To learn how to navigate Church Services click here.
Go to Features page, and click on Groups, then click on Group Setup.
To create a new group, scroll to the bottom of the groups list and click on the green button “Add New Group”
To edit an existing group, scroll to the desired group (you can use the blue filter at the top, to easily find the desired group), the click on the blue edit button corresponding to that group.
Fill in the group detailed information.
Leave Capacity to 0 if there is unlimited capacity for the group (unlimited number of members).
Fill in name, description, mission and put a picture if you want to. Notice that you won’t be able to setup a picture until you save the group.
Select the group type:
Private Group: This group will not appear to people on their app, and hence they cannot join or request to join. Admin will have to explicitly add/remove members to the group.
Public Group: You can allow people to see the group, join the group or request to join it any time.
Virtual Group: This type of group is more for reporting and communication purposes. With this type you can create dynamic reports, and communicate with their members.
When selecting Public group, you can all people to request joining, and even add a question to the join request. This way, group admin, would see their requests together with their answers and decides whether to accept or decline the join request. Click here to learn more.
Promote to Group: choose the group, which the current group would promote to. This is helpful if you have structured or academic groups, where their students would move to another level (group) when they complete.
Set send invitation to yes, if you would like to allow people to freely join a group based on a invitation you send them.
Set member can leave, if you would like to allow members freely leave the group if they desire to.
Set auto update to yes, if you would like this group to automatically add/remove members based on the set filter. Notice that, when you set auto update to yes, you should not manually add or remove any member, since all you are doing manual will be overridden by the system based on set filter.
Select View Members and Communication Level, to define the level of access each member of this group has to all other members of this group.
If this group needs to be exclusively restricted to a specific person, this option is done only by Church Services. You will need to request that. Restrict Access To Member is only visible to Church Services support team.
When done, click on Save Group.
Setup Group Filter and Auto Update
One of the best features of Church Services, is that you can have your groups auto update, by automatically adding new members or removing existing ones based on the filter you set and the change of their basic information such as address, age, grade…etc.
To do that, you need to define the group filter.
Click on the red button More, and start filling in your group filter such as membership status, age range, school grade, address attributes…etc.
Click on button Save Filter when done, then change group Auto Update selection to YES.
Now click Save Group, and you are all set.
The group will automatically update every one hour.
How to assign members to your group, or remove members?
Start by looking up for the people you would like to add. You can simply search by First and Last names, or click on More to use advanced search.
After filling in your search criteria, click on the blue Search button.
A result list of people will display, who fulfill the criteria you have set in the search filter.
If any of the list of people is already a member of the group, s/he will be highlighted in blue.
You can select all, select page, or select people individually as you wish.
If you would like to use two different filters to select to groups of people, you can check the Keep checkbox, to keep your selections while running additional searches.
Now that you selected the people, click on the desired function:
Join: will add the selected members to the group. If a member is already added, he will remain added.
Leave: will remove the selected members from the group. If one of the selected members isn’t in the group already, no change for that member will take place as he is already not a member.
Promote: will remove the selected members from this group, and add them to the promotion group if it exists.
Demote: will remove the selected members from this group, and add them to the group which has the current group defined as a promotion group.
Lead: will attempt to assign leadership role to the selected member(s). Notice that for a member to be assigned leadership role, he has to have an account. This is for security purposes to ensure that permission is given directly to that person not to his account holder such as father or mother.
Unlead: will attempt to remove leadership role from the selected member(s), only if they already have leadership role assigned.
Remember that, at any time, you can access the member’s profile to ensure he is the right person you intend to add him to the group or give him leadership.
How to handle a student whose school grade is ahead or behind his age?
While you are enjoying the group assignment automation, and promotion automation by the beginning of each school year, you might find some kids who are ahead or behind their age.
To handle that, you can set an offset to that kid by accessing the user groups in his/her user tools. To learn more, please read here.
