My ChurchSuite - My Rotas

In this article, we talk about the My Rotas section of My ChurchSuite. This is where you can view and manage your serving commitments. Note that you will only see the My Rotas section if you're part of an active ministry, have future serving dates on a published rota, if there are rotas published that you can sign up for or if you are an overseer for an active ministry.

Next Serving

Selecting My Rotas from the Menu opens the Next Serving tab:

The Next Serving tab shows your serving commitments for the next three months:

Those with linked family members can also access their family's Next Serving dates:

Clicking on a rota date will take you to the full rota, which we'll talk through in the Rotas section below.

Rotas listed in red indicate a clash, where you're set to serve on more than one rota on the same date/time. Of course, it's perfectly possible to serve on multiple rota dates at the same time but some clashes may require you to decline or organise a swap. For rotas with 'accept/decline' enabled, you'll have the option to respond to serving requests:

Previous Accepts are distinguished with a green tick icon; Declines are distinguished with a red cross icon, with the rota name in red strikethrough styling. Declining will send a decline notification to your rota's overseer. Red strikethrough styling is also used to distinguish dates where unavailability has been added. You'll continue to see declined and unavailable servings listed until your ministry overseer either replaces or removes you from the rota or you organise and process a swap - explained later.

Finally, on an iOS device, you can use the ... Actions button to open a tab with iCal and Google buttons, where you can subscribe to a feed of your serving dates. This is further explained in the related Support Article, Subscribe to a My Rotas iCal feed, linked at the bottom of this page; the article also details how to access a Google calendar feed for My Rotas via a browser for Android devices.

Rotas

The Rotas tab contains a list of all the Rotas you either serve on, are part of the ministry team for or oversee. Once a rota expires, or your final serving date on a rota passes, that rota will cease to show in the list. You may also see follow-on rotas when an existing rota is expiring soon.

Clicking through into a rota from the Next Serving or Rotas list opens the rota to view. The rota view is divided into tabs, showing the rota Dates, the rota's underlying Teams (members and roles) and further rota Details.

Within the Rota Dates tab, the rota view can be changed to show all dates or just your own serving dates, along with options of which future dates to show:

By clicking the ... Actions button on a rota view, then selecting the Edit my visibility option ...

... you can override your default privacy settings and decide which details are visible to others on the rota - for each rota that you're scheduled on, you can edit your visibility on a rota-by-rota basis.

You also have the option to Email members - ideal for starting the process of organising a swap if you're not available:

Moving to the rota dates, on each of your serving dates you'll have actions available - to Add unavailability, Accept or Decline (if enabled for the rota), Organise swap and Sign up to serve on available dates - we'll talk about all of these in their respective sections later in this article.

You can also access published service plans from the rota Date actions on a date-by-date basis, by clicking the action menu (3 dots) alongside the date. The View plan action is only available on rota dates where there is a published plan:

Unavailability

You can easily block out dates of known unavailability for yourself and linked family members from the Unavailability section. Adding unavailability means you are unavailable for any rotas on the dates selected - it's not possible to be selectively available or unavailable for certain ministries; however, you can selectively Decline serving requests for certain rotas if your ministry overseer uses that functionality. By keeping your known unavailability up to date, those overseeing rotas can more easily plan and manage their rotas, identify gaps and needs, and better ensure people are not over-serving.

Unavailability can be added from the Unavailability tab or from the action menu within a rota (shown in the previous section). To add unavailability, click Add unavailability:

On the Add unavailability pop-up, you can add unavailability for a range of Dates and add an optional Description (reason) for yourself and/or for your linked spouse/partner and children. Any clashes arising from family unavailability are shown within the pop-up, alerting you if you or other family members need to organise a swap:

Rota Swaps

The Rota Swap functionality has been designed as a way to update the rota to reflect an arranged swap, rather than a function to initiate swaps. From the rota Dates tab, click the action menu (3 dots) next to your name on the date you've organised a swap for and select Organise swap:

Select the person's name from the Swap with drop-down list and optionally select details of any Return swap you may have agreed to. Saving the changes will update the rota immediately, adding the swapped people to the rota dates with an Accepted status. You can only process swaps with an available rota member who is not already serving on the rota on that date. It is not currently possible to process swaps with children.

After processing a rota swap, an email will be sent to you confirming you are no longer serving on that date and also to the ' Swap with' person confirming that they are now serving on that date and the role/s they are serving on that date. A further notification is sent to the ministry overseers advising them of the swap transaction.

Note that rota members can't edit their roles – this is a task that can only be done by a ministry overseer. When swapping, the "swapee" will inherit the original roles of the swapper. If in doubt, contact your rota overseer to advise them what is happening and, if necessary, they can update the rota for you, as they have further functionality that enables them to manage team member roles from within My ChurchSuite.

Rota Sign Up

For rotas with sign-up enabled, you'll see a + Sign Up button at the bottom of each rota date where serving spaces are available:

In this way, rota overseers may publish a part-completed rota and then invite ministry members to sign up for future dates based on their availability. This is a great way to recruit for rota gaps and help team members self-manage their serving commitments based on their known availability.

All Rotas

Depending on your church's settings, rota members may see the All Rotas page shown at the end of the list of Rotas.

Selecting All Rotas opens the page to view. The page can be further filtered by Service for a selected Date and, for those using Plans, includes published plan page links.

Rota functionality for ministry overseers

If you oversee a rota, you'll also see the Add rota option in the Rotas tab. Rotas with a 'pencil' icon indicate rotas you oversee and may also be serving on; those without a pencil icon are rotas for ministries that you belong to or have future serving dates:

Once a rota expires or your final serving date on a rota passes, that rota will cease to show in the list. You may also see follow-on rotas when an existing rota is expiring soon. Note that draft status rotas - styled italicised in the list - are only visible to those who are ministry overseers and are not visible to the rota's members until published, enabling overseers to plan, create and fine-tune rotas before publishing them and making them visible to rota members.

In addition to great rota member functionality in My Rotas, designated ministry Overseers have full rota management functionality in My ChurchSuite. If you're a ministry overseer, this means you'll be able to:

• Manage teams, team members and roles within your ministry, including adding/removing team members and assigning roles to team members.
• Create draft rotas, publish and distribute them.
• Manage rota members on the rota page, including adding/removing people from rota dates, swapping people, accepting/declining on behalf of rota members and adding/removing dates on the rota.
• Add notes to rota dates to communicate pertinent information about something happening on that date.
• Enable rota sign-up and manage the maximum sign-up numbers for individual dates or the entire rota.
• Add and manage unavailability for all serving team members and themselves.
• Receive notifications for declines, unavailability clashes and upcoming rota expiry.

Full details of the ministry overseer functionality are explained in our related article - Working with rotas in My ChurchSuite - referenced at the end of this article.

• Back to My ChurchSuite Contents