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Ask the Right Questions

 
Here are some questions you can ask when deciding if a new page should be created. We'll use the example of a church who wants to track their "Elders".
 
What is my "noun"? This is the thing you want to track.
Elders: Officers of the church who is tasked with specific shepherding responsibilities.
 
What do I know about my noun?
  1. There are nearly 300 elders at any given time in this church.
  2. These are different types of elders.
  3. Each elder is supervised by a “Supervising Elder”.
  4. There is a relationship between elders and the people/families they shepherd.
  5. There is a ministry department that oversees and manages these elders.
  6. Elders serve for terms with defined start and end dates.
  7. Elders can take a sabbatical.
Why do I think it needs to be a separate page?
  1. This is very high priority to the church.
  2. An existing ministry is struggling to manage with existing structures. They have already promised to manage this new page.
  3. There is a lot of special data related to elders that doesn't apply to other groups/group roles:
    • This might imply special helper pages "Lookup Values" like Elder Type. Remember, any dropdowns on your new Elder page need come from another page.
  4. Elders need to be assigned to households: **
    • Note that this implies a foreign key will be added under Households.
    • This implies page views on the households page to help manage the foreign key.
  5. Elders need to submit confidential notes related to their interactions with those they shepherd: **
    • This implies a sub-page called for "Elder Notes" that itself is a main page.
    • If there are two new pages we probably need a new Section called "Elders".
  6. Elders need to be assigned a "Supervising Elder" and this relationship is not easily or clearly expressed right now in the database.
 **In the above list, reasons 4 and 5 are compelling reasons to introduce new data structures
Do I have the correct semantics?
  1. Is "Elders" sufficiently broad for a new page? What about Deacons? Should I call this page "Officers" instead of "Elders"?
  2. Are there other churches that use different terms, but accomplish similar things? Maybe we should talk to Think Ministry. If they have already built reports and tools around a similar semantic, adopting that semantic might save us time and money.
Do I have a plan to get data into this new page?
  1. Initially, migration from existing structures (groups/relationships).
  2. Post launch, the team will add/update.
  3. Long term we need an app for elders to add notes (visits and calls made).
Do I have a plan to change how we currently manage this data?
  1. Simplify the group structure for elders:
    • Only one group is needed so we conform with best practices in MP (having a central list of everyone who is participating/serving/leading in groups).
  2. Cease tracking "Relationships" between elders and the individual contacts they shepherd as soon as we start assigning elders to households.
Do I have a plan to get data out of this page?
  1. Have I mocked up my summary/overview reports?
  2. Can I use existing reports? (e.g., Selected Labels)
  3. Can I use existing core tools? (e.g., Contact Log Tool, Text Messaging Tool)