Group Maps

Clicking the map marker button will take you to an interactive group map showing the members of the group. Depending on the configuration of the group other features may be enabled.

If the group has a geopoint (determined through the address geocoding process or by selecting the point on the map) the location of the group will also be present on the map.

If the group has a defined geofence this fence will be shown on the map. The presence of the geofence will also enable the display of connection status labels at the top of the map. Clicking these labels will show everyone with that connection status in the database who lives within the geofence. This allows you to view possible 'prospect' group members.

Adding a Group

You can add a new group to the tree by clicking the Add Group dropdown and then selecting the location from the list. Adding a group to the Top-Level will place the group at the root or top of the tree. Selecting Child to Selected will place the group under the currently selected group.

Group Details

The group details section displays all of the information about the group. The group type and campus (if configured) will be shown as labels in the banner at the top. A map of the group’s location will also be shown, if configured.

Editing a Group

Clicking the Edit button from the detail section will allow you to edit information about the group and provide additional configuration settings.

The key features of the edit screen are discussed below.

1 Name

Update this field to change the name of the group.

2 Active

You can inactivate the group by deselecting this checkbox. See Inactivating a Group for additional details.

3 Public

Only groups that are marked as Public can be viewed in the Group Finder.

4 Description

Providing a good description for the group lets people know what the group is all about.

5 Group Type

Changing the group type of an existing group is possible, but it does have some consequences. All group attribute data for the group will be lost if the group type is changed.

6 Parent Group

Changing this will move the group to a new parent in the hierarchy. Removing a parent group will move the group to the root or top of the tree.

7 Administrator

Select the individual who is responsible for administrating the group. This will only appear if Show Administrator is enabled for the group type, and may be labeled differently (e.g. Coordinator, Director) if an Administrator Term has been configured. Group administrators don't have the security privileges of Leaders, and they aren't members of the group. Generally, this is only used for internal purposes to identify who is responsible for the group from an organizational perspective without having to add that individual to the group.

8 Security Role

This option will enable the group to operate as a security role. The members of the group will be granted access to whatever privileges the group is granted.

9 Campus

Providing an optional campus will link the group to a specific campus. This isn’t shown if you have only one campus.

10 Require Signed Document

This setting determines if the members of the group require a signed document/waiver to be in the group. Rock can automate the sending of requests to get digital signatures after each registration. We cover this topic in detail in the Admin Hero Guide.

11 Meeting Details

This area allows you to add locations and times based on the configuration provided through the group type.

12 Group Attribute Values

Any group attributes values added by the group type will be available here for editing.

13 Member Attributes

In this area, you can configure attributes to be assigned to each member of the group. These attributes will be available for edit when adding or editing group members.

14 Group Member Workflows

This section allows you to configure workflows that will be launched when specific events occur with group members.

Inactivating a Group

If enabled in the Group Type settings, you’ll be prompted to provide additional details after inactivating a group.

1 Inactive Reason

Select a reason for inactivating the group. Depending on the Group Type settings, the Inactive Reason may be optional or required.

2 Inactive Note

Additional details can be recorded here for future reference. Notes are optional, even if a reason is required.

3 Inactivate Child Groups

If there are child groups, you can choose whether to inactivate them also. You’ll be given this option any time an inactivated group has child groups.

The list of Inactive Reasons is maintained under Admin Tools > General Settings > Defined Types > Inactive Group Reasons. You can restrict which Group Types the reason can be applied to. If no Group Types are selected, the reason can be used with groups of any type.

Group Hierarchy

One of the most important concepts to understand as you create new group types is the relationship that groups have to each other. There are two basic hierarchy types to choose from:

• Structured Hierarchy: In this configuration, the levels of hierarchy are defined and limited. For example, you may want to define the hierarchy of your small group ministry to have a single leadership team, under them a level of lay leaders who act as coaches to the groups, and then the groups themselves. In a structured hierarchy you can be sure that this structure is enforced.

  

• Flexible Hierarchy: For some ministry types, you want your groups to have a more unstructured hierarchy. An example of this might be how you set up serving teams. You may want serving teams to be able to have sub-teams that might have additional sub-teams themselves. These hierarchies may be very deep in some ministry areas (like First Impressions) but shallow in others.

  

You define these hierarchies by configuring what child groups each group type can have. In the structured example, you would create a group type called Small Group Leadership, which would allow child group types of Group Coaches, which would allow child groups of Small Groups. The Small Groups would not allow any child types, ensuring that your hierarchy was fixed at the third level.

In the flexible hierarchy example, you would configure Serving Teams to have child-types of itself. This guarantees that you can have an unlimited hierarchy.

Administering Group Types

You administrate group types under Admin Tools > General Settings > Group Types. When adding or modifying a group type, you can provide the following types of configuration:

Let's look at the different Group Types settings you can configure in the Group Type Detail block.

Group Member Roles

People often have special roles in groups. Some are leaders; others have unique duties. To help differentiate the members of a group, you can give each a Group Member Role. The list of possible roles are defined on the group type. For more information on the roles available, you can check out the chapter on Group Members.

Securing Group Types

By adding security to a group type, you control the base security of every group of that type. Let's say your organization adds a new type of group to help manage some classes you're starting. You may want to create a new group type for this initiative where every class is a group of this new type. By adding security to the group type, you can ensure that every group can be viewed and edited by a select handful of people.

To add security to a group type, go to Admin Tools > General Settings > Group Types. There you will see a list of group types in a table. In the far right column you will see an button. Clicking this will allow you to set the security for the selected group type.

Securing A Group

There may be occasions where each group will need different security settings. Don't worry, this is super easy in Rock. To secure a specific group, find the group in the group viewer (People > Group Viewer). On the group details page you'll find the same button. Clicking this button will bring up the Rock security dialog where you can adjust the security settings.

Groups have a special Manage Members security tab. Anyone with Manage Members security can add, edit and delete group members, but they can't edit or delete the group itself. If no permissions are listed under Manage Members it doesn't mean that members can't be managed. Anyone with Edit access has Manage Members access by default. Also, group Leaders can manage members even if no Manage Members permissions are set or if they don't have Edit permission.

Note the inherited permissions at the bottom of this screen. Inherited security is a very powerful concept with groups. By default, a group will inherit the security of its parent groups and group type. This limits the amount of security configuration each group requires. These inherited rights are only a starting point. You can either build on top of these permissions or override them. The choice, and power, is up to you.

At first you may be tempted to go overboard with your group's security settings. In general it's best to keep them simple. For instance, in the case of home-based Bible studies you may be tempted to secure each group differently to only allow the leader to edit them. While in certain cases you may need to do this, you could also secure all groups with a generic Small Group Leader role. You could then limit which groups a leader was able to navigate to through the configuration of your leader toolbox blocks.

Group Member Roles

Group member roles play an important role in how groups are secured. Each role can be configured to provide View and / or Edit rights. This is configured under Admin Tools > General Settings > Group Types.

Inherited Permissions

When determining the security of a group it’s important to consider not only the specific permissions of the group but also the inherited permission rules. The inheritance rules for groups is:

Current Group > Group Type Security > Parent Group Security > (continue up the hierarchy till it reaches the root group) > Group EntityType Security > Global Default.

The primary inheritance rules come from the group’s hierarchy but the system has a built in ‘choke point’ check on the security of the group type first. Why is this? Adding a quick check of the group types security allows specific types of groups to have unique security considerations. Take for example a group type for ‘Addiction Classes’. Adding a check for the group types security allows a way for limiting visibility to these groups without having to worry about inconsistencies in the security of the group hierarchy. In most cases the group type will not have specific security so this check will not matter, but it’s there if you need it.

