Demo church: explore FlockConnect on sample data

What is the demo church?

The demo church is a complete FlockConnect workspace seeded with sample data. When you create one it is named Harbor Community Church (Demo), and you become its account owner. The onboarding card sums up what it is for: try Collie, the Mission Feed, and connection health on a sample dataset. Collie stays advisory in the demo too: a person reviews and approves everything it drafts, and it never sends anything on its own.

Each account gets one demo. If you ask for another while you already own one, FlockConnect simply takes you back to the demo you already have. The demo is exempt from billing, so it never needs a subscription, and you can browse its sample data without first setting up multi-factor authentication.

• One demo per account: asking again returns you to the demo you already own.
• Inside: 50 fictional people in 25 households, 8 groups, and 4 sample staff (1 admin, 3 care partners).
• A Demo Church badge stays pinned on screen whenever the demo is your active church.
• Billing exempt and simulated: no real emails go out, and checkout will not start a real payment.
• Reset re-seeds fresh sample data and keeps the workspace; Delete removes it entirely. Both ask you to confirm first.
• To leave without deleting, switch back to your real church with the church switcher.

How do I create the demo?

The demo lives on the setup picker at /onboarding/setup-path, the page account owners see after the short tell-us-about-your-church step. It offers five paths: connect Planning Center, upload a CSV, set up manually, explore a demo church, or decide later. Choose Explore a demo church and press Create demo workspace.

FlockConnect builds the workspace, makes it your active church, and lands you in the app inside the demo. The picker is built for account owners; admins and care partners who open the page are taken to the app instead. You can return to the picker later, so trying the demo first does not lock you out of the other paths.

What sample data is inside?

The demo holds fifty fictional people, a mix of adults and children with names drawn from many cultures, arranged into twenty-five households: singles, couples, and families. Eight groups range from Wednesday Small Group and Worship Team to a membership class cohort and serving teams, each with a small roster and a leader.

Four sample staff round it out: one admin and three care partners, and each care partner already has a few people assigned, so care views have something to show. The staff are data only; their accounts have no working password and can never sign in. A person record for you is created too, since you are a member of the demo. Every seeded row is tagged as demo data, which is what lets a reset find and replace it cleanly.

How is the demo kept separate from my real church?

The demo is its own workspace with its own records. Nothing you do inside it touches your real church, and nothing from your real church appears in it. So you always know which one you are in, a Demo Church badge stays pinned to the top corner of the app whenever the demo is your active church.

The demo is also marked to run against simulated providers, which keeps it away from real outside services. Two examples of how that plays out: invitation emails from a demo church are recorded for the audit trail but never actually sent, and the billing checkout refuses to start a real payment in a demo, pointing you to create a real church for a subscription instead.

How do I reset, leave, or delete the demo?

Inside the demo, open Settings. As the demo's owner you will see a Demo workspace section with two controls. Reset demo wipes the sample data and seeds a fresh copy; the workspace itself stays, your access is preserved, and the section shows when the last reset happened. Delete demo removes the workspace entirely, sample staff included, and sends you back to the setup picker, where you can create a new demo later if you like. Both buttons ask you to confirm before anything happens.

You can also leave without deleting anything. If you belong to your real church as well, the church switcher in the app lists both churches, and switching makes your real church active again. The demo just waits until you come back, reset it, or delete it.