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We're into the process of implementing Provision. Actually, coincidentally, we're doing two different things, each of which has the name Provision!
ProVision CRM is our new MS-CRM based Church Management system (codename PacMan).
Provision Networks is our new TS/Citrix replacement. We've been pretty happy with Citrix for four or five years, but Provision offers some nice alternatives and a very attractive price.
So...anybody confused yet?
"A sense of humor is part of the art of leadership, of getting along with people, of getting things done."
- Dwight D. Eisenhower
MinistryCOM starts on September 13! That date will get here quickly. Although this is technically a Church Communications conference, there will be a lot of Church IT people there, and we have two Church IT events taking place. Are you coming? Now is the time to make that commitment.
Among the people who will be attending: Terry Storch, Jason Powell, Kem Meyer, Dawn Nicole Baldwin, Brad Abare, Shawn Wood, and probably many more who you already know.
Hope to see you in Nashville!
Perimeter staff member Scott Logan is, well, "one of them." We're a PC shop and he's just not a PC person. Well...maybe he is. Here's his first report on using VMWare Fusion on his Mac.
"Mistakes are the usual bridge between inexperience and wisdom."
– Phyllis Theroux
Previously, I mentioned some general ideas for document management. Perimeter's IT team spent a while further brainstorming. Here are some of our ideas and discussions.
Ideas (or "what if" thoughts):
What if we had several different storage areas?
A key item here is to separate "active" files from less-active ones. Perhaps "current" vs. "archive." There may be all kinds of hierarchies within these storage areas: user, shared, restricted, but what really matters is that current documents are separated from inactive/archive documents. If we can isolate the searches, such that a default search is only of the active areas, then the results will tend to be better.
Maybe we could take this current vs. archive one more step and have an "off-line" concept. Files that don't have any conceivable future value, but for whatever reason need to be saved forever, could move to an off-line area, which conceivably could mean fully removed from normal storage. Of course, Dean Lisenby recently suggested why that's such a bad idea. Still, if you could maintain a good index of documents, with excerpts, and you really do have a way to retrieve them, off-line storage might be a viable way to save some disk.
What if we automatically archived or retired documents based on activity?
Having the current, archive, and off-line hierarchies only works if there's a way to get infrequently used, or out-dated documents, out of the current hierarchy. Can that be automated? What if documents that hadn't been accessed for over 14 months, or maybe even a couple of years, were automatically moved from current to archive? Keep in mind, they are still on-line, still searchable, they just aren't in the default search. To search archives takes an extra check-box, or pull-down, or anything that's just one more step. Same idea for off-line: documents that haven't been accessed in years and years don't need to be kept on-line at all. Besides the search advantages of of archive documents, there's also a simplification of backup. You know those documents have been backed up regularly for a long time, and they haven't changed in a long time, so the archive hierarchy doesn't need to be backed up very often. Maybe once a month? maybe even less than that!
Maybe take this a notch further. If an archive document is accessed, give an option to say "return this to 'active' storage." Not sure how important that is, but it's a consideration.
If a document is moved from "current" to "archive," should the document's owner be notified? What if this process was performed once every few months, and each user received a nice list of the documents that were moved? Does that reduce fear of loss, or does it maybe go the other way around and make it seem that a document is on it's way to oblivion? (hopefully it's an confirmation of safety, but I could see people having opposite concerns)
The real win is in searching
Saving space (potentially) is a good thing, simplifying backup is a good thing, but the real win of reorganizing documents is the improvement from searching. Well, at least it should be. What if people really could find the documents they want, easily. Organization is a big step. Teaching people better searching is also a big factor. (learning how to make documents searchable is another topic for another time)
Something that should be easy, but I haven't seen much of yet, is to have a search engine that let's you search within the results of a previous search. How often have you wanted to narrow down a search? Add a few more keywords and it works great. A lot of users don't know how to do that, so changing the results, and asking users if they want to narrow the results, might help people move from "ok" results to very specific results.
We had one more even more radical idea for document management. I'll address that in part 3.
OK, so as not to give it away all at once, I'll just say the initials are MG. Wholistech
We haven't completely given up, but we're pretty much coming to the end of the line on our attempt to fully repair our corrupt SharePoint database.
The bad news (1): The database can be repaired, but it causes a significant loss of data.
The good news (1): We weren't in real production yet. Only some IT stuff was in it. *Most* of that IT stuff still existed elsewhere.
The bad news (2): We don't really know how much was in SharePoint that's not somewhere else, nor do we have a way to determine what was there, so we probably have lost things that we don't, yet, know about.
The good news (2): We sure got to review some of our procedures and find some shortcomings. That's painful good news, but it's still good.
Some Learnings:
Over the past couple of months, we've been working on a major cleanup to our wiring mess. Here are some progress pictures, as well as a chance to "meet" some of the Viant guys.
David Thames proves that IT guys are capable of cleaning:
Richard Dolan, behind the racks. Yes, that probably is an Apple logo on the hat.
This is part of the mess. Does it motivate you?
Richard Dolan and David Thames show why it's important to be tall or have long arms
Ugh!
Brandon Huff was in on the work too.
Making progress
Left or Right -- which looks better?
Even making some good progress on the second rack
Danny Ybarra took the pictures. We'll have to catch him hard at work some time, too.
Jeffrey Thompson at First Baptist has been managing the ITdiscuss mailing list and web site for several years now. A few days ago, during some server reorganization, something went wrong, and the ITdiscuss mailing list went down for a bit. I've been suffering withdrawal symptoms. Well, I'm pleased to report that as of a few hours ago, mail is flowing again.
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