1. What is My ChurchSuite - overview
My ChurchSuite is your church's member-facing platform and is the perfect tool to help your members stay connected and keep up to date with all that’s going on in the life of your church.
Through My ChurchSuite, people can manage their details, sign up for events, join small groups, stay on top of the rotas they serve on, block out unavailability and organise swaps, catch up on a missed sermon, view all their church communications in one place, and much much more! And primary parents/carers can manage their children's details, meaning your leaders always have the very latest information.
Access to My ChurchSuite is through an invitation process initiated from ChurchSuite, meaning that you can easily manage who is granted access, or revoke access should you need to.
Many parts of My ChurchSuite can be customised to provide an intuitive and familiar user experience for members, whether they're accessing it through a web browser or using the free iOS or Android apps for their smartphones and tablets.
In this article, we'll tour through a brief overview of the My ChurchSuite functionality. See the related support articles for further information on customising My ChurchSuite and sending invitations.
Home
After logging in with their email address and password, the landing page for every member is their Home page where a customisable welcome message greets them.
Underneath is a scrollable list of upcoming Featured Events from which they can click through to an event page to see further information about the event and even sign-up (where event sign-up is enabled).
Finally, the member's 'contact card' and recent communications are shown.
Clicking through to the My Details section, members can manage their details, providing a degree of ownership over their data while reducing the administrative burden on the church office – a win-win situation!
The Communication section is for managing communication options – members can opt in or out of your organisation's various communication methods. In this context, ChurchSuite distinguishes rota reminders from all other general communications. In this way, a member can opt out of receiving rota reminders while remaining opted into receiving all your other general communications.
Members can also manage their My ChurchSuite Privacy settings, choosing which elements of their basic contact details they are happy to be visible to other members who also have My ChurchSuite access. They can share as much or as little as they feel comfortable - privacy settings only extend to the member's name, address, telephone, mobile and email – no other personal details are visible to others in My ChurchSuite.
Members can also manage their Login password, access your organisation's Privacy Notice, or request their account be Deleted.
My Communication
The My Communication section lists all email and SMS communications sent to the member through ChurchSuite - members can access all their church communications in one place. My Communication shows messages for the last six months, with a maximum of 50 items (whichever is fewer). Selecting any communication opens the message to view in a pop-up.
Note: It's not possible to dismiss or hide 'read' communications – in this regard, the My Communication section is not a mail folder. It's also not possible to reply to messages from within My ChurchSuite – members would continue to use their regular email applications to send email replies.
My Children
The My Children section enables primary parents/carers to manage their children's details. Only a parent/carer can view their linked children’s details.
Additionally, during an active Child Check-In session, a check-in QR code is shown, which can be scanned at your check-in station using a QR code scanner to help primary parents/carers quickly locate their children within the check-in system and check them in. Once checked in, the parent's pick-up badges are also shown – primary parents/carers can even see if a child has already been checked out - perhaps if the child was collected by another parent/carer.
Clicking through from a child's 'contact card' opens their profile page to view. From here, primary parents/carers can Edit to make changes and manage the child's information, including contact details, communication options and important medical and additional needs.
My Events
The My Events section provides members with a simple, searchable event calendar listing all your member-facing upcoming events, courses and meetings. Events marked as Visible in My ChurchSuite are shown. The My Events page also shows the same scrollable Featured Events feed as the Home page. Members can also see events they are signed up for and any outstanding event invitations.
Clicking on any event takes them through to the Event Page showing the date, time and location (as well as a handy embedded location map to help them find their way) and a short description of the event itself.
For events with sign-up enabled, it's easy for members to engage and participate - their contact details are even pre-populated into the sign-up form.
The My Events section is also designated for event overseers. For each event they oversee, they can view a list of Sign-ups including sign-up contact details, question responses, tickets and payments...
Event overseers can also access event Check-In to record attendance at the event.
My Groups
The My Groups section has many great features! Group members can see the contact details of their fellow small group members (subject to each group member's privacy settings). Additionally, through "role" permissions e.g. a "leader" role, role-holders can submit group attendance and manage the group's details and member list.
The My Groups section is great for those not yet in a small group too! Members can view a list of groups open for Sign Up, find a group that's right for them and sign up in a single click, with group leaders getting a notification!
We've made it easy for group members to communicate with one another using a simple 'closed' Group email feature.
A message author can choose whether message replies come back just to them or get sent to all the group members, ending the perpetual round-robin of emails, replies and updates that can occur when communicating with a group of people; now members just send out one group email and the replies can optionally be visible to all members.
My Rotas
The My Rotas section enables members (and their linked family members) to view their rotas and upcoming serving commitments in one place. As with the My Groups section, rotas include the ability to communicate with everyone on the rota using the rota Group email feature. Through My Rotas, members can Accept or Decline serving requests, organise and process Swaps, add Unavailability, access linked service Plans and even Sign up for rota dates where there are gaps and serving needs.
Rota overseers will also love the My Rotas section too! Overseers can create, publish, distribute and manage rotas all from within My ChurchSuite without needing access to your ChurchSuite Rotas module. Whether it's managing teams and roles, or emailing out a new rota, My Rotas helps everyone stay up to date with who's doing what and when. We've produced a separate My ChurchSuite support article for rota overseers.
My Giving
The My Giving section makes it simple for members to engage with stewardship. Through the My Giving section members can access ChurchSuite Donate to make one-off and recurring online donations, view their donation history and add Gift Aid declaration (UK customers only). My ChurchSuite also supports Pledge Management - which is ideal if running a fundraising campaign, providing givers with a simple visual way to make a pledge and track their pledge progress.
My Podcasts
If your church records podcast messages you can easily make them available to your members directly through My ChurchSuite! This fantastic feature allows you to link to an existing XML/iTunes feed or SoundCloud ID so that podcast episodes are available through My Podcasts. And if you upload video messages to either a YouTube or Vimeo account you can even include the video message alongside the audio message.
Search for Others
Search for Others is a member contact directory enabling permitted members to be able to look up contact details of other members without having to burden the church office or use out-of-date printed church directories. Members can only view basic contact information that people have chosen to be visible to other members through their privacy settings, and importantly, no children are shown in the directory. This feature, if enabled, can be made available to all My ChurchSuite members or restricted to just those members in particular Tags. You can also use Tags to restrict which group members are searchable, perhaps excluding newcomers.
Links
In addition to the standard My ChurchSuite menu items outlined in this article, you can also add custom menu items for external links. These are great for providing links to the church website, social media pages, mission links, prayer chains, secure file storage etc. Optional link visibility restrictions mean that every member can have a curated list of personal links based on the Tags they belong to so that only relevant links are shown.
