Suggestion for helpful change to MSP

[O'Brien, Tom]

Hello all,

I'd like to suggest an update that would add 2 new features to a scheduled service:

1) Add "Clear all Assignments" to a Service. This would be helpful for a service that is regularly scheduled, but for whatever reason needs a different set of volunteers after the schedule has been run.  In my case, I have an annual event that I let run as auto-scheduled, but I want to hand pick the volunteers. So if I can clear all the assignments (not just the "auto" assignments) that would be great.

2) Create a new field that is only used as a placeholder. I suggest that this new item not be treated as a regular volunteer, and the placeholder feature can be used multiple times in a service simply to plug a ministry slot, which should prevent others from volunteering. Again, I have a special event that I want to show on the Quarter's calendar, but I don't want people volunteering for the openings. I only want admin level people to be able to fill those spots. Currently I have had to create dummy volunteers, such as "_EM1", _EM2", etc. but these chew up my limit on max number of volunteers.

Thanks for listening. What do others think? How do they solve these 2 issues currently?

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Deacon Tom O'Brien

Pastoral Associate, Music Director

Nativity of Our Lady Catholic Church

221 Daly Ave

San Luis Obispo, CA 93405

805-544-2357 ext 103

tom.o...@NativitySLO.org

www.NativitySLO.org

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/NativitySLO/

Twitter @NativitySLO

[Randal Dalhoff]

I agree with Deacon Tom's ideas for enhancements.  We would use them.  Like Tom, we make up dummy volunteers to use as place holders.

Randy Dlahoff

Saint Cecilia Parish

Ames, IA

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[Raina Hanson]

Hi Tom and Randall, 

Both of these are already possible with the software. Let me show you how! 

1. To clear all assignments for a service, you want to select the first person in the service, then hold the shift key and select the last person so everyone is selected in blue. Then, click the icon of the person with the red X ONCE to remove the volunteers from the positions. (Careful, if you click it twice, it will also remove the positions!) 

2. With the Plus edition, you can create a "Group" volunteer, which is one volunteer that can fill as many positions as you like in the same service. This will allow you to create one volunteer as a placeholder instead of multiple. 

https://rotundasoftware.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/360044314834-Schedule-a-group-of-volunteers-with-one-volunteer-profile

If you have any additional questions about these features or how to use them, please send in your data files (Help - Send Data Files to Tech Support) and we would love to help! 

Raina Hanson

Director of Technical Support

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[Lynn Pechiney]

Raina, 

Thank you, this is great information! Is it possible to clear all assignments for a particular ministry on an entire schedule, or for a particular date range? I have had ministry heads ask during the editing process whether their ministry could be cleared. I usually end up doing it manually, but it would be nice to not have to.

In Christ,

Lynn

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Lynn Pechiney

Program Coordinator

All Saints Youth Ministry

571-516-3162

"You aspire to great things? Begin with little ones." ~ St. Augustine

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[Raina Hanson]

Hi Lynn, 

There is not, but I am happy to put that as a feature request! 

Raina Hanson

Director of Technical Support

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[Albie Bell]

Raina, 

Is your answer to number 2 anything like a write in, one time use volunteer?  I have faced a few services recently, that have volunteers that are only needed for a particular service and are not part of the standard ministry rotation.  Is that possible?  If not, can we put in a feature request?

Albie

On Mon, Jun 19, 2023 at 10:54 AM Raina Hanson <ra...@rotundasoftware.com> wrote:

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[Raina Hanson]

Hi Albie, 

No, MSP does not support "write in" volunteers. The closest thing would be allowing a volunteer to submit an enrollment form that is then automatically processed so they can sign up on the schedule. 

Raina Hanson

Director of Technical Support

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[Dorothy DeLuca]

As you described in your second request, I also create a number of dummy ministers to fill positions that I want to control differently than usual.  In my case, I cannot allow the "Automatically process assignment forms (i.e. fill the related unfilled position)" because I have 10% of my ministers that sign up for 90% of the unfilled slots.  However, I do want ministers to sign up and be automatically processed for certain Special Masses - i.e. a Holy Day, Christmas, Easter, ..., so what I do is fill all the positions for those days with dummy ministers and then swap request those positions, and I set swap requests to be automatically processed.  This takes up a LOT of my minister counts, and is time consuming to fill all the slots and set them one by one to be swap requested without sending email.  I also have to set this up for Daily Mass, so a dummy minister is assigned for every daily Mass and subrequested for the entire year - not fun - fortunately we only schedule one Reader for Daily Mass, otherwise I would go crazy.  I do autofill all the Daily Mass Reader slots with the dummy ministers, but still have to go through and sub request them all.

I would like see some enhancements that looks like:  

"Automatically process assignment forms (i.e. fill the related unfilled position) for specific services"

"Automatically process assignment forms (i.e. fill the related unfilled position) for specific ministers"

"Automatically process assignment forms (i.e. fill the related unfilled position) for specific ministries" but this has to be granular, not all Reader slots, but only Daily Mass Reader slots that is a sub-ministry of Reader.

I could definitely be happy with just the first one, but it would be more flexible with all three.

Dorothy

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[Pastor Cap]

So would the best practice be to create the dummy volunteers for the event and then delete them afterwards?

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Joe Cappabianca
Business Admin /  Asst. Pastor
New Beginnings Church
Office: 732.451.0777 ext. 117
Email: pasto...@newbeginningsnj.org

[Lynn Pechiney]

Thank you, Raina!

Lynn Pechiney

Program Coordinator

All Saints Youth Ministry

571-516-3162

"You aspire to great things? Begin with little ones." ~ St. Augustine

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[richard...@gmail.com]

We want only specific lectors to be able to sign up for special services, in our case the services during Holy Week.  I create another ministry called Holy Week Lectors, make it a private ministry, and assign my special lectors to that ministry.  Then I don’t have the problem of other volunteers volunteering for slots that won’t apply to them. They won’t even see those slots on the Web Terminal.  And I am usually talking to the “special” lectors and asking them for their service, so I usually can assign these manually.  I think if you make it a different ministry you have more control.

 

With regard to dummy volunteers, we have a Deacon do the homily at all Masses every third weekend.  When a Deacon serves at  Mass, they always participate as a Eucharistic Minister.  Don’t know which Deacon will do this when the schedule is created, so I have one volunteer named “Deacon.” that is auto assigned to that slot. 

 

-Richard

St. Margaret Mary, Lomita

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