C3HITS+Status

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December 2010 Update
All IT related tasks since Summer 2010 are now coordinated by C3HUU staff. Please contact ITServe@c3huu.org or finance@c3huu.org.

December 2009 Update
Here is a quick summary of some end of year activities related to C3HUU IT Services:

First, a thank you to all the volunteers for your assistance in 2009. We have a very vibrant online community now thanks to our volunteers, especially Tom Jerdee who keeps an eye and manages the weekly content changes on our main online presence, the C3H Wikispace.

Here is a list of our IT Services volunteers in 2009:

Tom Jerdee Dan Poirier Mike Birenbach Susan McDaniels Pat Smith

{...add more names...}

State of the Office ITS
As of 2009-12-20 the PCs are very stable, knock on wood, if not doing their auto-backups as well as we would like. Staff are reworking their jobs and trying to understand what responsibilities they will bear, including for the PCs that they use daily in their work. Once the roles and responsibilities are better resolved, we'll be able to understand "who is going to to what" in maintaining the C3HUU Office PCs. There is one backup PC sitting in the former Intern Minister office which can be moved to a staff member's desk at a moments notice, so I feel better about not having the monthly access to check up on the PCs that we used to have.

Some closeout stuff in 2009:
The old Snap Server 4100 NAS which sat in the wiring closet had a 2nd hard disk drive fail. The only PCs that had any activity to that NAS were the Office Administrator PC and the Asst DRE PC, both with files from former staff members. The 4 hard disks in that Snap Server are at least 6 years old and with this second failure and the new QNAP TS209 NAS picking up all the load, we've decommissioned the Snap Server and put it on the Recycles.org "available" list. We got the last tape drive and SCSI adapters that we had at C3H a few years ago from Recycles.org, so it seems appropriate to give back. A neighborhood church in Fayettevill has a set of IT classes run out of their back room setup as an instructional lab, so I offered this Snap Server 4100 to them. They are Recycles.org subscribers and interested in an example of a commercial NAS (with 4 drives, RAID-1 & RAID-5 support). If anyone is concerned over this arrangement, let me know before Thursday 24Dec. I was sending this as a holiday gift to the church training lab! Because there is no longer a tape drive (long story, but autoloader finally failed and NO ONE wants to swap tapes out of a tape drive at church!) there has been no offsite rotation of data from a central backup in several years. The last 2009 purchase made was for a small SATA external drive (currently 60GB) to attach to the QNAP NAS and backup important data for rotation offsite. This is one of those Disaster Recovery type activities that no one really wants to think about, but just in case of some damage to a PC and to the backup NAS in the wiring closet, having this device and extra hard disks to stick into it will allow us to rotate data offsite. For now, this SATA external drive is in the firebox in my garage office. Should we put it in the C3HUU safe?

Some things to look forward to in 2010
In 2010, I believe we will have a "front end" web page in place which is more aesthetically pleasing and geared toward providing the kind of information at a glance that visitors and prospective new members seek. With the ever increasing content in the Wikispace, we'll keep that up as well and work to keep the two in synch and referencing one another wherever needed. Also the merge of the two will be something to keep up. There will be some rough spots in the beginning, we'll work it out. It is essential that we maintain a common web presence and insure that the content is in synch, and available for update and management by a team of people. So many congregations have been burned in the past by having web site information only accessible to one key person, so if anything happens to that person the web presence is impacted. Thank you to all the IT Services team for working together on this!

Update to the Church Management System
We have an excellent start on putting in place a Church Management System that our church staff, board, and members can build up rather than being forced into. Our new Congregational Administrator, Andrea, and our new ITS volunteer, Mike Birenbach, are working on ways to make this new service work. We REALLY appreciate the patience of those who have reviewed, sat through training sessions, and tested software over these past 2 years. Finding something to first supplement, then replace a 10 year old sofware package that is integrated into church processes is not easy!

I am looking forward to providing more excellent IT Services for this congregation, and providing a model for other congregational IT Services groups in 2010! Thank you all again for your time and efforts here in 2009!

