User Support Forum

Would anyone out there who has mastered the activity and skill numbers, departments, types, and roles be willing to share their lists with us to help us get started?

We are trying to set this all up and are having a hard time relating the two lists (Activity & skill numbers vs. departments, types, and roles) to each other. We start out with something we think is a department and then wonder if it's really an activity.

We're thinking that if we had a bit more of a sample list for the two things, we'd be able to get off the ground.

Thank you...

We're getting into the same situation. A looooong time ago (v.8 ), I set up a lot of skills/activities. Since v9 has been released, things are a bit easier albiet possibly more complicated.

It used to be that for an activitity, you could only have one application; i.e. Young Adult Sunday School Class. So, if you were a member of that class, great! If you were a teacher, asst teacher, helper, etc...you needed a separate activity and had to figure out how to associate them. (History lesson over)

Now, you can have Young Adult Sunday School Class, associate each person to that activity AND designate their association: i.e. member, teacher, etc. What's also nice is that you can define the default role for an activity. In other words, you can set it as member, since you will probably have more members than other roles for a given activity.

I view departments as ministry areas: Children's Church, Bus Ministry, Young Adults, Senior Adults, Committees, Deacon Board, Facilities, Youth Group, Sunday School, Family Training Hour, Evangelism, Encouragement, Prayer, etc.

Maybe someone else has been further along than I and will share.

Make sense?
Jeff

As Jeff mentions, the nice thing about the changes is that prior to version 9, you had to have a separate entry for each area iin Sunday School to indicate a teacher, teacher assistant and student. No longer.

We did some revamping recently as we are overhauling our Session and Ministry setup. It does take a bit of doing, but as long as you first sit down with pad and pencil, and figure out what you want, you can then take the existing entries and convert them without having to reenter all the data.

This is what I did ... planned the move, created the roles, departments, etc. Then did a renumber of the existing entries to the new entries. You can do this in a few ways. For some, I used the mass move, on others I seem to remember I renumbered the existing number. Then once the members were located under the activities, I went through and adjusted their roles.

That said, each church is different, and what works for APC, may not work for you. That's the good and the bad of having as much customization as we have.

Thank you both for replying, however we are still stumped. We are setting up ver. 9 for the first time. Further, we are rather new to this database thing and are having a hard time getting a handle on the relationship between the depts. vs roles etc. (as mentioned in original email).

What we think would really help us along would be if someone would be willing to email us a list of their two lists so we can get a better idea of how to set them up. The examples in the book are just too short for us to grasp what they are trying to tell us. We think this is going to be one of those situations where, when you FINALLY get it, we'll want to hit ourselves up the side of the head and say Duh! But, at the moment, we're struggling to get this portion set up.

Further ideas/thoughts??
Thanks

JGrell wrote:Thank you both for replying, however we are still stumped. We are setting up ver. 9 for the first time. Further, we are rather new to this database thing and are having a hard time getting a handle on the relationship between the depts. vs roles etc. (as mentioned in original email).

What we think would really help us along would be if someone would be willing to email us a list of their two lists so we can get a better idea of how to set them up. The examples in the book are just too short for us to grasp what they are trying to tell us. We think this is going to be one of those situations where, when you FINALLY get it, we'll want to hit ourselves up the side of the head and say Duh! But, at the moment, we're struggling to get this portion set up.

Further ideas/thoughts??
Thanks

Since you're starting out fresh, you can do anything you want in terms of departments and roles. And understand .. the roles are not tied to a particular departement. These can be general roles:

For instance here at APC we have our ministries listed as departments:

Worship
Facilities
Youth Discipleship
Adult Discipleship
Stewardship & Finance
Administration
(just ashort exanoe list)

For our roles, we have them all over the place, as they are not tied to any one ministry:

Chair
Vice Chair
Member
Teacher
Teacher Assistant

(again a short list)

You can then use the roles in areas all over the church. And remember, the activity is the thing that is tied to the department.

For instance, you can have activities like

Worship Committee & Music Committee which here fall under the Worship Ministry. You would have these two activities setup, assign them to the Worship Ministry or Department, and have John Jones with a role of Chair, Jack Smith as Vice Chair, and Lucy Brown as member.

THen you can have the 'Building Maintenance Committee' assigned under the Facilities department, with Sally White as Chair, Neil Blue as Vice Chair, and Mickey Mouse as member.

And finally you have Sunday School - Third Grade as the activity, the department would be Youth Discipleship, with Jack Jones as the Teacher, Sally Smith as the Teacher Assistance, and Jack Jones Jr as member.

Or you can add a role of student for that location.

Does that help ??

The reason I won't send a list of how we use our system, is it may not make any sense to you as your church may be setup differently, and again, none of the roles really are assigned to any one department.

For you can use Teacher, Assistant and member, under Adult Discipleship for Sunday School or Small Group Studies. The roles are exactly that .. what the person does in that activity, and as such, one role, such as member, can be used almost anywhere to signfiy someone who is active in that activity.

