TechShepherds.com

Google Apps To The Rescue

In addition to the church, we have 7 affiliate ministries.  One of those is our preschool, who had several issues with their email system and Outlook.  The wanted to allow all the teachers to have email addresses in addition to just the administrators.  They also needed to have a calendar to share with the teachers.

In min-April, I moved them to Google Apps.  Currently they use email, calendar, and internal Google-Talk.  It has greatly reduced the number of service calls to our help desk. 

They have fewer than 15 users on the preschool staff.  Has anyone used Google Apps for a user base of over 100?  If so, how is it working for you?

Online Bible Community

I have been using YouVersion.com beta for the past few months.  I am excited about this tool for Bible study and community.  The development team at YouVersion have and continue to make great enhancements.  I highly encourage you to check it out if you have not already.

www.YouVersion.com

Basic Requirement for ChMS

I have been asked a lot lately what the basic requirements should be for a Chruch Management System (ChMS).  While there is a fairly extensive list and it depends upon how each ministry is structured, I do have one basic requirement that has to do with the technology itself. 

The platform should be either SQL or Oracle.  Since Oracle tends to be on the pricy side, then SQL is the way to go.  If the date in the ChMS is truly mission critical, it needs to be on a stable platform. 

So when shopping for/evaluating a ChMS for your church, you can dramtically narrow the list of possibilities down to a handful with this one requirement.

ServiceDesk Plus

I first heard about ServiceDesk Plus from Jason Powell.  I downloaded and installed it in December.  During that month I tested it out by entering service tickets received by via phone.  January 2, 2007, it I introduced our staff to the concept.  While I still have users who call, the majority of the staff have begun using it via the online portal or by sending emails to our help desk email address.  It is great because even those sent via email automatically open a trouble ticket in the system.

You can read more about it over at Jason's blog.  If you are looking for a great help desk system, I highly recomment ManageEngine ServiceDesk Plus.

Version 6.0 coming soon....

One of the neat features in the next version is automated password resets.  You can see the full feature list on their website.

Food Services Inventory Software

Our food services ministry is looking for a great inventory system that integrates with point of sale.  Does anyone have a suggestions?  Thanks in advance.

Cost of Technology vs Cost of Ministry

Terry Storch placed a trackback to my post about Preparing for FellowshipOne that has created some great posts about the cost involved.  I would like to add my two cents to the conversation as I think it goes beyond the cost of F1 to the cost of good technology in general....

Food Pantry and Fellowship One

Jason Powell at Granger Community Church has a great post on his blog about using the Fellowship One to help out at their food pantry.  This is great stuff.  Thanks, Jason, for documenting this for us to see!!!

Read all about it here.

Technology for Less

You may be able to afford that technology after all.  If you are affiliated with a denomination, you may be able to purchase hardware and software at discounted prices.  Some of the items may include:

• phone service
• copiers
• software
• hardware
• projectors
• website solutions
• etc.

Two of the denominations that I have found who offer this to their churches are:

• Southern Baptist Purchasing Alliance
• United Methodists Communications

The items offered are major brands.   When shopping, be sure to compare.

These are just two of the denominations out there.  Does yours offer this type of program?  Leave a comment or drop me an email, and I will be sure to compile and share a more complete list.

Has Tiger Bitten You?

Tiger, MACs new operating system, promises and delivers a lot to their faithful followers.  However, if you are running in a networked environment, you may want to wait for some bugs to be fixed before jumping in the cage with the Tiger.

According to eWeek.com's article "Tiger Bugs Break Networking Software":

Some enterprise networking software developers have discovered that their products are not compatible with Apple Computer Inc.'s new "Tiger" operating system and are recommending that their customers hold off on upgrading to Tiger, Ziff Davis Internet News has learned.

Just a heads up in case you have mission-critical software that may not work with Tiger.  Read the full article below for more details.

[Link]:  eWeek.com article
[Link]:  Apple's Tiger OS

UPDATE:
Good news.  According to eWeek.com...

Apple Computer Inc. has released the first patch to its new "Tiger" operating system, Mac OS X 10.4, with an update that purportedly addresses several of the problems reported by early users of the software. Mac OS X 10.4.1, which can be downloaded either directly from Apple's Web site or via the Software Update system, includes bug fixes for Mail, Address Book, iSync and Safari.

[Link]:  eWeek.com article about the update

Tired of Waiting for PDFs to Load?

PDFs files seem to be one of those can't live with...can't live without solutions.  I like the ability to create a file that cannot be edited by the end user (or at the very least has limited edit ability). 

However, as an end user, I often run across PDF files on web sites take forever to load, even on broadband.  So I was excited when I hear about AcroPDF SpeedUp in the May 2005 issue of Laptop Magazine. 

This is a small and free download that allows you to customize your Adobe Acrobat Reader by telling it how much of the program to load each time you want to read a PDF.  By default, Acrobat Reader loads a lot of features that you don't need for basic PDFs.  Laptop Magazine's test reduced Acrobat's Reader's load time from 10 seconds to 1 second.  My tests have not seen that big on an improvement, but I have noticed a very noticeable increase in speed.

AcroPDF also has a free "SpeedUp" for Photoshop as well as a $69 PDF creator program.  While the SpeedUp programs work in conjunction with Acrobat Reader and Photoshop, the PDF creator program is an economical replacement for Adobe's PDF creator.

Link: PDF SpeedUp
Link: Laptop Magazine
Link: Adobe Acrobat Reader