Access Powerchurch from Off-site service

[jbmitchell]

We will be having our Easter service offsite due to the size of our congregation and the limited seating in our sanctuary. Our PowerChurch11 is setup on a server at the church and accessed by multiple PCs. One of those PCs is the computer that runs the Kids Check-In plugin. We would like to be able to take the Check In pc to the offsite location for that Sunday and still be able to access the information on the server at church. Additionally, I do not want to take the server off-site. This is not an option.

Is this possible? What is the best approach to doing this? Our internet connection at church is pretty slow, max upload speed is probably 128kb (on a good day ). If you need more info, just ask. Thanks in advance for any guidance.

[NeilZ]

We will be having our Easter service offsite due to the size of our congregation and the limited seating in our sanctuary. Our PowerChurch11 is setup on a server at the church and accessed by multiple PCs. One of those PCs is the computer that runs the Kids Check-In plugin. We would like to be able to take the Check In pc to the offsite location for that Sunday and still be able to access the information on the server at church. Additionally, I do not want to take the server off-site. This is not an option.

Is this possible? What is the best approach to doing this? Our internet connection at church is pretty slow, max upload speed is probably 128kb (on a good day ). If you need more info, just ask. Thanks in advance for any guidance.

There isn't a good way of doing this over the Internet, however, I suspect there is a different way. Since the Powerchurch user agreement covers the use of multiple copies of Powerchurch used within a church, you can do the following.

I'm going to assume that you're not going to do any Contributions entry at this off-site location. I'm also assuming that this procedure is workable, I'm sure that one of the Powerchurch staff will let me know otherwise .

1. Install Powerchurch 11.1, and Powerchurch Check-in Server and Check-In Client on a laptop or desktop that you plan to bring.

2. Do a backup of the central database, then install on the laptop. Instruct anyone at the church to not do updates on the main system at church over this weekend.

3. The traveling system will have the current membership information, as well as the security permissions for the system so no one could access areas of the system they do not normally access.

4. Use the system as normal, which would include adding any visitor family that may attend the services, thus capturing any information (name, address, kids names, etc) that you can use as follow up.

5. Upon return to the main site (I would do this on that Sunday, or first thing Monday at the latest) do a backup of only the Membership files from the laptop.

6 Restore that membership backup to the main system.

Your main system should then contain all the data on the visitors as well as your general membership.

[Zorak]

I'm also assuming that this procedure is workable, I'm sure that one of the Powerchurch staff will let me know otherwise .

That looks like it would work just fine and is, as you mentioned, completely within the license agreement.