Neil and Jeff have given great examples of what they do, but also important is what it seems they haven't done. Their examples don't seem to be using the "Type" option, and that's just fine. A problem that I encounter quite a lot when talking to customers is they think that just because a feature exists, that they're supposed to use it. PowerChurch is designed to be very flexible in what it will allow you to do, but it's also very flexible in what it allows you not to do. In this case, since Jeff and Neil both have very functional setups without it, they don't need to set up the Type option. I see this happen a lot with custom codes in Family Mailing List and Personal Profiles too. Anyway, my point is, don't feel like you HAVE to set up Departments, Types, and Roles. Activities and Skills will work without them. They do make things easier to group though. But you can always assign the Departments, Types, and Roles later in the process.

That may not be entirely on topic, and it doesn't answer the question at hand, but it's something to think about.

jeffkoke wrote:Now, you can have Young Adult Sunday School Class, associate each person to that activity AND designate their association: i.e. member, teacher, etc. What's also nice is that you can define the default role for an activity. In other words, you can set it as member, since you will probably have more members than other roles for a given activity.

Zaphod, et al,

Having stated the above, I've discovered that when I put all of the people associated with a class in one activity, I can not print an attendance register report with the teacher, assistant teacher and helpers at the top of the report.

Is there another solution?

Can this sort/include feature be implemented with little or no pain?

Right now, I have department/ministry leaders who do not like seeing the teachers, et al buried in the attendance register report by alpha/last name.

AdvanceThanks,
Jeff

jeffkoke wrote: Is there another solution?

Can this sort/include feature be implemented with little or no pain?

Right now, I have department/ministry leaders who do not like seeing the teachers, et al buried in the attendance register report by alpha/last name.

AdvanceThanks,
Jeff

Ditto .. Ditto .. ETC .. and so on ...

Not easily, I'm afraid. Maybe a split by categories options can be added in PC+10. However, a sort order and maintenance process will need to be added, before implementing sort and categorize.

What I think you are looking for would be:
Teacher:
Jane Doe

Teacher Assistant:
Sally Jane

Student:
Harry Smith
Fred Waters

With that, If it sorted by category, and split like that, Students would be first in the list.

Tracy wrote:Not easily, I'm afraid. Maybe a split by categories options can be added in PC+10. However, a sort order and maintenance process will need to be added, before implementing sort and categorize.

What I think you are looking for would be:
Teacher:
Jane Doe

Teacher Assistant:
Sally Jane

Student:
Harry Smith
Fred Waters

With that, If it sorted by category, and split like that, Students would be first in the list.

Tracy,

As long as the teachers, assistants and helpers could be segregated from the membership, whether the membership list is first or last is of no consequence (IMHO).

Jeff

Going back to the original question about types and departments. When we originally implemented this feature we only included types and roles. We quickly realized that you may need more detailed selections than just all Sunday School activities so we added the department selection.

The easiest way to described this is using Sunday School as an example. In your Sunday School you could have several departments:
Children (ages 1-5)
Grade School (Grades 1 - 6)
Youth (Grades 6-12)
College & Singles
Adults

These could be your departments. By setting the type to Sunday School and assigning roles as well, you can select the following groups easily:

Sunday School Participants (Type = Sunday School)
Sunday School Teachers (Type = Sunday School, Role = Teacher)
Children's Sunday School Teachers (Type = Sunday School, Role = Teacher, Department = Children)
Adult Sunday School Teachers(Type = Sunday School, Role = Teacher, Department = Adult, College & Singles)

You can have more than one type of activity in a department. For example in our Youth Department above we can have Sunday School and Youth Group Activities. Now if I assign all my roles I can select all adult leaders in the youth department when I need to send them an e-mail about something. (Department = Youth, Role = Teacher, Adult Leader, etc)

I hope this gives you a better idea behind the design. Types and Departments do overlap some, but when we were working through the different selections you might want to do, it became apparanent that both were needed. The idea was to provide you with the most flexibility. As stated previously you don't have to implement every feature, so don't feel you have to use both types and departments. Use whatever works for your church in your situation.

Jeff wrote:The easiest way to described this is using Sunday School as an example. In your Sunday School you could have several departments:
Children (ages 1-5)
Grade School (Grades 1 - 6)
Youth (Grades 6-12)
College & Singles
Adults

These could be your departments. By setting the type to Sunday School and assigning roles as well, you can select the following groups easily:

Sunday School Participants (Type = Sunday School)
Sunday School Teachers (Type = Sunday School, Role = Teacher)
Children's Sunday School Teachers (Type = Sunday School, Role = Teacher, Department = Children)
Adult Sunday School Teachers(Type = Sunday School, Role = Teacher, Department = Adult, College & Singles)

You can have more than one type of activity in a department. For example in our Youth Department above we can have Sunday School and Youth Group Activities. Now if I assign all my roles I can select all adult leaders in the youth department when I need to send them an e-mail about something. (Department = Youth, Role = Teacher, Adult Leader, etc)

I hope this gives you a better idea behind the design. Types and Departments do overlap some, but when we were working through the different selections you might want to do, it became apparanent that both were needed. The idea was to provide you with the most flexibility. As stated previously you don't have to implement every feature, so don't feel you have to use both types and departments. Use whatever works for your church in your situation.