If when checking the group’s security the person is blocked access there’s still one last check to be done. Roles defined on the group type can be configured to provide access to the group. For instance you can configure the leader of a group to have view/edit rights to that group. Likewise the member of a group could be setup to have view access. This allows a very simple and flexible way of providing access to external individuals.

Multiple Group Viewers

Rock comes preconfigured with a general group viewer People > Group Viewer, but you can add more. Say, for instance, your church has a strong small group ministry. You may want to create a new Group Viewer page just for this ministry. You can do this by adding a new page under People (or any other page you like) and add the group viewer blocks to the page.

The following blocks are used to make a group viewer. We recommend that you use the LeftSidebar Panel page layout.

1 Group Tree View

Add a group tree view block to the sidebar zone to help you navigate your group heirarchy.

2 Group Details

Add the group details block to the top of the main zone.

3 Group Member List

Next add the group member list block under the group details.

When you set up the Group Tree Block you can set the root group to start with and limit which types of groups it will display. This allows you to make a very specific small groups viewer with just a couple of clicks.

Group Folders

As you start to think about your group hierarchies, make sure that you plan for growth. This might mean that you create special groups in your hierarchy to help to categorize your groups. You can think of this like using folders on your computer to help manage all of your files. You could throw all of your files in one folder, but you’d never find anything. Adding folders helps you arrange and sort your groups. While folders add little value to your computer’s file-system, these category groups can actually be beneficial beyond just organizing. For instance, if you add these category groups to your serving teams, the categories can act as leadership teams for their sub-groups. Take a look at this example of the first impressions serving teams at a large multi-campus church:

Notice how each campus and ministry area has a leadership group. These groups not only help arrange the serving teams, but they can also have members of their own that represent the leadership team for each area.

Types of Group Schedules

There are three types of group schedules that can be configured for a group. To help simplify the editing of a group we allow you to configure which of these options are available to groups of each particular type. For instance, you'll probably want to configure your Small Groups to only be configured to allow the Weekly schedule. You can select which of these options are available for a specific group type under Admin Tools > General Settings > Group Types

Schedule Exclusions

Picture this: you've just finished entering all of your small groups into the system with their correct schedules and your supervisor just announced that, "groups are taking a two-week break." Not a problem! Adding a Schedule Exclusion to the Small Group group type will add the exclusion(s) to the schedule of all groups of this type. This is done under Admin Tools > General Settings > Group Types. This not only keeps the schedule accurate it also keeps attendance reminders from being sent while groups are not meeting.

Configuring a Group for Attendance

Before a group can take attendance, its group type must first be configured to enable attendance tracking under Admin Tools > General Settings > Group Types. From here you should select the group type you'd like to configure check-in for. Under the General tab enable setting Takes Attendance.

While this one setting is all you need to enable the attendance features, there are a couple of other settings that help improve the attendance tools:

• Group Schedule Options: While a group schedule is not required to take attendance, having a schedule will simplify the attendance entry because it will guide the user to enter attendance on those dates when the group meets.


• Schedule Exclusions: While each group can set its own schedule (including exclusion dates) you may want to set exclusion dates for every group of this type. This is especially helpful when using the simple schedule option where you only specify the day of the week and start time for a group. Adding these group type schedule exclusions help to keep email attendance reminders from being sent.


• Send Attendance Reminder: This checkbox will enable the sending of an attendance reminder email to the group leader the day the group is scheduled to meet.

Entering Attendance Information

Internal Attendance Features

There are several ways to collect group attendance. The first is to use the internal attendance features built into the group viewer under People > Group Viewer. You'll notice an attendance button on the group details block for groups that are configured to take attendance.

Selecting this option will bring up the group attendance grid. This grid lists the previously entered attendance for the group and allows you to enter new attendance records from the add button in the grid's footer.

Selecting the button will take you to the attendance entry screen below. From this screen you can check off all those who attended the group or note that the group did not meet on its scheduled time. You can also print an attendance sheet which allow attendance to be collected via a register.

1 Attendance For

The date for which attendance is being recorded.

2 Schedule

If a schedule exists for this group, it will be shown here.

3 Attendance Count

After attendance has been entered, the count of attendees is displayed.

4 We Did Not Meet

Select this checkbox if there was no attendance because the group did not meet. This distinction is helpful for record-keeping, but also impacts areas like Streaks.

5 Members

Attendance is tracked by checking the boxes next to the names of those who attended. The list of group members can be sorted by either first or last name.

6 Notes

If enabled in the block settings, notes can be added here. Notes will appear in the Attendance Summary Notification email if you are using that feature. The label “Notes” can be customized in the block settings.

7 Print Attendance Roster

Click the button to generate a printer-friendly version of the attendance page.

A Rock administrator can update the attendance entry block's settings to enable an automated Attendance Summary notification. This notification includes attendance details for the occurrence, any notes that exist and who entered the attendance.

1 Show Notes

The notes field, pictured in the prior screenshot above, can be disabled using this setting.

2 Attendance Note Label

You can customize the label that appears above the text entry box on the page.

3 Send Summary Email To

A summary of attendance data and Notes (if any exist) will be sent to the selected individuals via email. If none of the boxes are checked the email won’t be sent.

4 Attendance Email

Use this field to pick which System Email to use for sending the attendance summary. The “Attendance Summary Notification” ships with Rock for this purpose.

Group Attendance Digest

The Attendance Email described above isn’t your only option for sending attendance information to those who need it. Check out the Group Attendance Digest section below to see if it’s a good fit for your groups.

Rapid Attendance Entry

The Rapid Attendance Entry method of recording attendance may come in handy for your groups. To learn more, see the Rapid Attendance Entry chapter of the Checking-out Check-in manual.

Attendance Reminders

As noted in the configuration section above, you can also configure Rock to send a communication to the group leader on the day that their group meets to remind them to take attendance. This communication will include a link to take them straight to the attendance detail screen. Since each group leader gets an individual communication, we have enabled this link to not require a login to help simplify the process (the user however must have edit rights to the group to enter attendance).

There are two other key configuration points for attendance reminders.

The first is the system communication that is used as the template for the reminder. This template can be edited by navigating to Admin Tools > Communications > System Communications > Group Attendance Reminder. See our Communicating With Rock guide for more information. If the template is configured for both email and SMS, and if your system is set up to send emails and text messages, then the reminder can use either medium. Group leaders will receive either an email or a text, depending on how the job is set up.

The other configuration point is the job that is run to send the communications on a daily basis. This job must be created for every group type that requires reminders. For more information on this job see the Service Jobs Relating To Groups section below.

Group Attendance Digest

Earlier in this chapter we looked at the Attendance Email you can configure to send attendance summary information to selected people. As you can see below, the Group Attendance Digest is similar, but there some important differences you should know about.

The Group Attendance Digest may not be the right fit for all of your groups. It’s only intended for a specific type of groups structure that we’ll describe below.

1 Parent Group

This is the Parent Group for all of the other groups below it. This group will be added to the Send Group Attendance Digest job configuration, which we’ll talk about in the Service Jobs chapter below.

2 Region or Area

Individuals in these groups who have a group role that’s configured as Is Leader will receive a digest email for the associated child groups. If these groups have multiple Leaders then each will receive their own email individually.

