0 Connection Attributes 2 Don Smallman posted 8 Years Ago How do I add additional Preference Area's and Roles to the Connections module?
Don Smallman 8 years ago Thank you! What additional ones would normally be added? We don't need one for each ministry do we? I just thought that we needed more than children's and First Impressions.
Jeremy Hoff 8 years ago Hi Don!This is one of those "It Depends" answers. :-) In our church, we'd have the two listed, plus an option for "Middle School / High School" plus another for "Audio/Video/Lighting" and so on. If you have a series of volunteer-job-descriptions for your organization, I'd start with those. I hope that helps!
Don Smallman 8 years ago Thank you. Yeah that helps. What about people who do setup, or other things that are not part of those Attributes? How do you categorize those? As "None"?
Jeremy Hoff 8 years ago Hi Don - there are a couple approaches you can take with this function. One is to look at the types of tasks someone wants to do, and the other involves the types of contexts in which they'd prefer to serve.So, for example, the website visitor filling out the form can have "no" preference (none), prefer to serve within children, youth, adults, etc. I would describe these as contexts.Or, for example, you could have them answer based on the types of tasks... story time, teaching, setup/teardown (muscles needed), trades (bricklaying, construction,etc.).And, of course you could mix them too. Much of these options and how you set them up are dictated by your church's ministry style and volunteer recruitment style and even assessment style. Some churches use DISC, others use SOI, some others base this on spiritual gifts.In the end, the goal of the Connections is to narrow down a list of opportunities to smallish number so that you are not overwhelming the visitor with options, while at the same time always presenting at least one opportunity so that there is no dead-end.. if you catch what I mean there.I hope that helps?
Don Smallman 8 years ago Hi Jeremy. Here is another question regarding the Connection page. Do you have more than one campus and if so, how do you handle the connections when people make a request? Co you create a connection for each campus? What I am wondering is, if the requesting person is supposed to be placed is a group, how does the system handle that? We have two serving groups for each group. One for each campus. I was not sure how else to handle it. Maybe I am doing it wrong.
Jeremy Hoff 8 years ago Hi Don,Sorry for the tardy reply! There are a couple of ways to go with handling campus, but the choice depends on how your campuses operate.For example, if your campuses operate independently and are a little unique in terms of available positions, then I'd recommend adding an "Opportunity Attribute" of Campus and aligning each Opportunity to their respective campus.If your volunteers roles are more centralized, then you may not want to offer a campus filter.In any case, I recommend any church consider that this type of function not only allows you to fill current positions, but can also help plan for the future. Sometimes you need to plan for where you are going, rather than plan for where you are. . . if you catch my drift.
Jeremy Hoff 8 years ago >> Does this sound correct?It does sound correct, though there is some flexibility in how you may desire for this to work. The question is: would you want a workflow to add someone to a volunteer Group before they are interviewed?Part of this is philosophical... so bear that in mind as you read... whether the volunteer process is word-of-mouth, paper-driven, or RockRMS-driven, the potential volunteers are commonly in some kind of queue before they actually begin to serve. I.E. their is some kind of review process. (I admit, this isn't always the case.. but stay with me.) Whether that queue is a Group called "Potential Ushers" from which members are moved into plain-ol "Ushers" is not too different from being added to queue in "Connections" and later added to the group "Ushers".By using Connections as the queue, an onboarding process can begin and be reinforced.I hope that is clearer than mud . . .
Don Smallman 8 years ago Thanks Jeremy. No I don't want to have people added to groups, as a member anyway, before being interviewed. It does bring more confusion as to the purpose of the "Placement Group Configuration" block, as it does not seem to do anything. Also, when I select a "Placement Group" for the connection request, it does not place that person into the selected group, also making me wonder what its purpose is. I assumed that once I selected the Connector, Placement group, campus and State, then saved, that connection would be complete. But, I still have to add the person to the group, after all of that.Sorry for rambling, just trying to figure this all out before allowing people to use it.
Don Smallman 8 years ago Have you created any workflows for your connection process? I was thinking a simple one to email at least one person when a connection request is made would be nice, or even to email the leader of that area.