Church Director Product Blog

Rapid Scheduling must now be activated before it will start performing the nightly auto scheduling. From any screen within the Rapid Scheduling area of your team planner, you will see a new yellow Status window:

After clicking the Activate Rapid Scheduling link, it will turn to green to indicate that it will begin mightly automatic scheduling:

Note: All planners using the Rapid Scheduling feature will need to activate their Rapid Scheduling module, as they are all currently deactivated.
Finally, there is a new Preview Calendar for the Rapid Scheduling module to visualize the weeks that your groups will be assigned events:

Enjoy!

Technorati Tags: volunteer scheduling, automatic scheduling, volunteer calendar

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One of the recent requests is a better method of getting started using Church Director for volunteer scheduling. Previously, we had a popup window that would appear after the planner is created. Now, there is a Getting Started Guide that is shown when going to the team planner after it is created, or whenever selected from your planner list within the accounts area. Here is a thumbnail of what the new screen looks like:

The screen provides an introduction on how each feature can be used. Further information is available from the Quickstart Guide, still available from the Team Calendar screen. There is also a checkbox at the bottom that can be used to disable this new Getting Started screen:

Finally, welcome to the latest round of beta testers. If you want to signup for a Church Director account, fill out the signup form and we’ll get you into the next round of beta testing.

Technorati Tags: volunteer scheduling, church scheduling, volunteer management, church leadership

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As a web application matures, it is often necessary to update the user interface to deal with the addition of new features. Since we added Rapid Scheduling, we noticed that some of the menus were getting a bit crowded. Knowing what is on tap, we wanted to revise the user interface a bit to make it easier to move around.

So, all major areas within the site now have a thin navigation bar with provide the content of where you are and what tools are available to you. If you are within a tool that has several options, the right-hand menu is still there. Here is a screenshot of what the new user interface looks like:

We hope this makes it easier to navigate around and find what you want quicker. Let us know what you think!

Technorati Tags: volunteer scheduling, rapid scheduling, children’s ministry, small groups, church director

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One of the biggest requests we’ve had for Church Director is to support reoccurring assignments. Rather than create a very complicated setup, we’ve opted to keep it simple (like the rest of the application) through a new feature called “Rapid Scheduling”. Here is how it works:

As a planner admin, click the “Rapid Scheduling” link on your planner:

Next, Church Director will ask you a single question: how do you want to start Rapid Scheduling?

You will then be able to view the groups that were created, and if you click the “Members” link, you can add your team members to the group:

Finally, your Rapid Scheduling groups list will show you the coverage percentage for each group:

After setting up groups and group members, Church Director will check every night for new assignments and schedule them up to one month in the future. Assignees will receive the same notification email they usually would, but without any more work from you! This should be a great timesaver for larger teams, such as children’s ministries, and teams that have set schedules, such as small groups.

If you try out the new feature, drop us a note using the Feedback link at the top of any page and let us know how you like it!

Technorati Tags: volunteer scheduling, rapid scheduling, children’s ministry, small groups, church director

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