Getting Started
Welcome to ChurchSuite! You may be wondering where to begin or what to do first. While there isn't a "hard and fast" right way, the following suggestions may help give some pointers and you get started.
Very little is required to get started and add people to the Address Book. This article is essentially intended to be a checklist that can be worked through step-by-step over time and at a pace that suits you.
1. Log in
2. Customise your account
Working within the Administrator area, you'll need to do some initial set-up of your account - see here for more detail: Customising your ChurchSuite account. This includes setting up your Data Protection Policy.
3. Multi-site
If you're a multi-site church or organisation, now is the time to set up the Multi-site functionality.
4. Add Brands
Help your communication and branded pages stand out and look like your own church's branding - Using brands
5. Configure Modules and Import Data
Starting with the Address Book module, view our Getting Started articles and Next Steps lists for each module (this is a suggested order to work through but, once you have tackled the Address Book module, you may want to prioritise modules differently):
- 1
- Address Book
- 2
- Children
- 3
- Giving
- 4
- Rotas
- 5
- Calendar
- 6
- Small Groups
- 7
- Attendance
- 8
- Bookings
- 9
- Planning
Note: For each support article referenced above, we also draw your attention to the related articles shown at the bottom of each article - these provide further detail about related functionality and similar related topics. Help is always available through the "Support" beacon in the bottom right-hand corner of every page in ChurchSuite - search by topic, phrase or keyword.
6. Dashboard
Customise your dashboard so that you have the widgets you want, providing you with the information you need to hand. Every dashboard is unique.
Check out our short training videos...
- How to log in to ChurchSuite
- How to customise your ChurchSuite account
- Multi-site: how to add a new site
- How to add branding to your ChurchSuite account
- How to add or remove ChurchSuite modules
- How to add a module password
- How to personalise your dashboard
- Adding your Data Protection Statement to ChurchSuite
- How to add a new user
- How to enable multi-factor authentication
- How to restrict feature access using User Groups
Terminology
Here's a list of terms you may see across the ChurchSuite modules and in our support articles:
- Connect is ChurchSuite's Sunday service and in-person event-facing functionality. The platform is a suite of applications designed to run on a device at your Information Point at services and in-person events and at a child registration/check-in point.
- My ChurchSuite is your church's member-facing platform where contacts are able to keep their details up to date, view all their communications in one place and communicate with one another.
- My Consent is a feature that allows you to send consent requests to people, and where people can update their details and preferences.
Data Protection
We encourage all organisations to revisit their Data Protection policies and procedures in light of the features and functionality they'll use within ChurchSuite. Questions you might consider include:
- Do people know what personal information is being stored/processed by our organisation and the purposes for which it is used? For each type of information we process, do we have a lawful basis for processing and is our privacy notice up to date?
- Do people understand that only appropriate users have access to our data, the security protections in place and their permissions?
- Does our data retention policy need updating? Have we purged any data that we no longer need or no longer have a lawful basis to process?
- Do we need to refresh our training, confidentiality and data access provisions for our staff and other users?
- Are the default privacy settings and communication options appropriate and in line with guiding legislation and the expectations and wishes of our members?
- Do the organisation's "data capture" processes (e.g. visitor cards, web-embedded forms etc) have sufficient data protection messaging and privacy notice visibility?
- Does our safeguarding policy need updating to reflect how data will be handled in respect of children, young people and vulnerable adults?
You’ll find the answers to most questions in our support articles - they're all available through the Support beacon located in the bottom-right corner of each page in ChurchSuite - just 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 get in touch with one of the ChurchSuite team - we’re happy to help!