Groups &
Attendance Help
The groups and attendance section of the website defines groups, group rosters (list of people in each group), collections of groups (multiple groups that have some characteristic in common).
Manage Ministry Service Schedule
Add a New Person to the Directory and a Group
Promote Members of Group to New Group
Track Weekly Personal Attendance
Collections contain multiple groups that have some characteristic in common, such as a common meeting time. For example the Sunday School collection contains all of the Sunday School classes. To access the list of collections, click the “Collections” button. To add a new collection, type the name of the collection in the text field in first row of the table, then click the “Submit Changes” button. To modify the name of an existing collection, type the change in the corresponding text box, then click the “Submit Changes” button. To access the list of groups for a collection, click the “Groups” link in the Options column next to the collection. To enter or view attendance for a collection, click the “Attendance” link in the Options column next to the collection.
A group is defined as any list of people that have something in common, such as a class that meets at a certain time every week, a list of college students, a list of shut-ins, a family, or a list of people on a deacon’s list. To access the list of groups, click the “Groups” button. To add a new group, type the group name in the text field in the first row of the table, select a collection for the group, then click the “Submit Changes” button. To access the roster for a group, click the “Roster” link in the Options column next to the group. To enter or view attendance for a group, click the “Attendance” link in the Options column next to the group.
A roster is a list of people in a particular group. To access rosters, click the “Rosters” button. Select a group from the drop down list. To add a person to the roster, select the person from the drop down list in the first row of the table, select the person’s role in the group from the drop down list in the first row of the table, then click the “Submit Changes” button. If the person is not listed in the drop down list, then the person must be added to the church directory. To change a person’s role in a group, select the person’s new role in the group from the drop down list in the first row of the table, then click the “Submit Changes” button. To remove a person from a group, click the “Remove” link in the Options column next to the person.
Leaders and helpers in each group can be scheduled for ministry service. To access schedules, click the “Schedule” button. Prior to scheduling a person, the person must first be added to the roster for the group. On the schedule page, select a group from the list. The list of groups is restricted based on your leadership roles and based on your rights level. Change the month and year to the month and year for which you are scheduling. Click a day on the calendar. In the pop-up window, choose a person from the list, select the scheduling frequency (e.g. every 4 weeks), and click the “Submit” button. If prompted, click the “Retry” button to reload the calendar page. If a helper in your group is not listed in the pop-up window, then that person has already been scheduled in another ministry in the same time slot. To remove a person from the schedule, click the “X” next to the person (this will remove the person from the schedule for all future dates as well as the date on which you remove the person). To view a list of people scheduled in the future (e.g. to post in the nursery), click the “Reports” link at the top of the page, select the group, and choose a date range. Click “Full Screen” before printing the report.
Before a person can be added to a group, the person must first be added to the directory.
To add a person to the directory and to the roster at the same time, click the “Add Person to Directory” link in the roster. Add the person to the directory, and the person will be automatically added to the roster.
To add a person separately to the directory, follow the instructions in the directory help section.
If a group has a next group defined (e.g. 2nd Grade Sunday School is the next group for 1st Grade Sunday School), a “Promote” link will appear next the group on the Group list page. Click the “Promote” link, and all members of the group will be moved to the next group. All Personal Attendance will be deleted and converted to Group Attendance, so backup the database prior to promoting groups.
Attendance can be tracked as a total count for a group, or by counting each person in the group individually. To enter attendance, click the “Attendance” button. Select a group or collection from the drop down list, and then select a date from the calendar. If a collection is selected, the attendance form will list each group in the collection. If a group is selected, switch between counting each person and counting the entire group by clicking the corresponding radio button. For counting entire groups or collections of groups, enter the attendance value(s), and then click the “Submit Changes” button. For counting each person in a group, click the check boxes to indicate whether or not each person in the group was present, then click the “Submit Changes” button.
Attendance reports show the attendance values for a specified date range, as well as the minimum, maximum, and average attendance for the specified date range.
To access attendance reports, click the “Reports” link on the top of the groups and attendance page.
Select a group or collection from the drop down list, then select a start date and end date from the calendar or a pre-defined range (e.g. “Past 8 Weeks”).
Click “Full Screen”.
Click “Personal Report” if a personal report is desired.
Setup the page to print in landscape mode (e.g. File->Page Setup, set Orientation to Landscape in Microsoft Internet Explorer).
Print the page.
Click “Change Group” to print a report for another group, or click “Exit Report” to return to the Groups & Attendance page.
For each group:
Add new people to the roster (and to the directory if necessary).
Enter the attendance information
Print the 8-week personal attendance report.
If a person has not attended the group in the past 8 weeks, remove the person from the group roster.
The attendance summary shows the attendance for all groups for the previous week, as well as the 1 month average and 1 year average for the groups. To view the attendance summary, click the “Attendance Summary” link on the top of the groups and attendance page. To print the attendance summary, click the “Full Screen” button, then print the displayed web page, then click the back button in the web browser to return to the groups and attendance page.