Using Google Apps to Create Forms

Posted on August 9, 2010 by paschott

Your church needs to figure out how well they’re doing with their Big Event. They need a survey for attendees to fill out and they need it as soon as possible. What do you do?  If you have a Google Apps account or even just a regular Google account, you can create a Form in Google to store and later analyze responses. Of course, it’s never that easy, right? Let’s look at what’s involved.

1. Decide the Purpose For and Design a Draft of Your Form – This is often overlooked. If you don’t have a good purpose or design for your form, you’re going to get poor results. Having worked in a position responsible for creating meaningful surveys and extracting useful information from those results, I can’t stress this point enough. Design your form. What do you want it to do? What information do you need? What information will you extract? A registration form should collect Names, Email, Phone, perhaps Ages, Allergies, Contact Information, and other information relating to the event.  A questionnaire may not need a name, but should include some rankings on items that you want to analyze. Perhaps you want to know if people enjoyed themselves or felt safe, how long did they stay, what did they enjoy the most. Where possible, use a predetermined set of criteria – numbers for rankings or a defined set of choices. It will make getting the information back much easier. Once you’ve done the first pass on paper, run it by other people. Often they’ll suggest things that you may not have considered. Edit your form requirements until you’re satisfied.
2. Create and Edit a Form – Log in to your Google Docs account or perhaps your Church’s Google Apps account.  (You do have a Google Apps account, right?)  Most people want to start with creating. While it may be helpful to see your form taking shape, this should still be considered as part of step 1.
   1. Create a New Form from their menu. Add a meaningful title and a description if appropriate.
   2. Add your questions or response items. Don’t forget to make them required or not required according to your design.
   3. Add Section Headers or Page Breaks to group items or to allow people to skip to certain pages of your form.
   4. Change the Theme of the form if you want a different look using the “Theme” button. Some themes may work better than others on your site.
   5. Preview the form with the link at the bottom of the page as you go. Make sure that your form seems to have the correct flow and behavior.
   6. Don’t forget about your response. If you want to give people a link to another web site or perhaps a different Thank You message, edit that response in the “More Actions” dropdown.
3. Have others review the draft form – Have other people you trust look over your form. Have them fill it out. Look at the results. Adjust ordering or required fields. Add values if some are missing. Check spelling. Give them the link to the published form so they can try it out themselves. If they can use different browsers, that can only help.
4. Edit Your Form – Now that you’ve got feedback, edit the form as needed with the recommendations. Repeat steps 2-4 until you have no more changes to make.
5. Email On Submission – If you want to be notified on new form submissions, you’ll need to view the Spreadsheet behind the form. On the Form Design page, choose to “See responses” and choose the “Spreadsheet” option. This will take you to the underlying spreadsheet. Choose the “Tools” menu, then choose the “Notification Rules” item. This will enable you to receive e-mails for any of the events that happen. Sadly, this does not allow you to select a group of people at this time. For that, you’ll need to set up a rule of some sort to forward those messages to others. However, it can be useful to know if you’re getting form submissions or if people are changing other parts of the spreadsheet. This is an optional step, but if you want to be notified when people use your form, this is an easy way to receive notifications.
6. Share the Spreadsheet Containing the Responses – Of course, you’re rarely the only one who wants to see what’s going on. To share the spreadsheet, look on the upper right corner of the spreadsheet for the “Share” button.  Click that and add people as viewers, editors, or whatever role is needed for those people. Giving people access to the data behind the form will let them see what’s going on and allow them to analyze the submissions as well.
7. Publish the Form – More than likely you won’t e-mail a link to your form to everyone you want to use it. You’ll want to put it on your website somewhere.  To get the code to put on your website, click the “More Actions” button and choose “Embed”.  You’ll be given a somewhat long string of HTML.  Put that in the HTML of the desired page on your website and you’ll have the form ready to go.  If the form is not the desired size, you can easily adjust the “width” and “height” values in the code you’re given.  You can’t adjust the size or position of any of the elements within that link through native code.  (You may be able to do it with some undocumented tricks but I wouldn’t rely on them long-term as they could stop working if Google changes something.)    Publishing may not be allowed in all scenarios, such as putting this directly into a Rich Text Editor, but a lot of CMS’ have some way to insert pure HTML. If you’re not sure how to accomplish inserting the HTML, ask your web people for some help.
8. Analyze the Results – Finally, you want to see the results.  I’ve found that Google’s forms do really well in this area. In your Docs you have the spreadsheet that drives the form. Open the spreadsheet.  You’ll probably see a bunch of data by default. However, since this was generated by a form, you can also choose the “Form” menu to “Show a Summary of Responses”. This is a great way to see trends, averages, highs, lows, combinations of selections, and other useful information.  If this was just used for recording registrations, you may not need this and can work with the data. However, if you collected feedback for events, Google’s forms solution shows you a lot of data about your forms without having to do much.  Incidentally, this menu also allows you to close the form to new responses, edit the form, or delete the form if it’s no longer in use.  You can always download this to your local spreadsheet if you want to do further analysis or more detailed analysis beyond what Google provides.

