Family Grouping Question

[gretche...@gmail.com]

Is there any way to have only certain members of a family always be scheduled together instead of only all?  We have several families serving in different ministries, with only the acolyte children in that family always needing to be scheduled together.  

Gretchen W. Kimble

St. James' Episcopal Church

Jackson, MS

601-624-3261

[J.C. Cantrell]

One solution would be to only “tag” (designate) the children as the family. 

Blessings 

JC Cantrell the 

JC Cantrell

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From: using-ministry...@googlegroups.com <using-ministry...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of gretche...@gmail.com <gretche...@gmail.com>
Sent: Friday, August 5, 2022 7:03:35 PM
To: Using Ministry Scheduler Pro <using-ministry...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: [Using MSP] Family Grouping Question

 

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[Raina Hanson]

Hi Gretchen, 

Great question! I like to use TEAMS in these cases to keep the kids together in the Acolyte ministry but allow other family members to have more flexible schedules. 

Basically, we will group the entire family in the Family Groupings pane, as you probably have done. Then, go to the Teams pane and designate a team of Acolytes, adding in both children. I suggest doing this for "any service" if you have multiple services since that will prevent you from having to adjust the team settings if the family changes their service preferences in the future, and can help holidays set as special services to be scheduled by these same rules. 

Once you set up the Acolyte team, the scheduler will make sure when one child is placed, so is the other, If there is room for the whole family to serve, the auto-scheduler will try to do so, but it will not prevent the kids from getting scheduled regularly if there is not room for the whole family. 

If you need any help getting this set up to work properly for your license, feel free to send in your data files (Help - Send Data Files to Tech Support) and we would be happy to help! 

Raina Hanson

Director of Technical Support

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/using-ministry-scheduler-pro/BL0PR14MB3844FAB74339ED6A88C4C655FE639%40BL0PR14MB3844.namprd14.prod.outlook.com.

[Ginger Bitikofer]

Gretchen:

 

Could you create two families, with one being Smith Family Acolytes and the other Smith Family Adults?

 

 

Ginger Bitikofer

Trinity Cathedral

Cleveland OH

 

 

 

 

From: using-ministry...@googlegroups.com <using-ministry...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of gretche...@gmail.com <gretche...@gmail.com>
Date: Monday, August 8, 2022 at 10:59 AM
To: Using Ministry Scheduler Pro <using-ministry...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: [Using MSP] Family Grouping Question

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[Kathryn Anderson Kuo]

Hi everyone!

I have another question about family groupings. I work in a university setting and I have some volunteers who are residents on campus for the school year only, and I have some volunteers (alumni, staff, neighbors) who are off campus and available year-round.  

I need to filter the two groups ONLY in order to get the most relevant announcements to them. For example, announcements about game night and student leader training only go to the on-campus students.  Announcements about the holiday schedule only go to the year-round community. 

I've created "families" for the two groups, but this makes scheduling complicated. When I use the web terminal to assign a volunteer, it asks me if I want to assign family members too, and then I have to run through a list of 70 volunteers unchecking names. I don't want to use the "teams" function either because I DON'T want the volunteers to be scheduled together, ONLY to be able to filter announcements by the relevant group. 

Is there a better way to group volunteers? Or is there a way to turn off family scheduling on the Web Terminal so that volunteers are never assigned as a family? 

Thank you very much!

Kathryn Anderson Kuo

she/her/hers

Associate Director of Campus Ministry for Liturgy

Resident Minister, Jogues Hall

Fordham University Rose Hill

(718)817-0588

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[Raina Hanson]

Hi Kathryn, 

In this case, I would not recommend using families for a variety of reasons, but the biggest one being that family members can switch between profiles, so they have access to update other peoples profiles, request subs for other people, etc.  

That being said, I think the best way to handle this is to use Custom Fields (available with the Plus edition) to set up a field that allows you to specify whether each volunteer is on-campus or off-campus. This would allow you to use filters in the Announcements pane, on rosters, and throughout the program to easily pull the two segments of volunteers when needed. If you send in your data files (Help - Send Data Files to Tech Support) with "Raina" in the subject and a quick note so I remember what you are trying to do, I would love to show you how to very quickly and easily get this set up and all volunteers qualified for the correct field! 

Raina Hanson

Director of Technical Support

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/using-ministry-scheduler-pro/CAEUCZt0aGvkP8Tn1XqnvrWj3e4BWER787w5rwUOv2K%2Bm1%2Bd6nw%40mail.gmail.com.