Best, Mark Mark Smith C3H IT Services Architect http://c3huu.org ITServ@c3huu.org

Overall Goals

 * Lead TJD and UUA wide efforts to align congregation information reporting:
 * ? What are the standards amongst UUA congregations for reporting congregation/district statistics and other information?
 * Create a document of understanding/confidentiality agreement for certain volunteer roles including IT Services roles:
 * ?What do the Treasurer, Canvassing (Stewardship) Committee, Board Chair (or Board members) agree to now that insures church confidential information is treated appropriately?
 * modified proposed C3HUU Confidentiality and Acceptable Use form, reviewed with Church Council newly named "[|IT Services Covenant]"
 * ? Is there a C3HUU document similar to this one? Anyone who works on the C3HUU PCs or Church Management System needs should sign.
 * Review with Board for revision and inclusion as formal policy.
 * Continue to maintain IT Services infrastructure (equipment, software, and network) to allow staff and authorized users ready access to licensed PC software and network services in support of C3HUU mission.
 * [|Estimated budget for 2010 at this online spreadsheet link]

Summary of questions/issues

 * Staff and any authorized ITS users should notify the office manager or ITServe@c3huu.org as soon as any problem or potential problem or issue is uncovered at C3HUU. "Not bothering" someone now may allow a minor problem to grow into a major problem that will take many hours to resolve. Better to know now than later!
 * Lack of consistent volunteer effort outside of core volunteers (Tom J for website; Tom, Eric, and many others for wiki; Mark for all other IT Services. ? What to do to prevent burnout?
 * Ask for perhaps younger volunteers to setup and introduce C3HUU to alternative services (Facebook, Twitter)
 * Began adding tags for more relevant hits from search engines ("Sunday School" for "Religious Education" for instance)

Church Management System (ChMS) software:
see: []
 * SK has all the nice user friendly touches, BUT they finally admitted in early April that much of our current Logos data would have to be re-entered BY HAND, so SK trial is over
 * now pursuing next on the list, PowerChurch Plus (PC+), if you want to get a peek at what this software offers,
 * feature: Palm/Windows Mobile support so you can have information on your congregation in your purse/pocket if you wish!
 * same functions as SK, just not as nice a user front-end or integration with word processor
 * data migration support, PC+ team will migrate Logos data to PC+ for an extra $250 (worth it!)
 * licensed user only training shared via CD! will make copies for those interested.
 * IT Services is leading in order to provide oversight for a well integrated ChMS, volunteer assistants?

Podcasts:

 * we're close now, let's review what we need to do to get this done well and reliably
 * due to recent increase in workload, Mark is catching up on creating and uploading MP3s to the web site, could train someone to do this, volunteers?
 * Another potential task for Young Adult!
 * to do the whole service, would need to cover copyrights, best case is to tie in with campus ministry and use UNC umbrella agreement as Duke Chapel does
 * edit out some anyway: Joys and Concerns, perhaps some "Within these walls", etc
 * to do well, would require separate mics for audio INPUT to be recorded from the sound system which AMPLIFIES the microphone input for the audience
 * really requires a separate process (sometimes separate volunteer) to oversee recording alongside person who is tending the service audio amplification
 * EZ Listening (for hearing impaired) needs to be part of Sound crew concerns for maintenance and appropriate setup. Soundroom crew is now coordinating on this and alternate input for RECORDING services, separate from audio feed for amplification in sanctuary.

Staff PCs and maintenance:

 * anyone who does IT work and has administrative access to PCs, CAN access ANY file on the PC IF they know what they are doing. Some possible ways to keep private information private such as:
 * setting more restrictive permissions and using a Windows Domain setup with the QNAS device (for laptops that are brought into C3HUU, too)
 * password protecting all files that are sensitive (the ChMS will do that for all information posted to it)
 * attempted to have work done by local Intrex service, was absurdly expensive. Reloading XP on a PC cost as much as BUYING a new PC with Windows XP! Then all the other software we use still had to be loaded.
 * Completed documentation of processes, still looking for a volunteer(s) to do this work when a PC goes belly up. Interesting story of last volunteer! (which is why new PC for Marion has been delayed)
 * most major software on C3HUU PCs is self-updating or prompts when updates are available