Getting started with the Rotas module

Introduction to the Rotas module

Welcome to the Rotas module. This module enables churches and other organisations to manage all aspects of their serving ministries, teams, roles and automated serving reminders.

We encourage you to read this article in full to familiarise yourself with the module's key features and customisation options, as well as some of the basic concepts and terminology you'll encounter in it, and in our related support articles and training videos.

Rotas module features at a glance

• Set up ministries and roles and optionally add ministry teams, and then assign people to teams and roles
• Assign ministry overseers who can then manage teams and rotas from within the member-facing My ChurchSuite without needing user access to the Rotas module
• Create rotas for a range of dates, choosing whether to schedule teams ad hoc or following a rotation
• Publish and send rotas to those scheduled to serve (with optional serving accept/decline responses)
• Send automated email and SMS serving reminders
• Rota sign-up functionality that allows ministry members to sign up to available serving dates where there is sign-up capacity remaining
• The built-in clash detection alerts you to potential issues when people are scheduled to serve on the same date and time across different rotas and when unavailability has been blocked out.
• Rota members can block out and manage their unavailability, respond to serving requests and organise and process swaps through the member-facing My ChurchSuite
• Link rotas to services to visualise all the rotas for a service in a single view, and link rotas to plans so that plans remain up to date as rotas change
• Powerful rota overview allows you to visualise multiple rotas and services across a range of dates in a single view
• Add rota or service-specific notes to serving dates - ideal for noting the name of a guest speaker or sharing pertinent details like the service theme and readings
• Rota expiry reminders let overseers know when their rota is coming to an end if there isn't a follow-on rota. Overseers can easily extend rotas or publish a new follow-up rota
• Comprehensive communication functionality enables you to stay in touch with all your serving volunteers
• Benefit from a wide range of serving-related reports designed to help you assess the health of your serving culture and identify those who may be at risk of serving fatigue, those who may have the capacity for additional serving and those who, for whatever reason, are not currently serving

Next Steps

Terminology

Here's a list of key terms you'll encounter in the Rotas module and the related support articles and training videos for this module:

• Ministry: Each serving area is known as a ministry, e.g. Worship, Welcome, Hospitality, Preaching, Readings, Set Up/Set Down. Ministry members - those who typically serve in the ministry - can be grouped into one or more teams and optionally assigned team roles. For example, you might have weekly teams called Week 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5, or Teams A, B and C that serve in simple rotation. People can belong to multiple teams in the same ministry and have different roles in different teams. The ministry set-up is the starting point when generating draft rotas for the ministry, but rotas can always be further customised once generated. You can't create a rota without first setting up the rota ministry.
• Overseers are the Address Book contacts you optionally assign to manage their ministries, teams, and related rotas. They can fully manage their ministries and rotas in the member-facing My ChurchSuite without needing access to the Rotas module. Overseers receive notifications of clashes, declined serving requests, and rota expiry.
• A Rota is a grid view of serving dates and times for each ministry, showing the people scheduled to serve on each date and details of their assigned roles and serving status (e.g. accepted, declined, pending). In some regions, the term 'rota' is translated as 'roster'. A rota, therefore, has a start and end, e.g. for a term or a year, but it can be easily extended to add dates for the next term or year, or a new follow-up rota can be added.
• Service is the term used to describe each of your gatherings where people serve. Rotas can be linked to a single service - you'll have separate rotas for each service - so you can visualise all the rotas (and those serving) related to a service and see where the serving gaps are.

Got a question?

You’ll find the answers to most questions in our support articles - they're all available through the Support menu located in the top-right corner of each page in ChurchSuite. Select Get help and search by topic, phrase or keyword. You can also access the Support Article library on our website. And if you still can't find something you're looking for, click to contact one of the ChurchSuite team - we’re happy to help!