Groups 2.0 Attendance - Preview Release
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Ready to empower your small group leaders so they can easily and consistently track attendance? Groups 2.0 Attendance "Preview Release" is a fully functioning, stable tool, that can immediately be used to collect small group attendance. Why is it a "Preview Release"? Simply because this first iteration is visible only to your small group leaders and does not include any visibility within the Fellowship One Portal or reporting; both due in a November release as projected in the RoadMap blog. This staged approach will give you perfect timing; you can immediately begin the process of releasing Groups Attendance to your small group leaders AND begin collecting the data that will provide value in the November release. For full instruction on how to use it, see the attached document at the bottom of this post. |
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How it works:
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Design:
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Available for the following Edition(s):  Premier Select Core [Find my Edition]
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Downloads
Curtis HarrisF1 Staff
190 posts
Comments (62)
Love it!
Any idea why, after selecting "Enter Attendance," no dates show up under "Post attendance for group meeting on…"? The group already met last week and is scheduled weekly since the in F1.
How do we "elect to turn on Attendance"? It's not in the instruction document?
How do I turn it on? I didn't see anything in the doc about that, and no Attendance tab shows at the top of the page. Thanks, Clay
Trying this out and I love the concept, but for some reason there aren't any occurrences showing up for my group to post attendance too....and yes, there is a weekly reoccurring schedule created for it. Any suggestions?
Same question as Clay....how do we turn on attendance?
My question is the same as Clay & Justin - where do I turn on attendance?
Okay I found it...since nobody from F1 is answering. In F1 go to the groups tab. Go to group types. Click on the group type you want to edit. Then click on edit admin rights under the Leader/Member Admin Rights. Check the box Take Attendance. Hope this helps.
@Matthew Starner, @Clay, @Justin and @Karen you turn attendance on through portal.
Hope that helps!
I am unable to add attendance. I have made sure that a schedule is setup however no schedules dates are showing up. Thomas
So excited- have a scheduled training next Sunday- the timing couldn't be better!
@John Fanous, @Zack Caey, @Thomas,
Concerning the population of the meeting dates after selecting "Enter Attendance," no dates show up under "Post attendance for group meeting on…". When first turning on the Groups Attendance, it may take up to an hour for the 10 previous meeting dates/times to populate. This only happens when first turning on the Groups Attendance. Sorry for any confusion on the delay.
Mark Lindsley
i'm with the others......I have a schedule all set, but no dates will show up to post attendance to. I'm so excited to get this working! any ideas why we're having this problem??
When we tried this in the staging environment and turned on attendance, groups that schedules were immediately sent emails reminding them to take attendance. I know that the emails in staging were supposed to be unlisted and this was an error, but when we turn a group type on for attendance now in the real system will all the leaders who had a scheduled meeting in the past, immediately be sent emails? Hard to test it out if as soon as we turn it on, leaders will be getting emails. What do you suggest? Wait to turn it on until all leaders have been trained?
while we're on this topic of posting attendance, I hate that I do not have the schedule option for small groups that meet on the "2nd and 4th" week of the month. there's only the option of "repeats weekly" or "repeats monthly" on one particular day or week. Anyone else need this to change???
Just a small suggestion on the document you posted, the pages are in reverse order when I open the document.
Lisa - this is correct. The Staging environment is pulling the emails from InFellowship regardless if they are unlisted or not. We recommend creating a new testing group type with only one group. That way you don't alert your group leaders to something you are not quite ready for them to see!
Linda - this scheduling feature has been corrected. If you choose the Monthly option, you can choose the 2nd and 4th week as you mentioned.
Guys,
The option is in the Admin rights of the Group Type that you would like to enable attendance for.
Brian
Thanks Mark. You were right.
Eric - The document has been fixed and replaced.
In a future release, will it be possible to add a group member and then go back in time and record attendance for that person? Currently, it looks like if the person isn't listed as a member of the group, then you can't record attendance for them on that day. We were hoping to use this feature for sunday school and other classes where you might have visitors. It would be nice to add that attendance in somehow. On a positive note, we have already opened it up and leaders are saying they like it and its very easy to use. Awesome feature. Thanks guys.
Eric - in the future, we will provide the capability to post attendance for a visitor/prospect of a group. I don't have a timeframe for when this will be available, but we're definitely heading in that direction.
Hello! We're so excited about Groups 2.0! Question: How do you add a member via 2.0? I see how you remove a member by viewing their profile and "removing them from the group." Thank you so much!
How quickly will the reporting for attendance be available? I turned on the attendance feature and had leaders using it immediately! We are so excited, we just need to have access or visibility into what attendance they are posting. Thanks!
