Church Director Product Blog

We are excited to announce a new feature that has received quite a few requests recently: every user account within the system now has an availability calendar! This calendar allows dates to be marked as ‘blocked’ or ‘unavailable’, preventing them from being scheduled via the Rapid Scheduler or manually. There is also a new report for creating a team or church-wide list of unavailable dates.

Here are some screenshots to demonstrate what the new feature looks like:

Team leaders can access the availability calendar for their team members, or users can edit it themselves from within the “My Account” area.

To mark a date as blocked, simply click on the date - it is that easy! If you become available again, click on the red ‘X’ and the date will become available once again.

Notice how the Rapid Scheduler now honors the availability calendar by not scheduling someone.

We also added a CSV format to all reports, allowing the reports to be saved locally and imported into Excel or another favorite spreadsheet for any kind of custom report that you may require.

Enjoy!

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We have some new features deployed that should make using the Rapid Scheduler even better!

Preview Rapid Scheduling Assignments

With Rapid Scheduling, you can now preview the assignments it plans to make for a specific date range. This is helpful if you want to see what the Rapid Scheduler will do, before it does it.

Our suggestion to get the most out of the feature is to use the following strategy:

1. Make sure Rapid Scheduling is deactivated (it won’t schedule nightly, giving you time to work everything out with confidence)
2. Add your team members to the appropriate scheduling groups (weekly, 1st week, 2nd week, etc)
3. Click the ‘Preview Schedule’ button to view what the Rapid Scheduler will schedule over the next month, 2 months, etc.
4. Make any changes as desired and view the preview schedule screen again to view the new results
5. Activate Rapid Scheduling when everything looks right for the needs of your team

Manually Control Rapid Scheduling Assignments

In addition to being able to preview Rapid Scheduling, you can request that the Rapid Scheduler create assignment requests and notify assignees immediately. This can be done whether the scheduler is activated or deactivated. Using it while the Rapid Scheduler is deactivated allows you to benefit from the mass assignments it will perform, while making the assignments when you want instead of on a nightly basis for the upcoming month.

Finally, you can use this manual control to schedule for multiple months in the future, a highly sought-after feature. One of our customers likes to schedule 3 months in advance, then provide a printed report for posting on a bulletin board or fridge.

Tabular Assignment Report

Want a better way to create printable reports for your team? You got it!

The screenshot above demonstrates using the Firefox print-preview feature (File->Print Preview from the Firefox menu) to set the scaling percentage to make it fit on 1 page in landscape mode prior to printing it out for you and your team.

Enjoy the new features and thanks for all of the questions, feedback, and ideas you have been providing!

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We’ve been hard at work making some behind-the-scenes changes to help get these new features rolled out, and it was worth it! Here is a short list of what is new:

Support for recurring schedules on the 1st-5th week of the month

This has been the most requested feature, by far and now we have it! When you activate Rapid Scheduling, we will now create 8 teams that you can use as needed:

1. Assigned Every Week
2. Assigned Every Odd Week
3. Assigned Every Even Week
4. Assigned Every 1st Week of the Month
5. Assigned Every 2nd Week of the Month
6. Assigned Every 3rd Week of the Month
7. Assigned Every 4th Week of the Month
8. Assigned Every 5th Week of the Month

So, if your team rotates every other week, use the first three groups. If your team rotates on a monthly basis, you one or more of the last five groups. Here is a screenshot of what the new groups listing looks like within Rapid Scheduling (click to view the full size image):

Also note that the preview calendar button has been moved to each group in the list, so that it is easier to view the occurrences of a specific group for the next three months.

New Group Membership Report

A new report is now available from within the Team Reports and Church Reports that display each member of your church, along with their contact details and their team memberships. Print a report just for your team as a contact sheet, or print a church-wide report of everyone within Church Director!

