Every week someone has to answer the same question: who's serving, where and when? Group Scheduling takes most of that work off your plate. Volunteers tell Rock when and where they like to serve. Rock fills the open spots in one click, and you can place anyone by hand. Volunteers can also sign themselves up for open times, and you can put your most urgent gaps right in front of them. Each person accepts or declines, reminders go out on their own, and afterward you can see who signed up and who actually showed up. Groups are at the heart of Rock, and serving teams are groups too. Nearly every organization schedules greeters, kids' ministry volunteers and worship and tech teams week after week. Turn on scheduling for a group type and every group of that type can use the tools in this article. Here's how it plays out. Ted Decker schedules the children's ministry team. Cindy Decker has told Rock she serves every other week at 10:30am in the Bears room, and she's blocked out the week of her family vacation. Ted selects Auto Schedule and Cindy lands in the Bears room on her weeks, skipping her vacation. She accepts from a text message, gets a reminder before Sunday and Ted's analytics show she was there. It's not just Sunday. Anything that repeats and needs the right people in the right place works the same way. Staff and care volunteers can take turns as the on-call pastor or covering hospital visits, and the security, parking and first aid teams that keep every gathering safe can be scheduled right alongside the greeters. For short-term projects like a serve day or a meal train, use Sign-Ups instead. How Group Scheduling works Volunteers share their preferences - Each person picks how often, when and where they like to serve, and blocks out the dates they're away. They do it in the Schedule Toolbox, or a staff member does it for them. See Use the Schedule Toolbox. Leaders fill the schedule in one click - Auto Schedule places people by their preferences, spreads the work so the same few aren't always serving and passes over anyone who's away or already serving elsewhere. Leaders fill any gaps by hand. See Use the Group Scheduler. Leaders see the gaps - In the Group Scheduler, each room and time shows a bar that moves from red to green as people accept, so gaps stand out before Sunday. Volunteers fill gaps themselves - In the Schedule Toolbox, volunteers sign up for open times for themselves and their family. Turn on Immediate Needs and the spots that still need people show first. See Use the Schedule Toolbox. Volunteers answer from anywhere - Rock sends each person an email or text to accept or decline, then reminders before they serve. See Send Confirmations and Reminders. You see who actually showed up - Check-in records who served, and Group Scheduler Analytics compares it with who was scheduled. See View Schedule Analytics. Set up Group Scheduling Most organizations set things up in this order: Enable scheduling on the group type, then add locations, times and how many people each one needs. See Set Up Group Scheduling.Invite volunteers to set their preferences in the Schedule Toolbox. See Use the Schedule Toolbox.Build the schedule in the Group Scheduler. See Use the Group Scheduler. Types of Group Schedules A group's own meeting schedule (Weekly, Custom or Named) is set on its group type. See Group Schedule 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 > Settings > General > Group Types. This not only keeps the schedule accurate, but it also keeps attendance reminders from being sent while groups are not meeting.