Rock Skills Rubric

Measure your progress in your Rock RMS journey and confirm that your skills and confidence are aligned.

The first step on any journey is knowing where you are and where you're going. At Triumph we've created the following skill rubrics to help us determine where each team member is on their technical journey and what their next step is. We hope they they help you in identifying where you are on your journey and how to go to the next level.

Note: If there is interest in the community we are considering creating an assessment / certification offering based off of these rubrics. If this is something you're interested in please let us know.

Practical Advice for Implementation

Below are a few thoughts about how we implement these rubrics internally and how to interpret their meaning.

  1. Above all please realize these scales are not used as a judgment tool but rather as a guide to determine areas for growth on your journey of learning Rock.
  2. The context of these scales is centered around Rock, not the specific technology. An individual can be an expert in SQL, but we're measuring their knowledge of SQL as it pertains to Rock.
  3. We've implemented these scales with rigor internally because we're not interested in a quick finish but rather a deep understanding of both the how and why of Rock.
  4. We've tried to balance clarity and concise. Sometimes this can be a little vague. We'll continue to tighten this up wihout being too verbose. We're not trying to create a set of boxes to check, but rather provide a framework for growth.

  5. Probably the most difficult measure is the rigor one applies to the scales. Consider: "Has a thorough knowledge of all Lava filters and their proper usage." We don't mean "have all filters memorized with all parameters". We mean more that you know of the existence of all Lava filters with a high-level understanding of optional parameters. You may not be able to type it into your Lava, but you know it exists and can navigate directly to it in the documentation.

    This leaves some gray area for interpretation. We'd recommend in these cases to lean into a more rigorous grading of your knowledge.

  6. Most important, enjoy your journey in learning Rock. Don't try to rush through to 'check all of the boxes'. It is only at the end of a journey that you realize the journey has just begun.

Level 1

  1. Can read basic HTML and understand its intent.
  2. Can make small changes to existing markup.
  3. Experience with writing HTML/CSS that follows the style guide and proper naming conventions.
  4. Experience modifying themes via the Theme Editor in Rock.
Minimum Experience: None

Level 2

  1. Experienced with all the documented CSS utility classes.
  2. Know the difference between inline and block HTML tags.
  3. Understand the concepts of semantic HTML.
  4. Experienced with the standard HTML/Bootstrap markup conventions in Rock (panels, wells, badges, labels, alerts, cards etc.)
  5. Experienced with Bootstrap Grid.
  6. Can write basic fragments of HTML/CSS to implement small projects.
  7. Experience with the blocks that are used to put content on external pages.
Minimum Experience: 3 months

Level 3

  1. Experienced writing full solutions from scratch (no copy/paste).
  2. Experience using common CSS properties and selectors.
  3. Understand all of the parameters available on the Image File Type's GetImage.ashx handler and the appropriate times to use them.
  4. Full knowledge of HTML5 tags.
  5. Understanding of the concepts of Rock’s themes and layouts.
  6. Understanding of caching strategies for Content blocks.
Minimum Experience: 6 months

Level 4

  1. At least 3 months experience coaching others in HTML/CSS.
  2. Experienced with concepts Flexbox and Grid outside of Rock.
  3. Can build full themes and templates for Rock.
  4. Experienced with implementation of Flexbox using Rock’s utility classes.
  5. Experience building Content Components.
Minimum Experience: 12 months

Level 5

  1. At least 6 months experience coaching others in HTML/CSS.
  2. Advanced knowledge of web development.
  3. Experience building complex themes and layouts.
  4. Lava Level 4+
  5. Workflows 1+
Minimum Experience: 18 months

Level 1

  1. Can read most SQL and understand its intent.
  2. Can make small changes to existing SQL.
  3. Knowledge of appropriate use of SQL within Rock.
  4. Knowledge of locations where SQL can be used within Rock.
  5. Experience with writing SQL that follows the SQL style guide and proper naming conventions.
Minimum Experience: None

Level 2

  1. Can write basic SELECT statements without copy/pasting.
  2. Experienced with JOINS (both INNER and OUTER).
  3. Experienced with filtering in the WHERE clause including concepts like wildcards and IN operators.
  4. Experienced with basic functions (COUNT, SUM, MAX, FORMAT, TOP, CAST, etc).
  5. Understanding of all datatypes used by Rock.
  6. Experience with common formatting of properties (dates, numbers).
  7. Experience with all common tables and their relationships.
Minimum Experience: 3 months

Level 3

  1. Ability to add sub SELECTS in their query.
  2. Advanced formatting including CASE.
  3. Knowledge of all tables and their relationships with familiarity of the properties of each table.
  4. Experience writing safe INSERTS, UPDATES and DELETE statements.
  5. Created and shared at least 5 reusable SQL scripts in shared repository that follows the Triumph design patterns
Minimum Experience: 6 months