3 Attendance Group

These are the small groups where attendance is being recorded. The attendance in these groups will be emailed to the Leaders of their respective parent groups. For instance, the attendance in ‘Group #3’ and ‘Group #4’ will be emailed to the Leaders in ‘Region #2’.

The Leader of the attendance group will be contacted when the ‘Email Leader’ link is clicked from the Attendance Digest email as shown in the prior screenshot above.

The chart above has three “Regions” with two “Groups” below each region. But you’re not limited to those numbers. You can have only one region with five child groups below it, or ten regions with a single child group each. The only requirement is that you need all three hierarchical levels, with a single parent group at the very top.

See the Service Jobs Relating to Groups chapter for information on setting up the Send Group Attendance Digest job.

How To Follow

Following is super simple. First navigate to the group you'd like to follow. Then, press the follow star in the upper right of the group detail block.

Following a group also enables several other features. For instance, when you have an event registration that places registrants into a group, you can configure the registration to also notify all individuals who are following that group.

Group Member Roles

People often have special roles in groups. Some are leaders; others have unique duties. To help differentiate the members of a group, you can give each a Group Member Role. The list of possible roles are defined on the group type. Each role has the following configuration options:

• Is Leader: Determines if the individuals in this role are considered leaders within the group. This option enables additional functionality within Rock.


• Can View: This gives the members of this role the ability to view the group information in various group toolbox blocks.


• Can Edit: Allows members to edit group information in various group toolbox blocks.


• Minimum Required: Rock allows you to have rules on how many individuals can have certain roles. This setting configures the minimum number of individuals who must have this role. This will keep you from deleting a group member if the deletion will drop the number of individuals with this role below the minimum.


• Maximum Allowed: This setting is like the minimum but limits the number of people who are allowed this role. For instance, you might configure a group type to only allow one person to be the leader. You can also use this option to limit the number of adults in a family. A family is a group type.


• Default: When someone is added to a group, this will be the default role they'll be assigned to. Note: Some blocks will have a block setting that overrides this default. This setting will handle cases when a block does not provide an overriding setting.

Group Member Status

The status of the group member tells you the person's standing within the group. The available statuses are:

• Active: The individual is currently participating in the group.


• Inactive: The individual is not currently participating in the group. Usually this status denotes that the person did participate at one point but isn't doing so anymore. How you choose to use this is up to you.


• Pending: The individual has not yet fully joined the group.

Group Member Attributes

Group members can also have attributes. This allows you to track custom data points for each person as it relates to their membership in the group. Usually these Group Member Attributes are defined on the Group Type under:
Admin Tools > General Settings > Group Types.
When they're configured here, the attributes will apply to every group member of this type. You can also add Group Member Attributes to a specific group under:
People > Group Viewer > Group if you have Administrate access to the group.

Editing a Group Member

Selecting a group member from a group member list will take you to the group member detail screen shown below. From here you can change the role and status of the group member. You will also be able to modify any of the Group Member Attributes defined for the group. You will also see a note field for the group member. This is useful for keeping basic notes. Rock uses this field to provide specific information about the group member when processing things like workflows and alternate placements.

If a group member has a note attached, a small note icon will display on the group member list to help identify this fact.

It is also possible to move a group member from one group to another. When you do you will be given the option to transfer any group member notes to the new group.

Group Member Workflows

By now you realize that groups are the backbone of Rock. So it makes sense that we'd invest in making them as powerful as possible. Group Member Workflows are one of these investments. So what do they do?

Group Member Workflows are an easy way to trigger workflows to launch when the state of a group member changes for a specific group. These events include:

• Being added to a group
• Being removed from a group
• Member status changes (e.g. status changed from Pending to Active)
• Member role changes (e.g. role changed from Attendee to Leader)
• Member attendance
• Member alternate placements (discussed in detail in the next chapter)

The workflows you define for these triggers can be configured for all groups of a specific type under:
Admin Tools > General Settings > Group Types or for a specific group under People > Group View > Group.
Below is the screen you'll see in either case.

1 Name

This is the name you want to use to describe the trigger.

2 Active

Indicates whether this trigger is currently active.

3 Start Workflow

The workflow type you'd like to start when the trigger conditions are met.

4 When

This determines when the trigger should be considered.

5 With Status Of

This allows you to filter when the trigger is applied for members with a specific status.

6 With Role Of

This allows you to filter when the trigger is applied for members with a specific status.

7 From Status/Role Of

Determines what the original status/role was to use as a trigger filter.

8 To Status/Role Of

Determines what the new status/role must be for the trigger to fire.

9 First-Time

Determines if this trigger should only be activated the first time a person attends this group or everytime.

See our Blasting Off With Workflows guide for more information.

Tips For Creating Triggered Workflows

When workflows are started from the group member triggers, they will pass in a few attributes for your convenience (as long as the attributes are defined). These include:

• Person: The person that the group member represents.
• Group: The group that the person is a member of.
• AttendanceDateTime: Only applies to the Member Attended Group trigger type and is the date/time that person attended the group.

Whenever possible, the workflow will also pass in the Group Member model as the entity of the workflow. You can access the group member properties and attributes by using the Attribute Set From Entity action with the following Lava:

In some group usage scenarios you may want group leaders to be able to remove someone from their group but not have the group member fall to the wayside. Alternate placements allows you to do just that.

The first step is to configure the group type to have an alternate placement group member workflow. We discussed creating these workflows in the previous chapter. This member workflow type has two options: Show Note and Note Required. This allows the group leader to notate the reason why they are seeking to place the group member elsewhere.

The Group Member Detail screen contains a button that allows you to initiate an alternate placement workflow. When you click this button, Rock displays the Move Group Member window, where you can select which configured workflow to launch (if there is more than one) and allow the leader to enter a note (if it's configured to do that).

When the Move button is clicked, the workflow is launched and the person is removed from the group.

Enable Group History

To enable Group History for all groups of a certain group type, begin by locating the group type in:
Admin Tools > General Settings > Group Types.
In the General section of the Group Type Details screen, check the Enable Group History checkbox. You can customize the group type's display options in the Display Options section by assigning it a color and icon. These options come into play in a number of the Group History views, but we'll get into that later. For now, click Save and Rock will enable the history and options for that group.

View Group History

Now that you have Group History enabled, you can jump to that 40,000ft view. Locate the group in the Group Viewer and click the button.

This brings up the group's timeline view, shown earlier, including both member and group history information. The Group History screen shows the history of the group by day for the lifetime of that group. Each event on the timeline has an icon that corresponds to a type of action.

• - Member added
• - Member removed
• - Group edited
• - Other/general group action

If there is more information than space available for an event on the timeline, you can view the entire contents by hovering your mouse over the text. For multiple occurrences on the same day, Rock will display link to expand the area to display all of the actions for that day.

To hide member history and view only actions made on the group level, click the button.

You can also zoom in from that 40,000ft view and get a closer look at the history of the members of a group. Click Member History to display a group's members and the history/dates of their involvement in the group. Click on a specific person to view a timeline of their involvement with the group.

View Group History in a Person's Profile Page

Individual group history is also available on the Person Profile, under the Groups tab.

Hover your mouse over any of the events on the person's timeline to display the details of that event. Note the timeline colors correspond to the color assigned to the group back when Group History was enabled. If the person is a group leader, the color will be slightly darker. You can also click on a specific event to drill down into the group. As with all of the tabs on the Person Profile, the information is filterable. Click the button to display the filter options.

