A little over a week ago, I posted an article entitled
Roadmap 2018 where I outlined some of the changes we have planned for the coming year. Today, I'm excited to announce we have already uploaded many of those changes. It was amazing how fast things came together!
For those who are regular site users, I wanted to give a quick overview of the changes to help you get oriented quickly. Here's a brief list:
- We changed the "Welcome" tab to "Latest News" and added a new "Site Activity" section there for those who like keeping up with what's what our community is doing at FAST.
- We combined our "Classes", "Resources", and "Programs" tabs into a single "Training" tab, and completely reorganized the content. Now we're grouping our content into topics, and for whatever topic you want, we'll pull in relevant Classes, Study Guides, Booklets, Sermons, Verse Sets, and whatever else we can find. I'm hoping a topical approach will be more useful. Still more indexing to go, but we're off and running...
- Those who were in the Journey program can now find the same outline in the "Core Track" section of the "Training" tab. We still have a monthly "Featured Class" link. Additional resources can be found in the "More Topics" area. And there's a new "Live Training" section for upcoming live classes. Just click through these links, and you should see how it's all laid out in minutes.
- We added a new "Tools" tab to take you to the top level of our Dashboard. Other than that convenience, this section remains unchanged. We will be breakout these tools down to smaller components next month, to simplify the navigation here further. Expect those changes sometime in February.
- The "Centers" tab is essentially unchanged, though we do have some big plans to add lots of new features this year, beginning with our long anticipated monthly Explosion Factory modules, hopefully starting in February also. It won't involve much change to our site navigation, but it could lead to powerful changes in your church!
- Last, we also made some simplifications to the outside of our site (the section you see when you are not logged in). Now there's just an About Us tab, a Monday Memo's tab, a Community tab (describing the benefits of being a member) and a Churches tab (with info about our Training Center program). It's all pretty straightforward. :)
All in all, our prayer is you will be able to adapt to the new navigation with little or no trouble!
PS. I should also add we did make some major updates to the software platform running our FAST site. In particular, you no longer have to worry about opening multiple browser tabs, and you have longer session timeouts to avoid lost comments and missed engine reviews. Plus, by making it possible to update to the latest apache/php versions we should have improved site security. We're still checking around our site to find any lingering bugs, but all systems seem go...
Comments
So what do you think of the changes so far? Any feedback? Questions? Difficulties? Share your thoughts in the comments below.
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Posted by Jephthae on 02/10/18 |
| Dan, I believe I found it here: https://www.fastmissions.com/center/afm/start |
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Posted by Dan Vis on 02/09/18 - Coach |
Rosemary, you only have 30 days to finish a course. Your time may have expired. Message me if you need me to extend your time a few days.
Jephthae, we tweaked the navigation a bit more in the training area > resource library page. Look for the study guides and classes link. I'll try to track down the help page and update the info. I don't suppose you remember where you saw those instructions? |
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Posted by Qing Ling on 02/09/18 - Coach |
| Dan messages above for you |
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Posted by Jephthae on 02/04/18 |
You may want to update the following information in the centers section... I have spent the last 30 minutes or more trying to find the printable study guides and still am looking, though reading the update tells me to look under Training--- again... I'll look.
Once a person has been accepted into your training center, they can access our entire library of classes and study guides for FREE. They simply go to the CLASSES section of our site, or the RESOURCES section. |
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Posted by Rosemary on 02/02/18 |
| Can't find my Rocket class. The previous link isn't working, and it's not listed on the sidebar like it was. |
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Posted by Dan Vis on 02/02/18 - Coach |
Still ironing out glitches. The software seems to be running smoothly but the new class registration system proved to be a bit more complex than I though. It is going to be a huge improvement, especially now that everything seems to be gradually falling into place.
I've scheduled a bit of down time for February to work on polishing up our software platform and revamping the dashboard. Then something big scheduled for March. More news on that in a couple weeks... |
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Posted by Dan Vis on 01/30/18 - Coach |
We're still making upgrades to our software platform, and have been experiencing periodic glitches and issues. But we're making good progress and hope to have this phase of our transition complete in just a few days. Apologies for any inconvenience this may have caused you.
You probably won't notice too much change right away, but it's a necessary first step for lot's of big plans coming later in the year... |
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Posted by Dan Vis on 01/27/18 - Coach |
| No problem Linda! Glad its working. I think most everything is going fine now, and we've got a good platform in place for even more changes coming through the next few months. Exciting... |
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Posted by Linda Gerace on 01/26/18 |
| Mobile's working great now! Thanks. |
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Posted by Dan Vis on 01/26/18 - Coach |
Great Shelley, glad you like the changes! We still have more coming, but wanted to put some big pieces in place first.
As for the bug, appreciate you reporting this. A simple fix. Should be working now! |
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Posted by Shelley Kanomata on 01/26/18 |
Hi Dan,
Thank you for the updates Dan. I think everything looks wonderful! I am excited and have been so blessed by all the things going on at FAST!
I am having a little trouble with step 2 of the Core Track. I wanted to check off some completed courses but when I mark to as done it just goes to a white screen. I have to go back and leave it unmarked.
Thanks so much. |
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Posted by Dan Vis on 01/26/18 - Coach |
| Great, glad to hear Marion. I also just updated the memory engine to give you 2 hours on the review before the session times out. If it works, yippee! |
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Posted by Marion Coppock on 01/26/18 |
| Thanks, the Prayer Journal works well. |
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Posted by Dan Vis on 01/25/18 - Coach |
| Just a quick update, that I think I have all the bugs worked out. Super exciting! I've even got our first conference lined up and ready to go. Just click the "Live Training" link in the Training area for details. |
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Posted by Dan Vis on 01/25/18 - Coach |
Hi Linda! Having the tools link is nice because it gives you a way to get to all the tools, plus the vacation bump and the forms and documents section. :)
I'll fix up the mobile menu today. I do tend to forget that... |
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Posted by Linda Gerace on 01/25/18 |
| Just reviewed the changes on my desktop while looking for the BUMP button (I did find it). It looks great. I really like the Training and Tools areas. Keeping everything in one place and simplified is much better. Waiting for changes to appear on my mobile, as mentioned in a message/email to you. Praise the Lord for the work of FAST. |
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Posted by Natalya on 01/25/18 |
| Thank you! The prayer journal works now. |
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Posted by Dan Vis on 01/24/18 - Coach |
Spent the last few hours fixing minor bugs here and there including problems with the online Bible, the verse hotlinks, and the prayer journal. There still seems to be some problems in the training area--I'll tackle those first thing in the morning tomorrow. :)
Apologize again for the inconvenience! |
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Posted by Dan Vis on 01/23/18 - Coach |
| So far the upload has gone relatively smooth, with only a few glitches here and there. Most of it was patched up in less than half an hour or so. Now I'm focused on seeking out and destroying any remaining bugs. If you spot something that's not working right, please report it on the Help Hotline. Tomorrow, I'll get on the backlog of bug reports from the last few days. Thanks for your patience! |
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