SDasilva, You add a member to a group in 2.0 by inviting them. If you're a member of the group you can "tell a friend," which sends them a link so they can take a look at the group and see if they would like to inquire and join. If you're a leader of the group, you can "invite" someone to the group which will send them a link to join if they'd like to. Group Admin's can add names to rosters through Fellowship One, but in InFellowship you need to invite them to join. And Resie, as far as reporting, we're working on it! We'll have you a timeline as soon as we get it! Thanks, Mayce
Resie - the best date I have for you re: reporting is sometime in the next month or so; there are a lot of variables to development, so it is hard to give a hard date. In the mean time, get the data collection going so you will have something to report on.
Hi Curtis, Everything looks GREAT and we really like the direction this heading in! I have one quick question - if a group has a new person come that is not on their roster, will there be a way the group leader to manually add them to their attendance?
Hi, This is real cool. Excited to start using it. Any idea how you can delete a prospect? I invited a couple of prospects. They haven't responded. I'd like to delete them from my list of prospects. How do I do it?
Also, is it possible for the small group leader to post a comment against an individual? For eg: If the leader wishes to communicate to the church oversight that a person is not regular to the group because he's in hospital. etc...
Matt - we are talking about ways we can add that in a more direct way, but right now the leader has to invite the person to the group; once they join they can take attendance on them.
Santosh - the feature to post information 'up' is not a part of this release.
I have a group that met Monday at 7 p.m. A few members were added to their group at 10:30 a.m. Monday but they do not appear in the Attendance. I saw the earlier comment about prospects and people added after a meeting, but that is not exactly the case here. Any help?
How can I pull a report of all my groups and their LH attendance?
Ben - at this time you can not pull reports or see the attendance within the portal. The next 2 iterations of this project will open a lot of that up; still on track for this quarter.
Any way in Group 2.0 we can turn a group "inactive", removing them InFellowshipone, but keeping the group data (leaders, members, attendace) in F1. When we close a group, we would like to be able to still note they were a part of a group (even if it's closed). It's just great info to have on a person when looking at their historical involvement...just curios.
Groups 2.0 is a great addition to F1. Will there be a way to "link" the data from the Ministries>Small Groups>RLC to the new group, so that the attendance posted in the past will show in a small group that we migrated to Groups?
Tony - we will be merging the two attendance repositories in some key reports (likely the Core reports) so you will see them consolidated. In addition we are working to add the attendance visibility into the portal in a seamless way. It's not going to be a magic bullet, since many of the great dashboard features that will be rolled out in the next month or so will not include the old attendance, we are trying to minimize the impact of this necessary change.
Loving the attendance feature! Question: Can we PLEASE get times listed in 12 hour format instead of 24 hour format? On the dashboard and in the search results it still lists times as 18:00 or 13:00, etc. Our people don't do military time... Is there any way to change this?
We had someone post attendance for their group inside of Groups 2.0, but then when we went to see if it posted in Fellowship One it was not there. Where does the attendance go? If the church office is keeping track of attendance, how do we check to see who and how many attended a group?
I noticed that when I click on the attendance tab and click People (so it shows the list of people and the dots representing their attendance) it has the dates and the attendance mismatched. The dates go from left to right with the newest dates on the right, while the dots seem to have the newest on the left. I noticed because we had an individual miss the first two meetings and attend last night but the dots on the attendance page show he attended the first meeting and not the last two.
Stephanie - attendance visibility is not a part of the current release, but is coming soon. For more details refer to the posting on this page.
Matthew - I've passed both of your considerations to Product Mgmt for review.
If attendance visibility is not possible yet, then is there a way for emails to stop going to facilitator's? We created a test group but in the mean time our facilitator's are getting emails telling them to post and we don't want them getting that until we can view the attendance on our end.
Stephanie - I apologize for inconvenience, but once it is turned on, your cannot turn off the attendance reminders. I do expect the attendance visibility to be incorporated in the next few weeks and would encourage you to begin collecting attendance now so when the visibility is incorporated you will immediately reap the value of it.
What about if you have an attendee? Is there a way to designate someone attended a group, but are not an official member of the group? We have several small groups that have members committed to them and at times they will have guests attend. We want to be able to record guests/attendees and members. Will this be possible?
Allen - at this time that is not possible, but I will share this with our Product Mgmt team.
Matthew - got an answer to your question re: making a group inactive while keeping attendance. The good news is, you can delete a group entirely and we have purposefully kept that data, the bad news is that you won't be able to see that data until the 3rd iteration of Groups Attendance is released (ummm... December maybe?). Feel free to delete them today though, the data is not lost!
We have the same problem that Ami Mcnamra had. WE added members to a group on Thursday morning, the group met Thursday night and we can't put attendance for them. Still can't do it today and it has been a few days.
In reply to Santosh Chandran said on 10.03.11
Hi, This is real cool. Excited to start using it. Any idea how you can delete a prospect? I invited a couple of prospects. They haven't responded. I'd like to delete them from my list of prospects. How do I do it?
ANSWER: Santosh, sorry for the delay in responding to your question. The Invite for the Prospect should expire after 14 days and will automatically close. If this is not happening, please enter a Support ticket so that we can research appropriately. Thanks!
