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Wep App Summit

Last week two colleagues and I had the pleasure of attending UIE's Web App summit in Newport Beach, CA. Newport Beach is beautiful and the weather was awesome, but the important thing was our exposure to concepts and procedures that will help improve the customer experience of our applications.

We also made numerous contacts who are experts in fields such as usability testing, web site accessibility, web standards, and design. We'll be enlisting the aid of these folks as we move forward.

My favorite session was "Wireframing and Prototyping for Highly Interactive Web Apps". This was a discussion of an iterative design approach where usability testing of prototypes occurs during the design process. This allows for a more complete, user tested set of program specifications to be developed before programmers ever touch the solution. We are already doing something like this, but techniques learned in the session will enable even more granularity in our design verification process.

Our goal is to create applications that are easy to navigate, engaging, look good, and yes, are fun to use. Events like the 2009 WAS will help us achieve that.

A little background on UIE(Taken from their web site: http://www.uie.com/):

User Interface Engineering is a leading research, training, and consulting firm specializing in web site and product usability. Every year, Jared M. Spool and his team of researchers oversee the User Interface Conference, a three-day event covering the biggest issues in the world of design, and the annual UIE Web App Summit, a four-day event examining the world's best web applications.

If you work in design in any capacity, I encourage you to subscribe to the UIETips Newsletter: http://www.uie.com/uietips/

New Checkpoint Features Available

An ACS Revision is now available for downloading, ACS version 10.2.1.2. This revision includes several new features for ACS Checkpoint.

• We’ve added the ability to check in to any roster group being offered during that session, not just roster groups that you have previously joined. For example, if individuals don’t belong to a group, they can add themselves to one when checking in, and those individuals who are already on a group’s roster can select Move to change their roster. We have added an option in setup that allows you to control this new feature. To enable this option, select Display Options for Adding to Groups in the Setup window.

• You can now copy an individual’s barcode in Checkpoint using fewer steps and without having access to the Add/Edit Individual window in ACS People. When in the Check In/Out window, right-click on the individual under Individuals and click Copy barcode to clipboard.

• We’ve improved the process for One-time Visitor check in. If checking into a single session, the badge automatically prints after you select the roster. If you are checking the person into multiple sessions, you can select which sessions need to receive a badge and the default is to receive a badge for all sessions. These new screen defaults should lessen the opportunity to close the add visitor window without printing a badge.

This revision also includes enhancements for General Ledger, Small Groups, and Organization bulk mailing. Corrections for both the People and Financial suites are included too. Check out the complete release notes from our revision web page.

ExtendPlatform Correction Release

Just a quick note to let everyone know there will be an Extend Correction Release next Thursday, April 2, 2009 at 6:00pm EST. The admin portion of Extend will not be available for up to an hour. As always, the presentation portion will be available.

While the main focus of this revision is to migrate to a new SQL server cluster, we do plan to make a few corrections. The migration to the new SQL server cluster will help with future releases and updates.

The following corrections are planned for the revision:

• Calendar Events — Apostrophes no longer cause issues when saving.
• Forms — Zero byte files are no longer created when building cache for a specific form function.
• Modify Date when Articles are Updated — Dates are saved in the proper format when an article is updated.
• Links Tab in Article Manager — An extra slash is no longer generated when creating a Web link.

Safeguard

I have a two year old son. My family lives in Texas, and this weekend I am visiting them. My mom and I are taking a little trip, and my Dad and his wife are keeping my son. A few weeks ago when planning things, my Dad tells me they have a prior commitment for Saturday night that they need to attend. He tells me that it is not a problem, they will get a sitter. I hear myself say before I realize it, "You know, we don't just let anyone keep him. I'm not sure I'm okay with that." I think my father and I were both suprised how quickly and strongly those words came out of my mouth! Am I an over protective mother? Maybe. Or maybe not.

