This is going to be a quick update, prior to RX2018 which will be next week! There are just a few updates we want to give you before we get to see you in person

v8

Version 8 has been in beta for a week and a half or so. We've gotten some great feedback, and we've made some fixes for some bugs that were identified. We've put those into an 8.1 release, which we expect to go out to the Alpha Testing team within the next day or so. 8.1 will be a very quick Alpha test though- we want to get it to get to Beta testers by the time we're all at the conference! If that all looks good, then we're hoping to release 8.0 and 8.1 simultaneously to early access organizations to use in production very soon after the conference.

Thank you to all of our Beta Testers! We really count on you, and we were excited to see a few new people step up and join the team this time around!

There are several plugins which had to be updated to work with v8, so as soon as you do update to version 8 in production, be sure to visit your Rock Shop and check all of your installed plugins to see if there are any updates you need to do

RX2018

We are very excited for this yearʼs conference! A few items you should know about:

• There is going to be a meetup room- feel free to use this room to talk with people, meet up with them, talk, network, etc. You can use this any time during the conference, but it will also be open after dinner until 10pm. This isn't the type of conference you leave after dinner- plan on sticking around and talking with other churches!
• Many conversations will also probably continue even after 10pm, in the various hotel lobbies. So if you want to meet with people, arrange it with them- thereʼs going to be lots of time!
• Don't leave early! Do not plan on flying out on Tuesday, even in the evening. Don't miss the opportunity to meet up with other people and churches!
• There is going to be a LOT of content! If you're interested in what you missed in other tracks, you're going to be able to buy the content subscription for your entire organization, and there is going to be a discount given for conference attendees, available for the entire week of the conference. Be sure to set aside some time post-conference to review some sessions with your team, as well.

Master Class

Yes, we're really focused on the conference at this point, but thereʼs not too much time left before our next Master Class occurs. This is an experience thatʼs totally different than our Roadshows, and different from the conference. This is an opportunity to take deep dives into specific features of Rock, so that you can go back and be the Rock Champion to your staff at home. This is not an event for your entire team, unlike the conference-

Registration is presently live at rockrms.com/masterclass for our September class, and sometime after the conference, we'll open up registration for another in November.

v9

Volunteer scheduling is coming along. But we're also partnering with NewSpring on a new CMS concept called a Content Component. Itʼs a blending of the HTML block and Content Channels. Itʼs really neat- you're going to want to look for this feature in v9!

We're also working with NewSpring on the concept of "Assets". If you're familiar with the filesystems available within Rock today, you might know that you can upload files to them through Rock, and then Rock will know about them and be able to use them. But a lot of times, you already have files in those systems that you DIDN'T upload through Rock, that you may still wish to be able to pick in Rock. This will allow you to use files in those systems, even if they were uploaded externally.

We're also working on some of our back end processes- as we grow, we really need our methodology to mature to a new level. So we're looking at the documentation process- even requiring the documentation of what the code should do, before we sit down to write anything. So, developers: look for more information about this, and new requirements we're going to have for Pull Requests. We're going to need to be able to test and prove all of the code added to Core.

Thatʼs it! See you at the conference!

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