Spring is a good time to review your software needs and capabilities. No doubt you have some software packages or services that have fallen into disuse. Feel free to get rid of them. By deleting them, you save disk space and make your computer systems run more efficiently. But do a survey of staff and users first to make sure nobody is really using them. It doesn’t do to delete a package or service and surprise somebody. They were expecting it to be there, but now it’s not!

Churches also need to renew licenses on an annual basis. The expense should be covered by a budget item. Keeping software packages and services up to date is good stewardship, for it heads off problems down the road. Pick a time when you know the computers are unused. (Sunday mornings are a bad choice, for what if you have a glitch in the upgrade process? There isn’t time to really resolve that when worship is about to start and the system has to be in working order!) So the best practice is to Turn Off Automatic Updates on presentation systems! That way, you don’t get a prompt on the big screen to enter your password or license! The worship team will appreciate that you did that. But that means that you have to schedule time for updates; just do it at a time when you don’t have an event about to happen in the sanctuary. That way, the computer systems stay up to date, the backups get done, and the systems are protected from known security threats in old software.