Continuing on my notes on sessions last week at the International Shelby Convention, today I’m writing about Kyle Brown’s session, “Preventative Maintenance: Tips to Keep your Server Serving You.” Kyle is the owner of Texas-based Innovative Data Solutions.

Some of the key tips Kyle provided in the session are:

• Proactive vs. Reactive. It’s more effective to do preventative maintenance in IT than to wait for things to break. If you take the time to prevent problems from happening, you won’t have to run around putting out fires. It’s less stressful, and cheaper.
• Tips on buying a new server. Kyle has several practical recommendations on buying a new server, all focus on redundancy. Make sure the server is equipped with RAID, dual power supplies, and a good UPS. He also suggests only buying new servers with good warranties, utilizing tape for nightly backups, enabling shadow copies on the volume, and using some sort of disaster recovery backup system.
• Routine Maintenance. Kyle suggests shutting down the server regularly, depending on amount of RAM, in order to fully clear the memory thus increasing system speed. His rule of thumb is for a server with 1 Gb of RAM to shut down every other week and for a server with 2 Gb of RAM to shut down once a month. He also suggests running a drive repair utility upon rebooting the server. (No word as to how often he suggest shutting down machines with more than 2 Gb).
• Software recommendations. Kyle made some recommendations for software utilities.
  1. File Recovery and Repair: OfficeRecovery, OfficeFix, and File Repair.
  2. Un-delete software and Solutions: Active Undelete, EasyRecovery, and WinUndelete.

Overall, a great session from a good man. Kyle seems to view his work as an IT consultant as his calling from God. I feel the same sort of conviction myself, and I’m sure that most of the readers of this blog do as well.

I’m curious what others think about the nightly tape backups. We’ve stopped using tape and are backing up to a NAS on the other side of the building. (I’m also doing off-site Shelby backups as well). Kyle admitted that he is somewhat obsessed about backing data up, and I’ve got to compliment him on that. Since most churches don’t have someone on staff to manage their network and data, they need a contractor who cares about their data just as much as they do.

Just a word of encouragement to churches who are looking for a good IT contractor, make a call to Kyle at IDS or Nick Nicholaou at MBS.

I suppose the secret’s out of the bag. I am trying to persuade my church to transition away from Shelby v5 as I am absolutely convinced that it is not currently serving us as it should. I don’t want to bash Shelby. They are a WONDERFUL company with some absolutely stellar employees. Still, there are some serious limitations in the software that force me to evaluate other options.

Today’s post is by no means an exhaustive evaluation of any Church Management System, but I do want to share some thoughts and discoveries that I have found about Shelby’s Arena and Fellowship One.

Fellowship One (http://www.fellowshiptech.com)		Arena (http://www.arenachms.com)
Originally developed by Fellowship Church Now a product of Fellowship Technologies Commercial launch: Jan. 2004 Over 550 customers		Originally developed by CCV Now a product of Shelby Systems Commercial launch: Aug. 2006 Around 20 customers
Key features Web based Hosted by Fellowship Easy to use and learn Toll-free phone support 6 am - 10 pm CST, 7 days Full CASS certification is in active development Check-in system works well with Terminal Services and thin clients Easy link between Web site and database through Weblink Robust contact management system to ensure that people don’t fall through the cracks. Report library contains thousands of reports, and they’ll create more if you need Many areas are customizable, but there are many hard-coded variables and sections Superior event management capabilities, intimately linked with check-in		Key features Web based Hosted by your church Easy to use and learn Toll-free phone support 7am - 6pm CST, 7 days Full CASS certification is not currently available Check-in system is not recommended for use with Terminal Services Built-in content management system for church Web site Detailed graph of real-time church involvement with fully customizable activity meter. Report library is robust, and you can build more with SQL reporting Application is fully customizable and ships with shared source code If transitioning from Shelby v5, an agent allows you to use v5 and Arena simultaneously
Price (based on TWA of 1,000, highest tier of service) First year: around $18,000 Subsequent years: around $1,000/month Price increases with higher attendance Price includes hosting and bandwidth Includes hardware (database servers) Includes unlimited SMTP (outgoing e-mails) SQL Server included		Price (only one option) First year: around $35,000 Subsequent years: around $1,000/month Price is fixed Price does not include hosting/bandwidth Does not include hardware (database server) Does not include SMTP (outgoing e-mails) Req. SQL Server 2005 (several thous. dollars)

So, what’s the bottom line?
Both systems are well built and production tested. I like the interface of both, and I’m hitting myself for not getting screenshots for you all. Part of the decision is a matter of preference. Where do you want your data? If you want it in-house, and you don’t want to develop your own system, Arena is your choice. You’ll have to have a full-time IT person, a rock-solid network, and some serious bandwidth if you’ll be using it for your church Web site. However, the data is completely within your control and you can do whatever you want with the source code. So, Arena is much more customizable -but- F1 is much more affordable as it includes the IT staff to support your database servers, the servers themselves, the bandwidth, and the secured location. If you’re cool with entrusting your data with someone else, F1 is a great choice.

