In 2022 we discovered the Hope Robot Project which was designed in Brazil and is being used to great effect to provide Bible studies on social media chat platforms via "Hope" - a virtual assistant who offers a range of Bible studies to any student who sends her a message with the words 'Bible study".
In South America, she is known as the most active evangelist in the Division - studying with over 20,000 students per month. In the past 3 years she has helped many thousands of students complete 2 complete study courses. Of these, over 12,500 have accepted the invitation to connect with a local pastor or church family. The team in Brazil know of at least 1,200 of these who went on to be baptised and join the local church.
Here in SPD, we are working collaboratively with Adventist Media and a local team to oversee Hope's work in PNG, with plans to expand to other parts of the Division as interest in the project spreads.
Want to know more about this project? Let us know at [email protected].
Remember Adhub? Designed to support members and leaders with discipleship journeys from first contact and before, through to baptism and beyond, adhub was designed and created to meet a vital need - helping the church disciple others in a way that made sure people didn't fall through the cracks!
The concept was powerful, and the technology was being used effectively in a number of locations, but the project itself encountered several and varied challenges which ultimately overcame its progress - much to the disappointment of those who had designed it, and those who were using it.. So... we are currently working on a new solution that overcomes those same challenges! Late in 2022, a project charter was mapped out together with the AUC, and together we are now building version 2 - using cheaper and more agile technology. Once built and tested, the plan is to first trial and prove the concept in the South New South Wales Conference (thanks team!), before reviewing the next steps. Those next steps will either be to further strengthen the project as built, rebuild it for higher capacity and wider rollout, or retire the project if it's not proving fruitful.
For more information on this project, or to send us your naming suggestion, reach out to us at [email protected].
Human Resource Information System (HRIS), Payroll, and Personnel Service Records (PSR)
Adventist Technology has gone through a couple of selection process cycles to find a solution to replace payroll, and introduce a HRIS. We have in recent weeks decided on the preferred vendor which is now being shared and considered across a wide group including Church and Education within Australia, and being take through a due diligence process before proceeding to implementation.
In parallel we will be running a project to replace PSR. There is employee data in common between these projects, and we are keen to ensure that we minimize efforts with data management, and ensure reports and searches are readily accessible to all key users as relating to PSR and HRIS/Payroll information.
SPD is quite keen to see us all able to achieve the greatest level of cooperation so that reports can sit atop current central data views, so the following view highlights the adaptable approach we expect to take. The diagram below highlights a structure we are working towards that allows the best possible integration to minimizes the potential for managing the same data in multiple places, and seeks to provide the benefits of solutions that are tightly integrated, and the best possible solutions for cases where there are not systems, or no possibility of integration with their systems. This diagram gives a high level view of the expected architecture between HRIS / Payroll / PSR.
The major project to replace the old Tithes and Offerings has reached the first phase of the project, which is delivery of a minimum viable product. The migration and major transition work has been completed on the week of Oct 31 to Nov 4 2022. This marks a significant milestone as we will then be able to turn off the old T&O solution, which has reached it’s natural end of life. The project impacts a large group of users from Conference support staff, to Church Treasurers.
There are some important updates as of out last steering committee meeting (March 10). The most significant discussion item was that after careful planning around the User Acceptance Testing (UAT) phase, it was recommended and accepted to set a go-live date later than some of the original estimated timeframes. This decision was made with full support of the committee, with strong support to affirm that the quality is of the highest priority, and ensuring there is enough time to address any concerns that arise during UAT. The go-live target date is now set for Monday 1st August.
Beyond the discussion about the go-live date we also took time to review the features for that date. We are very glad to be seeking not only to cover the Minimum Viable Product (MVP) as a replacement, but adding a number of improvements in the first new release. On top of all existing features, and the fact that the new version will work on web browsers other than Internet Explorer / Edge, we intend for the following improvements to be available
Further to the news about coming improvements, development will continue after go-live. There is a list of features that will be included that arose during the initial project requirements gathering.
Version 4.9.004 of the eGiving app was released as an update on February 18, 2022 (iOS and Android). This release includes major updates to creating and managing recurring/scheduled gifts. It is now easier to:
Minor bugs were also fixed. Please ensure you update to the latest version, and contact [email protected] if you experience any issues.
