 20min overview of why use Church Management Software, especially SK, while the afternoon session had a guided tour of the major functions in SK. The morning session served as a marketing lead to sell the software at discounts that were the same as offered to C3HUU after an online introductory session earlier in March. Several questions were raised by C3HUU staff and volunteers during both sessions, all were answered leaving us with an overall impression that the SK team may indeed have a product that can meet our church's requirements. Some issues remain and are summarized at the bottom of this trip report.

Introduction to SK Session, morning
The morning session included a bit of a devotional and hymn, then after a 15 minute introduction to the //**WHY**// install and setup a Church Management System (ChMS), the leader, Bill, went through a rapidly paced tour of Servant Keeper (SK) major features. This session included about 50 people drawn from all over the Triad and Triangle areas of NC including many from Durham as well as two Chapel Hill (Mark S + one other not from C3HUU). The morning session included 3 marketing segments where the SK programs, special bundles, and reduced price deals with partner companies were featured. By contrast, the afternoon session only had one such marketing pitch just before the mid-session break.

SK Training Session, afternoon
The morning session covered much of the same material as the afternoon session, but in the afternoon there was much more attention to the answering questions in detail from attendees who paid for this sesson. About 32 people joined the afternoon session, where there was only one person who stayed for both sessions (MS). The trainer, Mike, covered these major topics in much more detail:
 * 1) Administration Manager
 * User ID and Password setup
 * Database optimization and Backups
 * Grade school promotion processes
 * 1) Membership Manager
 * Main List
 * Groups Keeper
 * SK Writer
 * 1) Contribution Manager
 * Setting up contributions and Contribution Entry
 * Posting Contributions
 * Contribution Statements
 * Operations on Contributions
 * Contribution Reports
 * Posting and adjusting Contributions

Many of the questions asked by the attendees focussed on the integration of the [|Contribution Manager] functions with the [|Membership Manager]. Unfortunately, neither session allowed enough time to cover [|Contribution Manager] in as much detail as the [|Membership Manager] functions. There are separate 2 hour web seminars available on each of these pieces of SK. There was a lot of time spent noting many ways to use the well integrated [|"Groups Keeper"] ([|SK Group Keeper Help File]) which supports very flexible definition of groups of members based on sorting and selecting families and individuals in the database.

The search feature allows one to create these groups out of the common attributes among people. The groups are are setup by selecting combinations of information on the interests, skills, status (member, visitor, many other levels of each), location, history of service, volunteer activity, and many user defined attributes of the people or families defined in the SK database. There are over two dozen built-in report formats with extensive collection of reports available in a report library available as an upgrade.

During the afternoon session, the trainer acknowledged that VFP (Visual FoxPro) is the programming environment used to develop Servant Keeper. The SK development team does not advertise that VFP is used to build SK anywhere on their web site. Only during demonstration when an error message included reference to "VFP6R.DLL", a Visual FoxPro error module, did the instructor acknowledge that FoxPro is the base. Several entries were logged in the SK user support forum on the future of Visual FoxPro in SK development and responses note that [|Microsoft has extended support to 2015], so no SK customers are in imminent risk of loss of support. The C3HUU evaluation team is disappointed to learn that FoxPro is the base of this and most of the other network compatible ChMS packages in this price range given our experiences a few years ago with Logos support. At the time we were told were told repeatedly that problems with Logos were due to FoxPro problems, Logos shipped us new CDs and left it as our problem to resolve by installing new FoxPro run-time modules. Eventually major Service Packs of Windows did fix the problems, but it took years!

Not enough time was given to coverage of:
 * Importing data from other Church Management Software (ChMS)
 * Integration of SK [|Contribution Manager with contribution data imported from other ChMS formats]
 * Extending SK function via 3rd party software

Followup Issues

 * 1) Export of Logos II data and import into SK didn't pull in contribution data, a separate step is required
 * This is a Logos issue: all data export to other than Logos must be using the "Print..." functions to CSV or Excel formats. Membership export was very straightforward, but the Contributions export did NOT include all data available on individuals and families from the Membership module. So we are faced with a problem of joining contribution and family information using without understanding what SK defines as a Family number or Member number.
 * 1) Insuring that the equivalent of current C3HUU report formats can be created in SK
 * 2) Commitment from [|Microsoft] and SK on the VFP platform or a migration strategy noting what will replace VFP and when. Microsoft has released updates and agreed to support through to 2012, but we had HORRIBLE support experiences with a prior ChMS which was based on FoxPro (Logos II). Migrating to SQLlite or MySQL (both of which are cross-platform, Mac, Windows, Linux)
 * 3) Add checkbox for address to be kept "unlisted" and treated as unlisted e-mail and phone numbers are treated
 * 4) Add a report for Background Check SK user can generate to fill in extra data (such as SSN) that isn't input into SK and send to the background check agency of our choice (at present SK has one vendor relationship for single click Background Check)
 * 5) Support alternate fields in addition to "e-mail" and "website", perhaps with drop down instead of finite number of fields, so could drop down with "http://", "https://", "mailto:", "ftp://", et al.
 * 6) Option for more detail audit trail logging, log all edits to any record for debug or special case such as end-of-year or end of quarter close of books or where a PC crashes. Include more information when data is imported in the log file.