Currently, F1 has more features. It’s a more robust solution, but it is older than Arena. It’s been around a little longer. My verdict for our church is that without a contact managment system, the inability to connect with check-in through terminal services, the extra steps in approving volunteers, the state of CASS certification, and a few other limitations that Arena is simply not worth the extra cost for us. Also, I’m not too keen on being a pioneer for Shelby’s new venture. I’d rather give them a few years with it to see if they make it better or worse than it is currently.

Your thoughts?

(Thanks to Brett for inspiring this post today.)

One of the most frustrating parts of working with Shelby for me is the lack of options in Selections and Listings. There are so many times that I need information in a report that comes from a different module than the one I am in, and S&L just doesn’t give me the option to include that information. Or, it does have the ability but it’ll just take you 20-minutes to figure out how to get it.

So, in comes ShelbyQUERY. With this, I can run SQL statements on my database, using this helpful tool. It is over the heads of most of our people, and there is a definite learning curve. I have a slight advantage because I’ve done so much web programming using MySQL.

I thought it was so funny that the presenter of this session talked about how the user interface is so much more intuitive in this module than in the rest of Shelby. He’s right - the UI is easier to use and more intuitive here. The real funny part to me was in finding out that Shelby didn’t actually program this module - they license it from another company.

Here are a few helpful pieces of information when using ShelbyQUERY. When filtering data through the module, the wildcard is not an asterisk (*) like in the rest of the software. You can’t filter the Smith’s by using Sm*, instead the wildcard in QUERY is the percent sign (%). So, to filter the Smith’s, use Sm%.

Also when filtering, the question mark (?) is no good, instead it must be substituted with an underscore (_).

Finally, here’s some helpful information in understanding Shelby’s tables. For instance, GlobaFile information is not found in the “GF” table, it’s found in the “NA” table. Here’s the list:

Happy query’ing to you all!

I’ve got to say that I love Nick Nicholaou. He was indeed my favorite part of the Shelby convention last week, and I gained a ton of valuable information from him. Today, here’s some insights from one of his classes.

Here are some of the things that I found noteworthy in Nick’s class:

• Short-term fixes are more costly than long-term strategies. As I try to lead our church to create and approve policies and procedures for IT, I am learning quickly that when you don’t have a plan you end up spending a lot more on technology than you should.
• When possible, avoid wireless networking. Much like abstinence, the easiest way to avoid viruses (and other bad stuff) through a wireless network is to avoid it. If wireless is a necessity for your organization, keep the AP behind the firewall (edit: outside of the firewall, thanks JRob for your comment). Our APs are a horrible example and are a huge risk to our organization. However, since there wasn’t a long-term strategy for wireless, it will be MUCH more expensive to re-cable these devices than it would have when they were installed.
• Standardization. Though not really about new building/expansion, it’s essential to standardize the software, hardware, PDAs, etc that will be used by your church. It is cost-prohibitive to support multiple word processing applications, PDA platforms, and printers. Standardize, and save today.
• Cable specs. When running new cable, go Cat 6. The cable costs more than Cat 5/5e, but it’s more future-proof, though Cat 6a/7 is on the way. Plus, the real cost is in labor, not in the cable.
• Run cable EVERYWHERE. When running cable, run it everywhere. Double the amount of conduit you think you’ll need when at 100% of current needs. Run cable to the platform (stage), to the worship center lobby, all classrooms, custodial office, and even the conference room table (not just the room, the actual table). If you may need it sometime, run it when you’ve already got the labor paid for.

Thanks Nick for a great session!

That’s right, this Wednesday through Friday, I’m at the International Shelby Conference. It’s been a truly interesting couple of days so far. After our “Ask the Programmers” session today, I’ve got lots of good feelings about where Shelby is going. Still, I’m not convinced that it is the right solution for our church.

I’ve been pushing my church leadership to change our Church Management System, and I’ve been met with lots of opposition. See, the bottom line is that I know what we can be and I know how technology can help us get there. What I’ve really enjoyed about this conference is seeing what Shelby is capable of. It is a good suite for many churches. The question still remains to be answered if it is the right solution for our church.

I’ve met a lot of great people this week, including Nick Nicholaou and Jeffrey Thompson. That is the one major benefit of this type of conference: when you get a group of church I.T. people together, solutions start to flow.

I’ll be writing more in coming days of some of the specific ministry insights I’ve gathered from the conference, but they’ll be more ministry focused than I.T. focused.

Bye for now.