There are three ways to enter new connection requests. Let's look at each one in detail below.

Self-Service

Rock ships with blocks that allow you to create a self-service entry to the connection process. This has been pre-configured on the external website for the involvement connection type under Connect > Serve.

Here you will see the search page for finding involvement opportunities. It allows you to filter by campus and also by various attributes about the opportunity (we'll show you how to configure these below). Selecting an opportunity will display its details.

From the details page, the guest can then choose to Connect with the opportunity. This action creates a connection request.

In the example pictured below, a custom attribute has been added to request "Begin Date" information from the individual.

Connection Request Attributes

To set up attributes for the connection request, go to Admin Tools > Settings > System > Entity Attributes. Add an attribute with an Entity Type of "Connection Request". The attribute's configuration can be used by the signup block to control which attributes will appear. You have different options for controlling this.

You can select specific categories to include or exclude. To set up categories for this, navigate to Admin Tools > Settings > General > Attribute Categories and add a category with the Entity Type set to "Connection Request". That category can then be assigned to your connection request attributes, so they can be included or excluded in the signup block's settings.

You can also use the Public flag in the attribute's setup to control which attributes are shown. There's a simple setting on the signup block where you can blanketly exclude non-public connection request attributes. This can be used in place of, or in conjunction with, included or excluded categories.

Staff Entry

As discussed above the staff can also enter requests from the internal site under People > Connections.

Workflows

Rock also ships with a workflow action that can create a new request. This is a powerful way of creating your own request screens using the workflow entry actions. See the Connection Workflows chapter below for more information on how you can configure workflows to best use the connection features.