My Account - Groups

Along the right of the My Account page is a listing of groups to which the person belongs. The individual can also see their role within the group. Through block settings you can configure which group types to show or hide. Using Lava, you can adjust the look of this block to your heart's content.

Clicking on any group in which the person is a leader will open the group leader's toolbox.

Group Toolbox

This is the money block. With this block, you have access to every detail of a group that's accessible in a Lava template. It also has some special Postback Commands that allow you to enable editing of the group details and its members. If enabled in the block settings, you can even allow individuals to set their communication preference for the group. The sky is really the limit when it comes to customizing the look of this block.

Group Attendance List and Detail

These two blocks allow you to track the attendance of a group. By default these options will only show for groups of a type with attendance enabled.

Group Registration

Registering for a group is a simple process using Rock's Group Registration block. Out-of-the-box this block will ask for basic contact information for the individual and their spouse. By adjusting the block settings you can customize this block in several different ways. Let's walk through each one:

• Mode: There are three entry modes for the registration form.
  • Simple: This mode only asks for the individual's first name, last name and email address.
  • Full: This mode additionally asks for more contact information including home phone, cell phone and address.
  • Full With Spouse: This mode is identical to the normal Full mode but adds the spouse's first name, last name, cell phone and email.


• Group Member Status: This setting determines the group member status that will be used when they are added to the group. Options include Pending, Active or Inactive.


• Connection Status: The registration form will attempt to find a matching record in the database using the first name, last name and email. If a record cannot be found, a new record will be created in the database. When that occurs, this will be the connection status that is used for these new records.


• Record Status: This represents the record status that will be used for new records. It's best to leave this as Pending so individuals on your data integrity team can manually review them for possible duplicates and merge the records if needed.


• Workflow: This option allows you to launch a workflow after the registration. The group member will be attached to the workflow as the Entity.


• Lava Template: This is a Lava template that will be applied to the top of the registration block. This allows you to customize the experience for the individual.


• Result Lava Template: This Lava template is used to craft a response message after the registration is completed.


• Result Page: You can optionally send the individual to a new page after the registration is processed.

Scheduling Tools

Any organization needs a way to manage which workers are assigned to what positions. Many approaches are used to schedule workers, from a paper on a clipboard, through excel spreadsheets, to complex and costly specialized scheduling software. Sometimes all of these approaches and more are in use within the same organization. In Rock, all of these methods can be put to rest by using the Group Scheduling feature as your one-stop-shop for coordinating people for any event.

Overview

The general point of using this tool is to quickly drag and drop people into a room for a specific time. The tools are very customizable for you to configure this so it will work for your organization's flow. A typical example here will be scheduling volunteers for your nursery team for the weekend. You'll pick the group, week, time, and location—the people will then be filtered based on those selections. Now you will drag and drop people names into the desired areas or use the auto tool. Make sense? If not, don't worry, we'll break each step down into detail.

Scheduling Toolbox

Let’s start with the power each person has. On the Schedule Toolbox on their My Account page they can:

• See what upcoming opportunities they are assigned to.
• Choose the frequency of serving. This could be once a month, every week, 1st and 3rd, etc.
• Choose which room/area of volunteering they prefer, plus preferred times.
• Set blackout dates—vacation, work, etc.

1 Send Reminder

How many days prior that a reminder email is sent about an upcoming schedule.

2 Current Schedule

The frequency someone is available to serve. Rock administrators can edit this list by navigating to Admin Tools > General Settings > Group Member Schedule Templates.

3 Assignment

Preferred times and locations. Time is required to choose a location. Location preferences are optional. If no location is selected, the auto scheduler will assign the person to the next available position at the preferred time.

3 Blackout Dates

Dates the person is not available to serve.

The Schedule Toolbox relieves your staff of a significant load because individuals can do that work for themselves. When each person logs in to the external website, within their My Account, they have access to their Schedule Toolbox. Don’t worry; we'll still have some work for you to do.

At least initially, you will need to configure all your locations and schedules within your groups. Once this part is complete, all you’ll do is place volunteers into their dedicated serving positions and send the request.

Along with being able to do everything we’ve listed above for volunteers, here are more actions you can take:

• Set the minimum, desired, and maximum people needed for each room and time.
• Auto-schedule each room and time based on volunteers’ preferences.
• Manually drag and drop people into positions and send a request for confirmation.
• Manually accept or decline individuals from the scheduler page.
• Individually resend a request to serve.
• And more…

Let’s take an in-depth look at each of these settings and how to configure it for your organization.

Configuring Group Scheduling

There are two critical pieces of the puzzle you need before starting to schedule volunteers. It’s simple to get these pieces because when it comes to asking for help, people are hardwired to know when and where they are needed. So, we are going to make sure our Named Locations and Schedules are configured.

Be sure to check out the Checking-Out Check-In user guide for more detail about adding locations. For Group Scheduler, however, you will be adding more than rooms. Perhaps you’ll be adding sections, areas or positions. These might be used to schedule specific areas of your lobby for the greeters to be stationed. Or, if you’ll be using Rock to schedule your band and technical teams, add a location named ‘Audio’ or ‘Piano’ and change the location type to be a position.

Next up: schedules, also known as times. This is found in General Settings > Schedules. You should have a few parent groups for different types of schedules. For group scheduling, we want to make sure the times are accurate since, you guessed it, location and time are critical aspects of scheduling volunteers.

Lastly, make sure scheduling is enabled on the Group Type. Navigate to General Settings > Group Types > Serving Teams | Scheduling. There are additional settings you can configure for your organization. To enable, check the Scheduling Enabled box.

Configuring Groups

We're almost to the fun part. The Group Scheduler requires some information from the group before it’s ready. In the Group Viewer, add Meeting Details for every location that needs assigned people. This might be a pretty long list for some groups like the list we see in the screenshot below.

At the end of the day, the goal for this page is to have separation and customization for each group. You can break your groups up any way that works best for your flow of work. We recommend that you do some planning before jumping in and creating groups so you can maximize the effectiveness of this feature for your staff.

Meeting Details

Click on the icon in the Meeting Details tab.

This opens a window to add a new location. The properties include Location, Type, and Schedule(s).

1 Location

Choose from the drop down (these are the rooms from the named location page).

2 Type

These are Defined Types found in General Settings > Defined Type > Group | Location Type.

3 Schedules

This drop down shows all the times from the Schedules page in General Settings.

You can select multiple times just by clicking on them one by one. Make sure you use the same schedule for every group in the meeting details. This will avoid scheduling conflicts. More properties can be selected to add the minimum, desired and maximum people needed for that room and its times.

You have the option to choose different capacities for each time. The Group Location page is where all those details are customized.

When its complete, you shouldn’t have to do anything in the meeting details again until your organization opens more rooms or adds times.

The Scheduling options you choose will be specific for each group.

Group Scheduler

Now the moment of truth…the Group Scheduler page. This is where the magic happens. Okay, maybe not actual magic, but it is where the scheduling happens. This page will become very familiar to your staff, since it’s the "magic page" for organizing group members into a location.

Navigating Group Scheduler

1 Group

Here you choose which group you’ll be scheduling. i.e. Tech Booth, Nursery, Greeters, etc. This drop down is limited to one group at a time to avoid conflict with the people list.

2 Week

This is the week: all schedules within that week will be shown including midweek events tied to the group. Weeks in Rock start on Monday and end on Sunday.