Jeff,

I think that one confusing item is the use of activities with attendance needs. I'm trying to reconcile in my mind how to support attendance needs for four (my word here) departments. These are Sunday School, FTH (our Wed Night classes), Childrens Church (four classes) and the youth group.

While I'm very appreciative of the built-in flexability, the question of "Who's on first?" comes to mind.

Since activities are associated with the personal profiles, should I be using another method in setting up for our attendance needs?

Here's my view of the world:
Activities include classes (as mentioned above)

Departments include ministries: Children's Church, Youth, Finance Committee, Ushers, Evangelism, Pastoral Care, Encouragement, Bus, World Missions, etc.

Roles include: Chairman, V-Chair, Teacher, Asst Teacher, Helper, Member, etc.

Suggestions? Ideas??

AdvanceThanks,
Jeff

Activity Type and Department are really on the same level as far as the data goes. One is not a lower level than the other so whatever way your church views the relationship, it should work. The answer would depend on how your church was organized.

As far as attendance goes, attendace is associated with each particular activity number. All the type and department selections are doing is selecting which individual activity numbers are going to be included on the report without having to specify a numeric range.

Well, let's see here. We worked on our lists again today and now after reading Jeff's most recent explanation of the purpose behind the various topics, I'm a bit confused again.

Maybe it would help if I give you some examples of what we've come up with and then you can poke holes in it for us? I'll give you a couple of examples.

Activity = Sunday School
Department = Children's Education, Youth, (these 2 fit above activity)
Type = Nursery, Toddler, 1st grade, 2nd grade, etc., Jr. High, Sr. High (per 2 departments)
Role = teacher, teacher assistant, member

OR,

Activity = Bible Study
Department = Adult
Type = College/Young Adult, Singles, Divorced, Seniors, Men's ministry, Women's ministry
Role = Leader/Facilitator, Assistant leader, Member

OR,

Activity = Worship Service
Department = Worship
Type = Worship team, women's ministry, men's ministry
Role = Leader/Facilitator, member

I think per Jeff's intentwe have reversed Department and Type definitions, is that right? Do we need to switch them? As I mentioned before, we are rather new to this database thing. It is our understanding that we should include as many possibilities as we can while setting up so we don't have to go back and edit too much. Jeff, perhaps we could email you our lists so far for your input? We just don't want to mess this up and get everybody assigned and then find that we've done something backwards and have to start all over again.

Thanks for all your patience and suggestions everyone. We at least feel like we're making progress and will soon "arrive"!

JGrell wrote: Activity = Sunday School
Department = Children's Education, Youth, (these 2 fit above activity)
Type = Nursery, Toddler, 1st grade, 2nd grade, etc., Jr. High, Sr. High (per 2 departments)
Role = teacher, teacher assistant, member

I don't think this will work ... if you want attendance sheets you have to do the following for these classes:

Activity Nursery, Toddler, 1st Grade
Department Children's Education
type Sunday School
role Teacher, Assistant, etc

Depending on if you split at middle school

Activity 6th Grade, 7th Grade, 8th Grade, High School
Department Youth
type Sunday School
role Teacher, etc.

Activity = Bible Study
Department = Adult
Type = College/Young Adult, Singles, Divorced, Seniors, Men's ministry, Women's ministry
Role = Leader/Facilitator, Assistant leader, Member

Activity College/Young Adult, singles, etc
Department Adult
type Bible Study or Small Group or Sunday School
role Leader/Facilitator, etc

Activity = Worship Service
Department = Worship
Type = Worship team, women's ministry, men's ministry
Role = Leader/Facilitator, member

Activity Worship Team, Men's Ministry, Women's Ministry
Department Worship
type Worship Service
role Leader/Facilitator - etc

The activity is the item you want to take attendance of or list as the group the person is a member/leader/teacher of.

Here are some of ours:

Activity Treasurer
Department Stewardship
type Finance Committee
role Interest

(these are for our time & talent sheets, so we use interest to show that the member has expressed an interest in the position or the ministry. These are used to then contact the person)

Activity Stewardship Campaign
Department Stewardship
type Stewardship
role Member, Committee Chair, etc

Activity Greeters - Contemporary Service
Department Missions & Evangelism
type Evangelism
role Member, Interest, etc

Activity Mixed Couples/Singles Study
Department Adult Discipleship
type Small Group
role Leader, Member, Host, etc

Activity Home Fellowship Group
Department Adult Discipleship
type Fellowship
role Leader, Member, Host, etc

Activity 1 - First Grade
Department Youth Discipleship
type Sunday School
role Teacher, Assistant, member, etc

[Activity Christian Essentials

Department Adult Discipleship
type Sunday School
role Teacher, Member, etc

Activity VBS - 4th Grade
Department Youth Discipleship
type VBS
role Teacher, Assistant, Member

We also use the activity numbers to group these (or try to group these) logically. Each activity that ends in zeros, such as 4000 is a group header, so you can use them on reports.

For instance all our 4700 series numbers are for VBS; 1900 series, board of deacons; 2000 series, Youth Ministry; 1600 series, Stewardship.

I've sent a copy of what we use .. note its a work in progress, and may make aboslutely no sense to you in the way your church is configured.