Child safety is a hot topic today. Our children can not be trusted with just anyone. That means they are not necessarily in safe in environment that we would previously consider. In Version 10.0 of ACS a Safeguard tab was released in People. This allows you to store information on every individual in the church involving your safety procedures. You can store where someone is in the process - Paperwork, training, background check, etc. - as well as their actual access levels - Have a Key, Work with Children, Drive the Van. The statuses can be set up to best fulfill your needs and the level of security you have around the tab. You may want a "Yes/No" listing instead of "Pass/Fail/Pending" depending on the item. There is a comments field available with a separate security bit around it to store more information.

In addition to being able to store the information on the Safeguard tab, the ability to request integrated Background Checks has been released. ACS Technologies has partnered with Secure Search to offer a variety of reports. For more information and to sign up, please see http://www.acstechnologies.com/backgroundchecks. When you request a background check for an individual, it communicates the data that is stored in ACS (First Name, Last Name, DOB, SSN) if it exists in to the application so that it does not have to be re-entered. The report is selected, processed, and then stored in the application for reviewing. Comments can be entered beside the report for future reference. Anytime you need to look at the report, it can be accessed through the button on the Safeguard tab. If you have a group of individuals you need to run reports for, you can also request reports through a batch request. From the Search screen, there is now an option to request Background Checks.

So, we worked it out so that a relative is keeping my son on Saturday night. So, he is in safe hands. Are the children of your church? Check out the new Safeguard.

Let's Go Workshops

In the last month ACS Technologies has sponsored two events we call Let's Go Workshops. These are events where customers are invited to meet with folks from our implementation and development teams to get hands on help on a selected topic and to hold one on one dialogs on any issue or question related to ACS. It's an informal setting with lunch provided.

The past two events were focused on getting started with Small Groups in Access ACS. The events seemed to be very helpful to the folks that attended and they were extremely helpful to the development staff that attended.

The event was great, but the trip to Atlanta was tricky:

From a development point of view the opportunity to watch users work without applications in invaluable.

Travis Tinker, a Senior Software Developer at ACS had this to say about the experience:

"The focus of this event was Small Groups, and being one of the developers I was invited to help in the workshop...The workshop was very informative for me as well as our clients. It helped us identify some areas that may need improvement, and we also could discuss some possible enhancements directly with our end users. Overall it was a very enjoyable experience, and I would encourage anyone to try to attend a Let’s Go Workshop when possible."

Teagan Kennedy, a Senior Software Tester commented:

"It was great to get out and see how people were using the software. I sat with one person for three hours, she had a list of things that she wanted to see AccessACS do. For the most part we had what she needed. Sitting with this client did show me areas that could cause confusion for staff that were just handed a login and told her go for it ."

Jamey McElveen, Senior Software Architect stated:

"I ate lunch with two individuals at the sponsoring church and then spent a good bit of the afternoon with them. Seeing how they use our designs, helped me think of numerous ways we can improve the user experience of our apps. I was also able to answer in depth questions on the best ways to setup Facility Scheduler and discuss new features coming down the pike."

We all highly recommend the workshops. The next event is being held at White's Chapel in Southlake, TX on April 21. Currently there is no fee for the event! The link for registering is www.acstechnologies.com/company/letsgo.

So come on and hang out with ACS Development.

Small Group attendance e-mail notification

Tired of nagging people? Let us do it for you!!

Ok, you figured out how you want your small group structured and you’ve got awesome leaders to teach and disciple, but who came to the meeting and when? Your leader knows, but they forgot to mark attendance so you don’t get the full picture of how things went. So, being the super Small Group Pastor you are, you make a schedule of who meets during the week. You have the leaders’ e-mail addresses, but it’s a hassle to try and send e-mails just to the leaders that meet that day. Well have no fear; we can do the work for you!

With Access ACS Small Group Attendance Notifications you can automatically send out professional, customizable e-mails to your leaders when their groups meet. The small group leader can then click on a link in the e-mail and be directed to the page to mark their group attendance without any hassle. WOW!!! Just a few clicks and you have your stats, no more hunting time schedules or e-mail addresses.