3 Schedule

These are the times that were selected in the meeting details on the group page. If a time is missing, then those groups or locations don’t have details with that schedule.

4 Locations

AKA Named Locations. These are all the locations that are added to the meeting details of the group.

5 Source of People

Determines where the list of people come from. The group itself, an alternative group or even a data view. When Scheduling Must Meet Requirements is enabled on the Scheduling Tab in the Group Settings, the alternative groups are disabled.

6 People

The people list shows everyone in the list. This shows if they are available or if there is a scheduling conflict. Use the search bar to search for specific individuals in a long list. If the individual isn't in your list, click on the [+] button in the top right to enable the person picker.

7 Location Grid

This is where you place people into locations. Choose which locations are shown by the check boxes on the Location section.

8 Status Bar

Shows the confirmed and unconfirmed status of the room at that time. If someone declines it will be subtracted.

9 Send Now

Sends everyone in a room a scheduling confirmation request, allowing them to respond "yes" or "no" to the position if they haven’t already responded to an email with the same request.

10 Auto Scheduler

Based off of individual preferences, when this button is clicked it will place them in their desired group and time if it is currently listed and if spots need to be filled.

Auto Schedule Vs. Manual Schedule

Auto scheduling works based on the preferences set by volunteers. In both an individual's My Account page on the external site, and on the groups page on an internal site person profile, there is a scheduling toolbox. These are the same, connected toolboxes so whatever a person sets on their external account will appear on the internal site for Rock administrators to view. Sometimes a verbal conversation will happen about someone’s preferences so a staff member can manually set that on their profile for them – whatever works for your organization, you can do.

So how does the auto scheduling feature work? Well, it involves some complex logic, and thankfully we already figured that all out for you, so sit back, relax and we’ll take a brief look at an example.

We all know those multi-talented people who can greet everyone at the door, run the lighting console and keep the attention of 10 three-year-olds for an hour, so naturally they set their preferences to every service, in every group which is a huge blessing. Only problem is how do you avoid double booking this individual?

This is how Rock solves that conflict: If you’re using the same schedules to represent the same time frames, (which we know they are from the foundation of your schedule configuration), then the auto scheduler won’t schedule the same person twice. Auto scheduling scans the person’s preferences and sees that they are not assigned anywhere so the first time a staff member clicks on auto schedule it will always pull them first. Once someone has been scheduled for a time and location, they will be marked with an icon on other lists indicating they are scheduled elsewhere.

Manual scheduling is in the name. It’s physically placing people into their serving locations. If we are being realistic here, we know there are going to be those few people who never get around to setting their preferences, so in those cases you’ll have to manually place them. We know you know each and every one of your volunteers’ time and location preferences, so this isn’t a big deal anyway.

There are a few things to take note of. When people have a blackout date, they cannot be auto or manually scheduled, but they will appear in the list with an absent icon by their name. Furthermore, if someone has a scheduling conflict, you could manually place them into a group and send them a request. In most cases you wouldn’t want to do that since they’re committed elsewhere, and pulling someone away from another location they’ve already accepted can cause confusion for the helper.

If you have multiple sites that are close enough to each other that some people volunteer at more than one location, you will run into a scheduling conflict that doesn’t appear as one if the locations have different schedules. For example, one site might have a 4:30pm and 6:00pm schedule while the other only has a 5:00pm schedule. If someone was already scheduled for the 5:00pm time, Rock would not see that they are elsewhere on the people list for the other site since the schedules are different.

Confirmation Email

You will typically send a mass email once you have your teams set up for them to accept or decline. Click on the Send Now button.

Alternatively, you can send an individual an email to accept or decline by clicking on the three dots near their name. This opens a drop down list of options where you can choose the Resend Confirmation button to send the email to confirm or decline again.

Schedule Status Board

The status board gives you a bird’s-eye view of the rooms and times which shows what is covered and what is still needed. The block settings allow you to choose a parent group to filter out any unnecessary groups showing in the select groups list. The dates button opens a slider bar to choose how many weeks to show at a time.

Schedule Analytics

The analytics board acts similarly to the scheduler page where you choose the group, location and time then hit update and it will show records of the response or lack thereof in one place.

System Communications

We have schedule confirmation request and reminder system communications already set up for you, which are of course customizable to fit your organization’s lingo. Just like all system communications, you can view and modify them under Admin Tools > Communications > System Communications.

See our Communicating With Rock guide for more information.

Jobs

Rock will send out confirmation and schedule communications based on the values you set on the Group Type Detail page. By default, these communications will be sent at 4pm. If you want to change the sending time, you can edit that time in the "Send Group Schedule Notifications" job, which can be viewed under Admin Tools > System Settings > Jobs Administration.

Group List

Like its name suggests, Group List block lists all groups that match a specific filter. The power of this block lies within its block settings. They allow you to:

• Include Groups Of Type: Specify which group types to include in the list.


• Exclude Groups Of Type: Specify which group types not to show in the list.


• Detail Page: The page you would like to navigate to when someone selects a group from the list.


• Limit to Security Groups: Remember that security groups are a bit special. While there is a group type for security groups, any specific group can be configured to act as a security group. This setting shows groups that meet any of these criteria.


• Display Filter: Determines if the filter panel should be displayed above the list.


• Display XYZ Column: This block also has several block settings to hide or display columns for displaying group type, group description, active status, group member count and system status.

Below is an image of a sample group list.

Group Tree View

The Group Tree View block is very similar in configuration to the Group List block except that it displays the groups in a hierarchical tree view. Below is a sample of what this block would look like.

Group Details / Group Member List / Group Member Details

While these are three different blocks they are usually used together to fully display the contents of a group with the ability to edit.

Group Type Map

The Group Type Map block maps the location of every group of a specfied type. While not included on a page out of the box, this is a very powerful block for mapping all of your small groups. Small organizations could even use it to map all the families in the database (remember families are groups too). Below is a sample of this block in action.

Group Member Add From URL

Say what? OK, this is easy... this block when passed a PersonGuid and GroupId through the query string will add the person to the group and display a Lava template of your design. This is very useful in crafting various group registration scenarios. To get the juices flowing think about all the things you could do with this using the Dynamic Data and Group Finder blocks. There you go!

Group Member Remove From URL

This block is just like the Group Member Add From URL block - but the opposite. It takes a PersonGuid and GroupId through the query string and will remove the person from the group and display a Lava template of your design. This allows you even more flexibility in creating group registration situations. Alright!

Group Simple Register

This block is another block that's handy for registration scenarios. It provides a simple form that accepts a first name, last name, and email address, registers the person to a group, and then forwards them on to a confirmation page. This block is most useful when it's used on an external facing site as a simple first point of contact but is flexible enough for many other scenarios!

Simple Register Confirmation

This block is designed to pair with the Simple Register block as a confirmation page. When a user is redirected to this page it provides either a success or a failure message. It's that simple!

Group Registration

This block is the big brother of the Simple Register block. This block takes a GroupId as a query parameter for context and allows you to do a few neat things like fire off a workflow when a user registers and use Lava options to format the registration form. It also has a full mode that takes down address details and phone details and a full with spouse -- which does exactly what you might expect. Use this mighty block when you want to get more than your standard information about a person or when you want to use a specific workflow process for your registrants.

Group Map

The Group Map block maps the members of a specific group that is passed through the query string (aka passed in through the address of the page http://server.com/page?GroupId=12). While this block isn't too powerful on its own, it can be very helpful when used in conjunction with other blocks like the Dynamic Data block. Below is a sample of what this block looks like with with a sample group.