Well, maybe it was that easy after all. With a little time to become familiar with the process, you can create a form and publish it in minutes rather than days. No learning new programming languages. No fees. No limitations on the number of items on your form. Just add your items, save it, and embed the form on your site.

I’ve used Google’s Forms to register people for an event quickly and easily, collected feedback for some of our programs, and been able to use that feedback to drive decisions by seeing what people liked or didn’t like.  My church didn’t need a lot of programming experience. All of the people who needed to see the results could see them when they needed them without asking someone to run a report.  Was it a perfect solution? No. I couldn’t adjust the form internals very much when it came to look and feel. I’d love a better layout when some of the options don’t need to flow up and down or for things like collecting Name, Address, and Contact information in a more pleasing manner. I’d have appreciated a little more number crunching ability online.  However, I think those areas are not as important for our purposes.  The speed and ease to create a form, publish it, and collect/analyze the results are hard to beat when you need something that works, but may not have all of the bells and whistles found in some other products or services.

What do you use to gather information?

How could you use something like this for your church?

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Burnout and Lessons Learned

Posted on August 5, 2010 by Jim Walton

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What To Do When a Staff Member Leaves Unexpectedly

Posted on August 2, 2010 by paschott

So what exactly do you do when a staff member resigns unexpectedly? What do you do when that person had the keys to everything?  Here are some things to help you cover all of your bases when trying to secure your network and other access points. It’s by no means a definitive list, but it covers a lot of areas that can be easily overlooked.

1. Network Logins – This is probably the easiest area to secure. At the very least, you should start by changing the account password. Ideally you can completely disable the account, but you may need to grant access to someone else to look through files and e-mails or to handle job duties that are tied specifically to the user’s login.

2. E-mail – If you’re running an internal e-mail service, this may be taken care of with the above step. If you are using something like Google Apps or a hosted Exchange service, you’ll need to use your administrator access to close down this account and perhaps add an auto-responder to indicate that this person no longer works for your organization or a forwarding rule to pass on e-mails to someone else who is taking over those duties.

3. Online Banking Accounts – if the person who left had any sort of access to your online financial information, you’ll want to change passwords, disable accounts, and notify your banking institutions. While the majority of people who are leaving have no desire to cause any harm, this is an area where no chances should be taken!

4. VPN, Remote Access, Blog, or Website accounts – This is most often handled by the person’s network login, but could very well be set up in some other way. Disable or modify any accounts that would give this user remote access or control over systems in your organization. This may include Routers, DNS Accounts, Web Hosting accounts, Blogging accounts, etc.  If you’ve been using Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, MyChurch, or similar sites, don’t forget to remove this person as a manager or administrator. For Twitter, consider changing the password of the account used to post updates.

5. Keys and Key cards – This is usually a given, but if you suspect that the person may have made copies, it could mean that you’ll be changing locks.

6. Security Codes and Combination Locks – Any alarm codes or access codes that could be manually entered should probably be changed. Don’t forget combination locks that may be in use or even the safe combination if things could be really bad.

