Liturgical Serving — How It Works

Who: Staff or the ministry's leader.   Goal: Get a new lector onto the roster.

1. Paste the list you already have. Import a roster takes one sheet covering several ministries — a name, an email, and a column saying Lector or Lector; EMHC — and shows you exactly what it will do before anything is written.
2. Everyone imported gets a person record, whether or not they will ever sign in. That record is what later holds their Safe Environment, their fingerprinting and their phone number — and what lets them claim a Nave account one day.
3. Someone already on the list? Open their row and use Add another role. A lector who is also a sacristan is two roles on one person, not two people.

Result: A roster you can trust, built from the list you already had, with no duplicate people hiding in it.

Who: Staff or the coordinator.   Goal: Only schedule people who are actually cleared.

1. Three columns say it at a glance: Trn (trained by the parish), SE (Safe Environment) and FP (fingerprinting). Every row has an answer in every column, so you can read straight down.
2. Training belongs to the ROLE. Trained as a lector is not trained for the chalice, so it is recorded once per ministry — and someone trained for one and not the other shows a warning rather than a tick.
3. Safe Environment and fingerprinting belong to the PERSON. Record them once and they count in every ministry that person serves in. Safe Environment renews; fingerprinting never expires, so a renewal will never send them back for another LiveScan.
4. Set Max 3/mo if someone should not be asked more than three times a month, and Unavailable dates when they are away — the rota skips them rather than asking and being turned down.

Result: Nobody is ever scheduled who is not cleared to serve — the schedule enforces it, not your memory.

Who: Staff or the coordinator.   Goal: Give a minister access to their own schedule.

1. A member with no account shows an Invite button. Open the row and enter their email (and phone, if you have it).
2. Send it. The address is saved to their parish record and to this seat, then the invitation goes out.
3. When they sign in, their account links itself to this seat automatically — because it matches on that email. Their dates, reminders and confirmations all start working.

Result: One form gets you the contact detail you were missing and the invitation, in a single step.

Who: Staff or the coordinator.   Goal: Say which Masses this person serves at.

1. In the same row, tick the Masses under Default Mass pool. Weekend Masses are shown first; weekday Masses sit behind a small toggle.
2. Tick more than one where someone covers two Masses.
3. Press Save once — the Mass pool and the eligibility fields share a single Save.

Result: A standing commitment, not a weekly sign-up. This is what the schedule is built from.

Who: Staff or the coordinator.   Goal: Define the target.

1. Under What each Mass needs, open a Mass and set the number for each ministry — for example 3 lectors at each English Mass and 4 at each Spanish Mass.
2. Tick Self sign-up if trained members may claim open places themselves.
3. Set it once. It is a standing requirement, not a per-week entry.

Result: The schedule now knows what "fully covered" means for every Mass.

Who: Staff or the coordinator.   Goal: Produce a rota nobody has been told about yet.

1. Choose a horizon — 2 to 12 weeks — and press Publish schedule. This builds a draft: the rota exists, and nobody has been told.
2. Places are filled least-recently-served first, so the rota self-balances and a brand-new minister is not left waiting behind the veterans.
3. It tops up: it fills only what is still open. Anyone already scheduled — by you, by the rotation, or by their own sign-up — keeps their date. Running it twice never duplicates or reshuffles.
4. Nothing is sent while it is a draft. It does not appear in anyone's portal, nor in their calendar, and no reminder goes out.

Result: A fair, balanced rota you can still change — and re-running it is always safe.

Who: The coordinator, with each ministry's leader.   Goal: Agree the rota before the parish reads it.

1. Where each ministry stands shows one line per ministry — how many are drafted, how many announced, how many have not confirmed, and where a Mass is still short. That is who still has work to do.
2. Leaders adjust their own ministry: swap a name, fill a hole, stand someone down. None of it reaches anyone.
3. When it is right, press Announce the schedule. It asks you to confirm, because this is the part that cannot be undone.
4. Only the newly announced rows are mailed. Announcing next month never writes again to someone who was told a fortnight ago.

Result: The parish hears once, when the rota is settled — not while it is still being argued over.

Who: Staff or the coordinator.   Goal: Swap a person, or fill a hole.

1. The roster grid shows the coming fortnight, Mass by Mass. Assign or unassign anyone directly there.
2. A minister who declines frees their place immediately — it reappears as open.
3. Ministers set their own away dates in their portal, and the rotation skips those before it ever schedules them.
4. Re-build whenever you like; existing assignments are never disturbed, and anything new stays a draft until you announce it.
5. Two deadlines, on purpose. You can assign and unassign until midnight on the day of the Mass — after that the sacristy has printed it and a change reaches nobody in time. But a minister can still find a substitute right up until that Mass starts, because "I woke up ill on Sunday morning" is exactly when a substitute is needed.

Result: The rota bends without breaking — no rebuilding from scratch.

Who: Staff or the coordinator.   Goal: Know the difference between a scheduling problem and a people problem.

1. If a Mass needs three lectors and only one person stands for it, the page says so at the top: "These Masses cannot be filled."
2. That is arithmetic, not scheduling — publishing again will never fix it.
3. Follow the link straight to Ministers to add people, or open self sign-up so a willing parishioner can step in.

Result: An honest answer instead of a weekly alert about something software cannot solve.

Who: Every scheduled minister.   Goal: Be told, then reminded.

1. On publishing, each person gets one email listing all their dates — not one email per date.
2. A reminder the day before, and another about an hour before the Mass.
3. They Confirm or say "Can't make it" from their phone. A decline frees the place at once.
4. Each minister can subscribe their phone calendar, so their dates sit beside everything else in their week and update themselves.

Result: Nobody has to remember to check a website.

Who: The coordinator, and the rest of the pool.   Goal: Fill the gap without a phone tree.

1. The moment someone declines, the coordinator is told — immediately, not in tomorrow's digest, because the value is the hours it buys.
2. At the same time the rest of that Mass's pool is asked whether anyone can cover it. Whoever answers first takes it.
3. Three days before any Mass, a leader gets an unfilled-slot warning — once per Mass, never a daily drumbeat.

Result: Substitutes find themselves; the coordinator stops being the switchboard.

Who: Staff or the coordinator.   Goal: A sheet on the wall, and a PDF to send.

1. Press Print / PDF on the serving page.
2. Choose 2, 4 or 8 weeks, and print one ministry at a time — the lector list goes to the lectors, not the whole liturgical roster.
3. It is laid out by weekend, with the vigil sitting beside the Sunday it serves, and each weekend kept whole on one sheet.
4. Print it, or choose Save as PDF to email it.

Result: The people who will never open the app still know when they are reading.

Who: Staff.   Goal: Build the roster without writing to volunteers yet.

1. In the ministry's settings, tick Pause automated emails for this ministry.
2. Everything still works — add people, publish, print — but no schedules, reminders or alerts go out.
3. Untick it when your ministers have been shown how it works. That is the moment the whole communication chain switches on.

Result: You can get the roster right first, and go live on purpose rather than by accident.