You'll notice two sets of color-coded labels near the top of this block. Clicking these will toggle the display of groups and families on the map. Below is a description of how and when these label toggles will appear.

Group / Group Member Labels (top left)

• If the selected group has a valid geopoint, or geofence location, that group's name will be displayed as a label in the upper left which can be used to toggle the display of the group. The group will be displayed on the map either as a marker or a polygon depending on whether the selected group had a geopoint or geofence. The color of the marker or polygon is determined by the first color specified in the Colors attribute of the selected mapstyle defined value. Note: this option will not appear if the selected group does not have a geopoint or geofence defined.


• A Groups label will be displayed if the selected group has any child groups with a valid geopoint or geofence location. The child groups may also be either a marker or a polygon. The color of markers is determined by the second color specified in the Colors attribute of the selected mapstyle defined value. The color of polygons is determined by the Polygon Colors block setting.


• A Group Members label will be displayed if the selected group has any members with a valid geopoint location. Clicking the label will toggle the display on the map of those members. Note, if the selected group is displayed as a polygon, these members may or may not be within the boundaries of the polygon. The color of the markers is determined by the third color specified in the Colors attribute of the selected mapstyle defined value.

Connection Status Labels (top right)

• If the selected group has a geofence location and is displayed as a polygon on the map, then the block will also display a list of Connection status labels to toggle the display of families whose locations fall within the boundaries of that polygon.


• The connection statuses that will be included as toggle options are determined by the Connection Status Defined Values. Only those defined values that have a value specified in the Color attribute will be displayed. The color value is also used to determine the color of the markers.


• Only families with at least one active record will be included.


• If family members have different connection statuses, they will be ordered by the connection status defined value order, and the first connection status found will be used for the family. For example, if a family has a member and a visitor, the family will be displayed when the Member label is selected.

Send Attendance Reminders

This job sends reminders to group leaders to enter attendance. All individuals in the group with a role that has the 'Is Leader' setting will receive this reminder. 'A couple of key configuration options for this job are:

• Group Type: The group type that the reminders are for.


• System Communication: The system communication that you would like to use for sending the reminder. Rock ships with a Group Attendance Reminder system communication for this purpose.


• Send Reminders: By default, a reminder will always be sent the day the group meets. By adding values here you can configure additional reminders if the attendance has not been entered. For instance, entering 2,4 would send reminders 2 and 4 days after the group has met if no attendance has been entered.


• Send Using: Choose whether the reminder should be sent via SMS text message, email or either according to the group leader's preference. Group leaders can set their preference in the Group Leader Toolbox.

Group Leader Pending Notifications

This job allows you to notify group leaders of newly pending members in their groups. This provides the following customization options:

• Group Type: The group type to filter off for limiting the groups that are checked for pending members.


• Include Previously Notified: This determines if only newly pending members should be sent to leaders, or if pending members who have already been sent once should also be considered. Note that when you initially set up this job, none of the current pending members will have been marked as sent, so they will all be sent to leaders on the first run.


• Notification Email: This is the system communication template that should be used. A sample one is provided out of the box for you to use or edit as you see fit.


• Group Role Filter: This is an optional setting that allows you to only include pending members of a specified role. If you don’t select a role, all roles will be considered.

The notification will be sent to all group members of the group whose role has been configured as Is Leader.

Send Group Attendance Digest

This job sends a summary of group attendance information to certain group Leaders. See the Group Attendance Digest section above for details on the group structure requirements for this job. When you’re configuring this job, pay close attention to the following configuration options:

• Parent Group: The job needs to know the highest-level parent group in the group structure to identify which child groups apply to the job.


• System Communication: This is the system communication template that should be used. A sample one is provided out of the box for you to use or edit as you see fit.


• Date Range: You can choose to send the attendance digest for either the ‘Current Week’ or the ‘Previous Week’.

In order for the job to work correctly, the groups taking attendance must meet on a regular (i.e. Weekly) schedule. If you have groups on a custom schedule, the Attendance Email may be a better fit.

Defining Group Requirements

You manage group requirements under Admin Tools > General Settings > Group Requirements.

Editing a requirement allows you to provide the following configuration options.

Editing Group Requirements

1 Name

This is the name of the requirement.

2 Description

Be sure to provide a good description of the requirements and any of the underlying criteria that are used to determine whether a group member meets the requirement. A little documentation now will save you headaches in the future.

3 Positive Label

This is the label text that will be show when a group member meets the requirement.

4 Negative Label

The label used when a group member does not meet the requirement.

5 Warning Label

The label text that should be shown when the check meets the warning condition.

6 Can Expire

Some requirements, once met, will always be true - say for instance a requirement that you take a specific class before serving. Other requirements may expire. A good example of this is a background check or CPR certification.

7 Expire in Days

When a requirement can expire, you can set the number of days in the future to wait before re-checking the requirement. For something like a background check you don't need to look every day to see if the background check is still valid.

8 Check Type

So how do we determine the logic of whether someone meets a requirement? Rock gives you three options:

• SQL: In this case you provide a SQL statement. This statement should return a list of Person Ids in the database that meet that requirement.
• Dataview: You can also select a dataview that returns a list of all the people who meet the requirement.
• Manual: This requires someone to manually determines if a person meets the requirement.

You'll notice that the SQL and Dataview options give you a separate property to determine the warning state. You can leave this blank if your requirement doesn't have a warning state.

Applying Group Requirements to Individual Groups

Once you have defined your requirement, you can apply it to groups. If you have Administrate access to a group you'll notice a panel on the edit screen entitled Group Requirements. You can add group requirements from this panel. There is also a setting to keep group members who don't already meet the requirements from being added to a group.

Applying Group Requirements to Group Types

You can also set group member requirements at the Group Type level. This allows you to apply member requirements to all groups of a certain type rather than to each individual group.

To access your group types, go to Admin Tools > General Settings > Group Types. Select the group you want to add requirements to from the Group Type list. In the Group Type Detail screen, expand the Group Requirements section. From here you can either select an existing group requirement to edit or click the button to add a new requirement.

Viewing Group Requirements

Once you enable group requirements you'll notice in the Group Viewer that certain group members may have warning icons next to their names. This yellow icon denotes that the group member either does not meet the requirements or is in a warning state.

Group Requirement Jobs

The Group Requirements features rely on two system jobs. These jobs can be configured under Admin Tools > System Settings > Service Jobs.

Fundraising Walk Through

Keep in mind that each fundraising opportunity is a group. You'll manage the opportunities from the Group Viewer.

Ok, but that's the boring part. Let's start looking at how these groups are displayed on your external site! Out of the box Rock configures several pages to view fundraising opportunties. The pages are displayed under the Missions pages (found under the Connect menu item). The missions page lists the various opportunites that are marked Show Public. Keep in mind that this block can be filtered by Opportunity Type.

Selecting one of the opportunities will take you to its detail page. In the example below, Ted (who is leading this particular mission trip) is viewing the page. Since we know it's Ted, a summary of his Fundraising Progress is shown. Links are also displayed to take him to his participant's page and for him to make a payment. Also, note that since Ted is a leader for this opportunity, he has access to a leader toolbox.

This page is also used for the general public to view. It allows them to easily register for the opportunity if a registration instance was provided.

Fundraising Opportunites can also optionally be configured with a Content Channel for providing updates. When configured, a new tab will be shown to display these updates.