Level 4

  1. Experience writing hierarchical (recursive) CTEs.
  2. Use of IF statements.
  3. Experience with UNION statements.
  4. Knowledge of how to write efficient queries.
  5. Experience with Windowing Functions.
  6. At least 3 months experience coaching others in SQL.
Minimum Experience: 12 months

Level 5

  1. Ability to write stored procedures and custom functions.
  2. Experience in the use of the PIVOT expression and Pivot pattern via CASE statements.
  3. Created and shared at least 10 reusable SQL scripts in shared repository that follows the Triumph design patterns.
  4. Experience with optimizing queries by reading the query plan using explain.
  5. Experience with the MERGE INTO functionality of TSQL.
  6. At least 6 months experience coaching others in SQL.
  7. Understands database schema design (third normal form).
  8. Watch and understand the Brent Ozar "How to Think Like the SQL Server Engine" video. (moderate content warning!)
Minimum Experience: 18 months

Level 1

  1. Can read most Lava and understand its intent.
  2. Can make small changes to existing templates.
  3. Experience with writing Lava that follows the Lava style guide and proper naming conventions.
Minimum Experience: None

Level 2

  1. Has a thorough knowledge of all filters and their proper usage.
    1. This does not need to be a 'rote memorization' of all the filters and each property, but more of a knowledge that a particular filter exists for a certain use case with the ability to navigate directly to it in the documentation.
  2. Experienced in basic logic structures (if, for, case, assign).
  3. Knowledge of all the places one can use Lava.
  4. Understanding of caching strategies for Lava.
Minimum Experience: 3 months

Level 3

  1. Experience using common Lava commands (Entity and SQL).
  2. Understands the proper use of includes.
  3. Able to write moderate level shortcodes.
  4. Advanced logic patterns (advanced for loops, patterns for common logic)
  5. Able to find available merge fields using Lava.
  6. Experienced in Lava debugging.
Minimum Experience: 6 months

Level 4

  1. Knowledge and experience with all Lava commands.
  2. Deep understanding of Lava performance.
  3. Ability to calculate the number of database reads a given template will generate.
  4. At least 3 months experience coaching others in Lava.
Minimum Experience: 12 months

Level 5

  1. Experience with creation of Persisted Datasets.
  2. Creation of at least 5 reusable shortcodes that are shared by the team and follow proper naming conventions and core design patterns.
  3. At least 6 months experience coaching others in Lava.
  4. Able to find available merge fields by reading the C#.
Minimum Experience: 18 months

Level 1

  1. Experience making small edits to existing workflows.
  2. Knowledge of all existing core Workflow actions.
  3. Understanding of the basic structure of a workflow (activities, actions, attributes, etc.).
  4. Understanding of persistence strategies, processing intervals and logging (what not to do).
  5. Understanding of how to document workflows (description and workflow notes).
  6. Experience exporting and importing workflows.
Minimum Experience: None

Level 2

  1. Experience building new workflows.
  2. Experience with linking inputs passed into workflow attributes.
  3. Understanding of common places workflows could be used (grids, jobs, etc.).
  4. Understanding of the raw values for each attribute field type (e.g. Person attributes raw value is the Guid of their Person Alias).
  5. Experience with the basic patterns of workflows (when to launch other workflows, etc.).
  6. Understanding of the lifecycle of workflow processing.
  7. Lava Level 2+
  8. Basic Form Design - Forms that require no additional markup.
Minimum Experience: 3 months

Level 3

  1. HTML/CSS Level 2+
  2. Lava Level 3+
  3. Experience using actions to create/modify entities.
  4. Experience retrieving data using SQL (as a last resort).
  5. Understanding of Workflow security.
  6. Advanced Form Design. For example:
    1. Use of HTML and CSS classes to adjust the alignment of fields, grouping fields into sections, etc.
    1. Addition of conditional logic into forms to show and hide fields based on the values of other fields on the form.
  7. Use of conditional logic on actions to disable running actions based on attribute value on the workflow.
  8. Basic understanding of using Lava in Workflows. For example:
    1. Using Lava in a workflow action to update setting values (e.g. provide the value of a workflow attribute to an action setting).
    1. Personalize form headers with the current person's name.
Minimum Experience: 6 months

Level 4

  1. HTML/CSS Level 3+
  2. Experience building performant text to workflows using the SMS pipeline.
  3. Experience with advanced workflow topics (control of related workflows).
  4. Understanding of advanced workflow patterns. For example:
    1. Activating and re-activating activities appropriately to change how the workflow processes.
    1. Knowledge of when to use, and when to avoid, actions being left active.
    1. Knowledge of what a person will see when loading an active workflow with multiple active activities, based on security and activity assignments.
  5. Advanced understanding of using Lava in workflows. For example:
    1. Using a person workflow Entity to look up their campus and assign the activity to someone in the campus group based on their role.
    1. Using Lava Run to evaluate multiple conditions and affect the workflow process.
Minimum Experience: 12 months

Level 5

  1. Experience actions to make external calls (Web Request).
  2. Experience using Webhook to Workflows.
Minimum Experience: 18 months