7. ChMS Access Rights – This may not matter much if you’re using a local service only, but it could be a big deal if you’re using something that’s web-enabled such as FellowshipOne, Arena, CCB, Access ACS, or similar services.  At the very least, change their password.  In fact, I’d recommend changing their password first, then delegating whatever rights they had before disabling or deleting the account.  You’d be amazed at how much some of these people may have used that was only accessible to their particular login.  Sometimes they’re the only admin. Sometimes they’re the only person with access to pre-defined sets of people or reports.  Regardless, change the password and login as them to see what they used to do and what they could see.

8. Check Time-controlled Access points – We found that sometimes we had doors locking or unlocking when nobody was using the building.  Ideally you should check this periodically and definitely when you change service times, but you should double-check the schedules just in case the building is opening at times when nobody should be there.

9. Local Computer Accounts – If you have physical security, this should be a minimal problem, but perhaps some folders or files were locked down to their specific account. If so, you’ll want to transfer those access rights to someone else or perhaps a group of users.

10. Social Engineering – Social engineering (getting access through people still at the church) is the trickiest problem to handle. Often people leave unexpectedly for reasons that cannot be disclosed to the rest of the church or staff. People need to be aware when some of these cases need to be handled in an even more secure manner than normal. They still don’t necessarily need to know specifics, but should know that they are not to be allowed access to systems, information, etc that they would have had as a staff member. This can be a tricky area to handle, but should be considered if they’re likely to have influence with current staff or members.

11. Backups – You’re checking your backups, right? Are they secure?  Are they going off-site or to an online backup site?  Who can access those backups?  If this staff person was one of those people, they should be removed from that group of people handling backups. This is especially true if you’re backing up your files online.  Change the account and/or password so they can’t take information they shouldn’t have.

12. Scheduled Jobs – Scheduled jobs are easy to overlook, but if your person was a technical person, it wouldn’t be hard to write something that could cause problems if it finds that an expected account is disabled or missing. Jobs can even be set up to send regular reports to an external address. Malicious scheduled jobs are unlikely, but it’s worth checking for jobs that have no purpose or even a destructive purpose. If you come across a job that is unfamiliar, check it out or ask someone to take a look at it.

13. E-mail again – If you don’t want to completely delete this e-mail account or have e-mails set to forward to some catch-all address, don’t forget to unsubscribe the person from mailing lists. We had a lot of catch-all addresses or orphaned e-mail accounts from people who used to work for our church that were not set up when we moved our mail service. Those were forwarded to the administrator’s account and we spent a lot of time unsubscribing people from various mailing lists for a while. We still get the occasional message, but less frequently now.

14. Credit Cards, Merchant Accounts, Vendor Accounts – Anything that involves the person being able to spend money on behalf of the church. If they had a church credit card, that needs to be cancelled. If they could spend the church’s money, that account or relationship should also be terminated or transferred.

15. Voicemail – Change their voicemail password or delete/disable their account. Perhaps setting up forwarding to a different phone number or mailbox would also work. Make sure someone’s checking it if you do that.

16. Common or Shared Passwords – By far, the most common password for church workers seems to be John3:16 in one form or another.  First – stop using this as your password! Now! Change it if this is your password! Now that I’ve said that, if you have shared accounts that people use or perhaps passwords that are common knowledge, change them and let those who use the account know the new password. Make sure that they don’t pass it on or leave it lying around.

17. Collect the church’s equipment – Not all churches issue equipment for people to take off-site, but if your staff member had equipment that belongs to the church, make sure you collect it from the staff member.  If you’re not maintaining an inventory, this may be a good time to start one.

18. Cell Phones or other recurring expenses – Some staff members have cell phone bills regularly paid by the church. Maybe they liked to read certain magazines that nobody else uses. Look for any recurring expenses that are paid by the church and cancel or transfer them.

19. Remove printed or online references – Remove the staff member’s name and contact information from your website and any printed materials. Replace it with someone else as appropriate, but stop printing materials with their name.