Another optional setting is to allow commenting on the opportunity. This tab will display a Rock notes control. Keep in mind that this feature currently doesn't allow for approving comments and does not email when new comments are added.

Each opportunity participant has a personalized page that they can share with others to help generate interest and help encourage funding.

Each participant can provide a custom opportunity introduction and edit their profile image from their personalized page. This block can also be configured to edit specific person attributes if you wish.

If the person logged in is the participant, they can also view the gifts that have been given.

If someone doesn't have a link to a participant's profile page they can choose to give from the opportunity detail page and select the participant they would like to fund.

Fundraising Opportunity Configuration

As we mentioned earlier, Rock's fundraising features are driven by a set of group and group member attributes. Let's take a look at these settings to see how you can customize each fundraising opportunity to meet your individualized needs.

Keep in mind the group and group member attributes below are specific to a single fundraising opportunity (each one is a group). This allows you to have several types of opportunities, each with their own unique settings and configuration.

Group Attributes

Below is a detailed discussion of each setting for the group that represents the opportunity (Mission Trip, Internship Season, etc.)

Name	Type	Description
Opportunity Title	Text	The group name is mainly used internally. This attribute of Opportunity Title is what will show on the external site when opportunities are listed.
Opportunity Date Range	Date Range	Used to show the start and end dates of the opportunity. For a mission trip, we would recommend that you put the trip dates here. This date range doesn't control when the opportunity is shown externally; it just describes when the opportunity occurs.
Opportunity Location	Text	This is the location of the opportunity. For a mission trip, this would be the city or country. Feel free to leave this blank if it doesn't make sense in your situation.
Opportunity Summary	Memo	A brief description of the fundraising opportunity.
Opportunity Photo	Image	If a picture is worth a thousand words, then we'd better include one.
Opportunity Details	HTML	Now we get to the nitty-gritty of what this opportunity is all about.
Individual Fundraising Goal	Currency	This field determines how much money each person is trying to raise. If each person in the opportunity is raising different amounts, you can provide those unique amounts on their group member attribute (discussed below).
Opportunity Type	Defined Value	The opportunity type helps group-like opportunities. Rock ships with three options (Trip, Internship and Project). You can add your own under General Settings > Defined Types > Fundraising Opportunity Type. This setting has two roles: Acts as a filter for opportunities on the external website (e.g. show only mission trips on this list) Provides a label to describe the opportunity type. For instance, should this opportunity be referred to as a Trip, Project, etc.
Update Content Channel	Content Channel	You may want to provide updates on the status of your opportunity. For example, if your opportunity is a mission trip, you might want to file trip reports. Or if it's a project, you might want to provide updates on the overall funding level or project status. This setting allows you to configure a content channel to manage these updates. If you don't provide a channel the updates tab will be hidden.
Enable Commenting	Boolean	Sometimes you want comments, sometimes you don't. When enabled, a notes block will be added to the opportunity detail. Just remember that there is no automatic email when new notes/comments are left and no approval process. These features may be added in a future release.
Registration Instance	Number	This is what ties in a registration to the fundraising opportunity. You must provide the registration instance ID (currently there isn't a registration instance picker).
Registration Notes	Memo	This short description will show up on the opportunity details page to provide any quick notes about the registration (e.g. A $200 deposit is required).
Allow Individual Disabling of Contribution Requests	Boolean	Opportunity participants can have their own personalized fundraising pages. Some participants may want to use this page to share the opportunity and provide updates, but not want to communicate the financial needs. This setting allows you the option to allow them to disable the sharing of their funding status.
Allow Individual Editing of Fundraising Goal	Boolean	This allows individuals to set their own fundraising goals from their external fundraising profiles. The default for this is not to allow editing.
Cap Fundraising Amount	Boolean	This setting determines if an individual can raise more money that their goal.
Financial Account	Financial Account	This configures which financial account the fundraising opportunity should use to track their money.
Show Public	Boolean	This flag determines whether the opportunity should be displayed on the external website. Since it's common for an opportunity to be displayed long before it starts, and for a brief time after it ends, this flag is used to determine when an opportunity should be displayed.

Since many of these attributes drive the external display of the opportunity, let's look at an example and where each value this shown.

1 Opportunity Title

2 Photo

3 Date Range

4 Location

5 Summary

6 Details

7 Trip Updates

8 Comments

9 Registration Status

This is determined by looking at the dates on the registration instance. If the registration is not yet open, the future opening date will be displayed.

10 Registration Contact

The contact comes from the Registration if it is configured.

11 Registration Note

12 Spots Available

This is calculated by looking at the number of registrant openings available for the registration.

Fundraising Financial Transactions

Financial Transactions that are created from the fundraising features will all default to the Contribution type. The account for the transaction will be applied based on the opportunity group setting. It is possible to change the transaction type to a different value than Contribution. To do so, you'd need to create a new page with a Transaction Entry block on it. This block has a block attribute to set the transaction type on the advanced setting panel. You'd then need to configure your fundraising pages to use this new page for processing financial transactions.

In Rock, financial transactions can be tied to another entity (event registration, etc.). Donations that are made as a part of fundraising will be tied to the Group Member of the Fundraising Opportunity group. The is no financial linkage to registrations. This is an important point to understand as there is no way to link money coming in to a registration with that given as a fundraising opportunity. Below we cover several ways you can configure event registration to work with the fundraising tools for maximum impact.

Financial Transactions Matching

We've already discussed that Financial Transactions for fundraising are Contributions that are tied to the Group Members of the Fundraising Opportunity Group. The Rock tools mentioned above do all of the connecting of the group member to the transactions. You might asking, "What about checks or gifts that need to be entered manually?" And that... is a GREAT question!

After entering contributions (either scanning and matching or through another process), you can link a contribution to a fundraising opportunity participant using the Fund Raising Matching block found under Finance > Fundraising Matching

Fundraising Progress

You can quickly track the progress of fundraising campaigns for fundraising groups. Start by going to the Group Viewer page (People > Group Viewer). From this screen you can view the individual fundraising donations for each group member.

You can also quickly view the group's overall fundraising progress. Click the button to display a snapshot of both the combined and individual fundraising progress.

How Registration Can Work with Fundraising

As mentioned above, Rock's registration and fundraising tools were meant to work together. That said, financial transactions from these two features don't tie directly together. Below are some use cases to show how you can get these two features to sing in perfect harmony.

Enable Group RSVP

The RSVP function is enabled in group type settings, making RSVP features available to any groups within that type. All RSVP features are tied directly to a group. That means you must have a group created before you can use RSVP. The group doesn't need to have any members, but it needs to exist so individuals who accept your RSVP can be added to it.

To enable RSVP for a group type, navigate to Administration > General Settings > Group Types and open the RSVP settings for the group type.

1 Group RSVP Enabled

This checkbox must be selected to access RSVP features for any group of this type. Once enabled, the other two fields related to RSVP will appear.

2 RSVP Reminder System Communication

Select the System Communication that should be used to send reminders to invitees who have Accepted. Only communications in the “RSVP Confirmation” category will be available for selection. The selected communication will automatically be used with all groups of this type.

3 RSVP Reminder Offset Days

Indicate how many days before the event the reminder should be sent. Like the communication selection, you won’t be able to change the offset days for individual groups if you set a value here. All groups of this type will inherit the offset days set at the group type level.