In reply to Ami McNamara said on 10.04.11
I have a group that met Monday at 7 p.m. A few members were added to their group at 10:30 a.m. Monday but they do not appear in the Attendance. I saw the earlier comment about prospects and people added after a meeting, but that is not exactly the case here. Any help?
ANSWER: Ami, sorry for the delay in responding to your question. Currently, the individual must be a member of the group before the start of the day. In the future, we will look into providing this functionality for same day group membership/posting of attendance. I don't have a timeline for this enhancement.
In reply to Matthew said on 10.05.11
Any way in Group 2.0 we can turn a group "inactive", removing them InFellowshipone, but keeping the group data (leaders, members, attendace) in F1. When we close a group, we would like to be able to still note they were a part of a group (even if it's closed). It's just great info to have on a person when looking at their historical involvement...just curious.
ANSWER: Matthew, sorry for the delay in responding to your question. My suggestion "for now” is to make a Group Type called something like “Retired Groups”, only give permissions to those that need to drill into those groups. Then move all of the groups that you want to retire into that Group Type. This will give visibility into the groups that are no longer meeting.
This will most likely not be our long term strategy for retiring groups, but it is a safe and workable process for the time being.
In reply to Matthew Starner said on 10.05.11
Loving the attendance feature! Question: Can we PLEASE get times listed in 12 hour format instead of 24 hour format? On the dashboard and in the search results it still lists times as 18:00 or 13:00, etc. Our people don't do military time... Is there any way to change this?
ANSWER: Matthew, sorry for the delay in responding to your question. This should not be happening as time format should be working the same way as elsewhere in the Portal and inFellowship. Please enter a Support ticket so that we can research appropriately. Thanks!
In reply to Matthew Starner said on 10.06.11
I noticed that when I click on the attendance tab and click People (so it shows the list of people and the dots representing their attendance) it has the dates and the attendance mismatched. The dates go from left to right with the newest dates on the right, while the dots seem to have the newest on the left. I noticed because we had an individual miss the first two meetings and attend last night but the dots on the attendance page show he attended the first meeting and not the last two.
ANSWER: Matthew, sorry for the delay in responding to your question. What you described is definitely a defect. We have corrected the problem and should be releasing the fix as soon as possible.
In reply to Lisa said on 10.10.11
We have the same problem that Ami Mcnamra had. WE added members to a group on Thursday morning, the group met Thursday night and we can't put attendance for them. Still can't do it today and it has been a few days.
ANSWER: Currently, the individual must be a member of the group before the start of the day. In the future, we will look into providing this functionality for same day group membership/posting of attendance. I don't have a timeline for this enhancement.
How do we make someone the overseer of different group types within Groups 2.0 so that they can monitor and report on the groups attendance. It's demonstrated at the end of the demo video but I didn't even know that function existed or how to set it up.
When logged in to your span of control you can select the gear button and email all leaders. But all the potential span of control leaders we showed this to immediately asked the same question.. how can I send an email to all leaders and all members in my span of control? It dose not appear that groups 2.0 supports this simple and seemingly obviously needed feature. Have I not set it up correctly or is this indeed not supported. If it is not supported is there a plan to add it. It would seem like a very simple programmatic addition.
Rhema, you can create a Span of Care by going to Groups › Administration › View Span of Care. You'll be able to designate Span of Care Owners that will have visibility to their groups' attendance. In future releases, Span of Care Owners will be able to see Attendance Trends and Attendance Reporting Compliance in inFellowship .
Jeffery, thanks for the enhancement request. Our original intention of Span of Care Owners was that they would be mentoring Group Leaders and would need to specifically communicate with Group Leaders. We've had a couple of churches mention the same need. We'll place it on the road map to be worked on in the future.
It would be nice if the names were listed in alphabetical order by last name instead of first name on the attendance rosters.
Re: someone else doing the attendance than the Group Leader. I have suggestion, that when the group leader edits the group details, perhaps you could offer a feature that would let the leader select one person from the members of the group that could have the same permissions as the leader so they could do the attendance. It would also be nice if the span of care people could also post attendance for those that don't have internet access, or for when changes need to take place, etc. etc. Thanks!
Thanks Dee! We appreciate your feedback!
I have deleted members from the roster but they still show up on the attendance and it still counts them as being in the group which affects our percentages.
How do I get them off the attendance list?
Thank you.
Kathleen - They are kept on the attendance list because they were in attendance and they were group members at the time. If they weren't actually there you could edit the attendance date and remove them, however they were still group members during that group meeting date. Your percentages are correct since they were part of your group. They will fall off your attendance list as time goes by with how the Attendance Dashboard pages display the attendance.
I hope this helps with ansering your question.
This has potential, but we must be able to list people by last name. We have between 80-100 people in some groups, and it is a BEAR to try and take attendance by first name... especially when our check-in sheet is listed by last name, which is the way people want to have it! In any setting, I have seldom seen rosters or lists by first name. Seems kind of odd (especially when people use NICKNAMES and such). Looking forward to you fixing this!