20. Back up their personal files and/or e-mail – Finally, back up their personal files and their e-mail for future reference. If there’s a supervisor, you can give the files to that person. If you have a good relationship with the staff member who’s leaving, you may be able to give them the files that are definitely personal.  Regardless, keeping an archive of their files and e-mail may prove invaluable down the road if something comes up that only your departed staff member knew about.

If I’ve missed anything obvious, let me know in the comments or discuss further in the forums.

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Digital Training

Posted on July 22, 2010 by acmull

One of my audio trainees recently had his first time at the helm during a Sunday morning service. Because we have a digital sound board (Yamaha’s LS9), I was able to do a few things to make his first time a little less hectic. I start out my newbies during rehearsals and working our Sunday night service. But there is a sharp contrast between our morning and evening services. Mornings involve four vocalists and a full band, videos all quickly moving from one element to the next. Evenings are more laid back with just the Music Minister and keyboardist.

My trainee’s job didn’t allow him to attend the weekly band rehearsal, and that concerned me, but since I’ve been moving toward saving a scene on the board for each song during the service, I decided to do that for him. I linked each scene for the service to a user defined key and noted on the worship flow which UDK to press for each song.

Next I sat my laptop beside the board that morning to make changes that his trainee user profile on the LS9 doesn’t allow him to do yet, like save settings. So while he was driving with his limited permissions, I had full use of my administrator permissions from my laptop using Yamaha’s LS9 Editor in Studio Manager. Kind of like the instructor in Driver’s Ed with the brake peddle on his side of the car.

We have used this method for a weeks, and it has worked very well. It allows the trainee to focus on timing and mechanics over mixing changes from one song to the next. Now that he is getting broken in to the Sunday routine, we can migrate to focusing on mixing.

Studio Manager and the LS9 Editor are free. All you need is a network connection, preferably wireless so you can move around. Mike Sessler has some great setup info here.

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Top 5 Ways To Keep Volunteers Satisfied

Posted on June 18, 2010 by Jim Walton

Many months ago, I wrote something on my whiteboard that I intended to write about but up until now, I never did.

The thought is this:

Bend over backwards for your volunteers because if they are not happy with you or your team for any reason, they are gone.

Read that sentence again.

Never forget that there is really not that much keeping the volunteer serving. It’s not like a job where if they don’t show up, you will get fired (i.e. lose your source of income and/or your identity) If a volunteer gets bored or frustrated, they’re going to stop showing up. No love lost there, that actually gives them a little more free time. What’s the key to keeping your volunteers satisfied with their role?

1. Get to know your volunteers individually – Be personal, do what you can to learn what motivates them, both in the role they are serving in and otherwise.
2. Do activities as a team – Team building is important, it builds trust and deepens your relationships, which ultimately helps you to work better together when the pressure is on.
3. Work to plug people into roles where they are gifted – Everyone involved will be better off if you work to understand your volunteer’s gifts and desires.
4. Don’t expect too much – Remember, they are volunteers and there’s good chance you are a volunteer as well. Understand that your passion for the role you are serving in may be substantially greater than the passion your volunteer feels.
5. Have fun – Chances are, you have a job to do as a team but have fun while you are doing it.

Bonus: Have food – Food is always good so do #2 with food. Also, just showing up with food on a regular day is a good thing.

Strive to make the things that your volunteer team are involved with fun and rewarding.

What has worked for you to keep your volunteers satisfied?

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Volunteers Rock!

Posted on May 25, 2010 by Jim Walton

I find it interesting that around the time I stepped down from leading the tech team at my church is around the same time that I lost my drive to write on this site.  Both were dwindling for several months and at the end of 2008, I walked away from it all.  After chilling for awhile, I thought I wanted to get back into it here but my heart wasn’t in it, no matter how hard I tried.

For the 5 years or more that I have been writing here, I have had a real heart for volunteers in church, especially in the area of technology. It has always fascinated me how much volunteers do around a church, in so many ways. I never lost my heart for volunteers and I was very excited when we revived this site, with the sole purpose of being a site for church tech volunteers written by church tech volunteers. However I struggled to feel it. If you haven’t noticed, we have a great team of men and women here who contribute to this site, a bunch of very skilled and talented volunteers, most who serve in their local church and share their stories, their frustrations and their successes with us here at CTM.