RSVP - Group Viewer

After you’ve enabled RSVP for a group type, you’ll see a couple of changes when viewing groups of that type from the Group Viewer page.

First, you’ll notice the addition of a new icon that will take you to the Group RSVP List page, where you can view or add occurrences. We’ll talk more about occurrences in the RSVP Occurrences section below.

Second, you can Edit a group to access the RSVP Reminder System Communication and RSVP Reminder Offset Days for that group. These settings are only available for groups where RSVP has been enabled on the group type.

1 RSVP Reminder System Communication

Select the System Communication that should be used to send reminders to invitees who have Accepted. Only communications in the “RSVP Confirmation” category will be listed for selection. If you already set this at the group type level then you won’t be able to change it here.

2 RSVP Reminder Offset Days

Indicate how many days before the event the reminder should be sent. Like the communication selection, you won’t be able to change the reminder settings for individual groups if they’re already configured for the group type.

Group RSVP List

Clicking the icon takes you to the Group RSVP List page. It will be empty when you first start, but after you add a few occurrences to the list (see RSVP Occurrences) you’ll quickly see how useful this page is. Let's take a look.

1 Date

The date of the occurrence is shown in the first column. You can use the Filter Options near the top of the block to narrow the list by date.

2 Schedule

The check-in schedule associated with the occurrence, if applicable, is shown here.

3 Location

If a location has been assigned to the occurrence you can see it here.

4 Response Progress Bar

This column gives you a graph of RSVP response data:

• Green = Accepted
• Red = Declined
• Blank/Gray = No Response

5 Invited

You can view the count of all invitees for the occurrence, so you know how many people were invited.

6 Response Statistics

In this part of the block you can see how many people have replied to the RSVP with either an Accept or Decline, and a count of how many haven’t responded.

7 RSVP Detail Icon

Click the icon to access the RSVP Detail page (see RSVP Detail).

RSVP Occurrences

Let’s look at how to add an occurrence to the RSVP List. You'll need to have at least one occurrence set up for the group before you can start sending your RSVP emails.

1 Name

You can optionally set a unique name for an occurrence. This applies only to the occurrence being viewed. Invitees will see the name you provide on the external website when they Accept or Decline.

2 Date

Set the date of the occurrence.

3 Check-in Schedule

Choose the check-in schedule associated with the occurrence, if applicable.

4 Location

Select the location of the occurrence.

5 Show/Hide Additional Fields

Click Show Additional Fields to reveal the settings for custom messages and decline reasons (listed below).

6 Custom Accept/Decline Messages

You can customize the message invitees see when they respond to your RSVP request. We'll show you what that looks like in the Responding to RSVP Requests section.

7 Show Decline Reasons

If the Show Decline Reasons box is selected, then invitees can give a reason for declining. You can choose which reasons are available to invitees from the list of Available Decline Reasons.

RSVP Email Requests

Now that we have an occurrence set up, we’re ready to send out some invitations.

Adding an RSVP request to an e-mail is as simple as clicking and dragging the RSVP tool button (look for the icon) into your email. If you’re not sure how to get to this point, check out the Communication Wizard section in the Communicating With Rock guide.

After the RSVP buttons have been added to the body of your email, use the panel on the right to select the group and occurrence.

1 Select Group

Choose the group associated with the occurrence. Only group types with RSVP enabled will be in the list of options.

2 Select Occurrence

Pick the occurrence for which you want to send an email. The RSVP responses you receive will be for this occurrence.

3 Register Recipients

Click the Register Recipients button to keep track of RSVP data for all the recipients of your email. If this button isn’t used, only people who have responded to your RSVP request will appear in the RSVP List or RSVP Detail pages.

4 Show Advanced Settings

You can use the advanced settings to customize how the RSVP buttons are shown to invitees.

RSVP Detail

Now that we’ve sent our email, we need to monitor the responses. We’ll do this from the RSVP Detail page, which you can get to by clicking an occurrence from the RSVP List page.

The detail block at the top of the RSVP Detail page shows the occurrence details and a graph of responses. The list block at the bottom of the page shows your invitees and their responses.

Not only can you view responses, but you can also update responses or add decline notes if you need to. This ensures you always have accurate information, especially if the invitee responds (or changes their response) by phone or in person.

If you didn’t turn on the Show Decline Reasons option for the occurrence, then the Decline Reason and Decline Note columns won’t be shown.

Responding to RSVP Requests

It may be helpful for you to know what individuals will be seeing and doing after they receive your RSVP email.

Clicking either Accept or Decline in the email will bring the invitee to your external site. What happens at that point depends on how you’ve set up your group, occurrence and email.

Public Group Member Attributes

When adding a member attribute to either a group or group type, you'll notice a Public setting. This setting controls whether the member attribute is included as part of the RSVP response process.

If the Public setting is enabled, then the group member attribute will be shown to RSVP invitees who accept your invitation. This allows you to gather additional information from the invitee beyond knowing that they plan to attend. We’ll show you exactly what this looks like in the Accept section below.

Accept

Invitees will be taken to your website after clicking “Accept” in the RSVP email they received. If you’ve attached any public member attributes to your group, then invitees will be asked to provide additional information (i.e. attribute values) accordingly.

For example, the RSVP Response page pictured below has a field labeled “Need Childcare?” with a drop-down menu below it. This prompts the individual to disclose if they need childcare before finalizing their RSVP acceptance. You can see how this particular member attribute was set up in the Public Group Member Attributes section above.

After the invitee clicks the Accept button on the page pictured above, they’ll be brought to the acceptance confirmation page pictured below.

If you didn't add any public member attributes to your group, then the above page is skipped because there is nothing else the invitee needs to provide. Instead, invitees will be taken directly to the acceptance confirmation page pictured below when they click “Accept” from the RSVP email.

The generic acceptance message pictured above can be customized if desired (see RSVP Occurrences).

Accepts Become Group Members

Rock will always add a person who accepts the RSVP into the group as a group member. This is especially needed when, for example, group member attributes are used. If an individual declines the RSVP invitation they won’t be removed from the group.

Decline

Just like clicking Accept, you control what happens when a person clicks Decline.

If the person declines, and if you enabled decline reasons, then they’ll be asked to provide a reason.

In the above example a custom decline message is displayed near the top of the block. If you didn’t customize your decline message then the generic message (pictured below) will appear instead.

If you didn’t enable decline reasons, then the invitee will be taken directly to the page below from the email.

Group RSVP Reminders

The SendRsvpReminders job will send a reminder to people who have accepted an RSVP invitation. Those who have declined or who haven’t responded won’t receive a reminder.

The job is ready for you to use out of the box, but it must be manually configured and is intended to be run daily. It will use the RSVP Reminder System Communication for the content, as configured at either the group or group type level. If you haven’t selected a System Communication to use, then the job will not send a reminder.

1 Job Type

For RSVP reminder communications, be sure to select the SendRsvpReminders job as pictured above. You’ll then be prompted to select a group type.

2 Group Type

The SendRsvpReminders job will attempt to send reminders for all group types if one is not specified here. Otherwise you can pick a group type if you only want to send reminders for groups of that type. In most cases you’ll probably want to configure a single job, without picking a group type, for all of your reminders. You can create multiple jobs if needed, but be sure every instance of the job has its own group type specified or you risk sending duplicate communications.

Don’t forget that the SendRsvpReminders job will reference the configured RSVP Reminder Offset Days value (either from the group type or for a particular group) to determine when to send reminders for any given occurrence.