Configure Attendance Reminders

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 (either the Manage Members or the Edit privilege must be present for a group leader to enter attendance).

To turn reminders on, open the group type under Admin Tools > Settings > General > Group Types. In the Attendance Notifications section, select Enable Attendance Reminder and choose the Attendance Reminder Communication. Attendance Reminder Lead Time sets how many minutes before a group starts that the reminder goes out. Attendance Reminder Follow-Up adds reminders on the days after a meeting when attendance is still missing. The group type needs Enable Attendance Tracking turned on first.

Do you have some groups that you don't want to send a reminder about attendance? No problem, we’ve got you covered! When attendance reminders are turned on for a group type, you can exclude individual groups. All you need is a Data View that includes the groups you want to exclude. Simply add this Data View to the Excluded Groups Data View field on the Send Group Attendance Reminders job and those groups won’t get the reminders going forward.

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 > Settings > Communications > System Communications > Group Attendance Reminder. See our Communications 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 Send Group Attendance Reminders job. It runs every 15 minutes and sends reminders for every group type that has Enable Attendance Reminder turned on, so you don't need to create a job for each group type. Rock includes this job and turns it on by default. Group types that keep the option off can use the older Send Attendance Reminders for Group Type job, which you create once for each group type. For more information on these jobs see Send Group Attendance Reminders and Send Attendance Reminders by Group Type.