The best place to connect with parents on Sunday morning is when they check-in their kids. This is just as true for your members and regular attenders as it is for your guests. You may already be using that time to start the follow-up process. If not, see section D in the check-in view. But, why not use the same opportunity to capture attendance for everything everyone in the family is attending or serving in that morning?
To do this, customize the Groups in the Check-in view to include all your Sunday morning worship services, classes and volunteer teams. Literally everyone for whom you want attendance, maybe even some areas you've not tracked before. Then, when the family texts to check-in or goes to a tablet or computer to check-in, they can literally check everyone in to everything they are doing that morning.
If they get checked in twice by an adult teacher doing attendance on their phone or the auto-attendance feature for confirmed volunteers, that's okay. The system will recognize that it is for the same group on the same day and just count them once.
Some of you have figured this out, but there was still one problem - name tags. Previously we had an option that would allow you to select "No Labels". That way you could check in adults and youth and the system would not print the security labels for them. But, if you wanted just a name tag, you had to remember to click the tag icon on the family check-in page.
Last night we released an upgrade that gives you a drop down to pick from three options for each group you want to check-in:
- No labels - For worship and youth or adult classes that you don't need any tags for.
- Name Tags - For youth and adult enviroments that like name tags but don't need security labels.
- Child / Parent labels - Traditional security labels printed for kids with matching label for parents.
For any group that you select Name Tags, option 2, the system will automatically print a name tag (right), just like it will print the child/parent security labels when marked that way.
This feature works for Text-to-Checkin the same way. BTW, if you're not familiar with Text-to-Checkin, click here. It has been a real hit among younger parents. One friend told me recently over 50% of his check-ins come via text. 50% and growing!
One more upgrade detail. When you review the Groups list for your check-in views, you will see that we have removed the option to pick groups based on ministry profiles. All groups that were included in those profiles were auto-selected for you in the upgrade. Going forward, you will select each group or class individually.
Thank you to several of you that have worked with us to think through this need and solution. Speaking of being part of the community.
If you haven't already, be sure to join our Churchteams Community Facebook group.