I have apparently been leading the way, yet I told them early on that I am probably not going to write much anymore. That in itself didn’t set right with me because I will typically lead by example. If I’m leading you, I will likely be working or serving right beside you. Whether it’s at work or at church or where ever, I will either be working with you on whatever the project is or watching and asking questions and learning from you because you are better at it than I am. I rarely manage or lead at an arms distance. I will definitely give you space to own your area and do it in your own way if that’s how you roll but I still won’t be too far away. So, trying to lead this team of writers in a hands off kind of way is not a normal thing for me.

In my defense, I will say I didn’t have a choice. I couldn’t walk away from this site. I tried, believe me, I tried. Once we breathed life back into it, I wanted to see this thing succeed, even if my heart wasn’t in it. Yet I have always felt a stirring inside me that this isn’t right, leading in this way wasn’t right. For me.

I hesitate to say that I’m back because I have done that before and it doesn’t stick. I will say I feel like I’m getting back in my element the more I get plugged into LifeChurch.tv #ChurchOnline. The juices are flowing in my brain and the thoughts of the great value of volunteers are rolling around in my head.

I am sure I’ll have more to say about all of this in the coming days. I am honored to be a part of what is going on at #OnlineChurch and so excited about the conversations I am having and the stories I am hearing.

If you can, stop by #ChurchOnline Thursday evening at 9:30CT, join the kickoff party for this new experience! Join us in chat and worship with us. I’m excited about my opportunity to work with a new team of volunteers.

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LifeChurch.tv – New OnlineChurch Experience Coming Soon

Posted on May 15, 2010 by Jim Walton

It has been over a year and a half since I have served in church and that is highly unusual for me. The exception was the one Sunday I ran a video camera, which was fun but I never really settled into that role, for a variety of reasons.  Recently, my family and I have been attending LifeChurch.tv OnlineChurch, sometimes as our only church for the week or sometimes in addition to a different church service.

I have been a fan of LifeChurch for many years and watched their online reach grow. I remember when they were first starting OnlineChurch and there was only a handful of experiences and I have watched as more and more experiences have been added.

Recently, I started poking around their website and found a link to opportunities to serve and that really grabbed my attention.  The more I read about what was available the more interested I became.  The roles are as follows:

• Captain: Lead, empower and encourage a team of volunteers as a lay pastor during the Church Online Experience.
• Live Prayer: Pray with people from around the world using one-on-one chat during the Church Online Experience.
• Admin: Moderate chat, run interactive elements and set the countdown clock for upcoming Church Online Experiences.
• Chat Host: Provide a warm welcome in the chat portion of the Experience.
• Live Help: Provide technical support during the Church Online Experience.

I contacted my friend Chase Livingston and asked him some questions about his role with the experiences and he then pointed me in the right direction to get involved.  As I considered the roles and prayed about it, I kept coming back to Captain. So, after completing the application process and talking with Amanda Sims, I got plugged in.

To start, I am serving with the 8pm CT experience and spending time doing each of the roles in preparation of being a captain of my own experience.

Now that you have read this far, here’s the pitch. If this seems to be something you might be interested in, go here and fill out the application. It is a little involved and they do run a background check but it really wasn’t a big thing.  I would encourage you to serve in the time slot that fits your schedule best but I would also like you to consider serving on my team, which will run the experience at 9:30pm CT on Thursday. That experience is non-existent currently but soon it will happen. I have a partial team established but need a few more people, then we will fire it up!

There are over 40 experiences each week so it’s likely you can find a time slot to fit your schedule, plus I know they are adding new experiences all of the time. If you are not familiar with #OnlineChurch, check it out, the first one for the new week starts in about 30minutes or click here and click on Upcoming Times to find a time that fits your schedule. Try it out a time or two and if you feel led to get involved, then go for it! (I would really love to have you on my team!)

Let me know if you have any further questions.

Also posted here.

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