Improved Request Emails

Request emails now have new subject lines and use better terminology. This has been another request recently, as the term ‘assignment’ has been deemed “not PC”. We now prevent reminder emails from being sent if the user has declined the assignment - something we should have done some time ago.

Enjoy!

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For those of you who use the assignment screen to drag-and-drop your team members to specific job roles for an event, there are some great changes coming.

Have a look at the preview below (click the image to view the full size screenshot):

There will now be a warning icon and pop-up notification if a team member has a possible conflict for the same day. This should prevent you from sending an assignment request, then getting a declined response due to the conflict. Of course, you will not be prevented from assigning them a job assignment if they have a possible conflict.

Other enhancements include moving the quick assignment group box so that it no longer take away valuable screen space from your team member list. Also, the new design offers a much needed cleanup of this screen and will make it easier to read.

We are getting close to releasing this new design and recently previewed features - stay subscribed!

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It will soon be possible to view conflicts on the assignment request screen (the screen that an assignee sees when clicking the link in their assignment request email). Below is an example:

It is now easier than ever to know when and where you are being requested, see your current response (or if you haven’t responded yet), and view any possible conflicts you may have on that same day. Clicking on a possible conflict will take you to the same assignment confirmation screen for the conflicting event, allowing you to see details and change your response, if desired. This should make it even easier to prevent double-bookings and remind assignees of forgotten assignments for the same day.
Stay tuned - more previews coming soon as we near the last stretch of this major site upgrade!

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We’ve been busy working on some recent upgrades for the website. In fact, we’ve experienced so much great response that we had to add a new server to our hosting plan already! While the previous setup was adequate, this new setup gives us some great flexibility and plenty of room to grow. Here is a quick summary of what is new on the website:

1. Auto Scheduler fixes - we found some small bugs with the Auto Scheduler, so we had it turned off the last week or so (no one was using it at the time). Those are now fixed and auto scheduling should work as expected now
2. Church admins may now access any of the church planners for management purposes or for changing a team planner’s leader (in case a new leader has been appointed)
3. We’ve added a Frequently Asked Questions page to answer some common questions we’ve been asked
4. Fixed the ‘my church’ link at the top to appear on all pages for faster navigation
5. We now show the minimum and preferred job role coverage metrics on the assignment screen (upper-left corner of each job role box)
6. Notification emails may now have a customized from email address and message (optional)

As always, thanks to everyone currently participating in the closed beta program! If you aren’t part of the closed beta program, signup today and get early access to Church Director!

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During the rollout to the new hosting service, we updated Church Director with some new features:

• Self-assignments are automatically set to ‘confirmed’ status and no email is sent regarding the assignment
• Assignment reminders for cancelled events or inactive planners are no longer sent
• Setting the From Address and Subject line, along with adding an additional message, is now available during the send notifications step. There is a button to optionally preview the list of email recipients, as was the default behavior previously
• The name of the team member that made the assignment is shown on the “My Assignments” screen, to aid in knowing who to contact.

As always, feel free to contact us if you have any questions or feedback regarding these changes.

Technorati Tags: Church Director, Volunteer Scheduling, Volunteer Management

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We’ve recently made some updates to the reporting section of Church Director:

• Access reports without leaving your team planner, being forced to navigate back when you are done
• Your team is automatically set as the default team for report filters
• Reports should generate faster and without slow page refreshes
• Printer-friendly reports will launch to a new window to prevent you from getting lost or being unable to navigate back
• CSV format has been removed (no one found them interesting, and neither did we)

There is also a new Team Coverage Report available from the event planning pop-up if you have created at least one assignment:

This report is a printer-friendly version of the information shown in this popup and is useful for you, fellow lay leaders, and your staff to view prior to a service or event:

We hope you’ll find the reporting features friendlier to use and even more useful than before. If you have any suggestions, please drop us a note using the feedback link at the top of any Church Director page.

Technorati Tags: volunteer scheduling, church reporting, volunteer coverage

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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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