Fellowship One

Megan, great questions, and I'm happy to say that both are coming soon.Groups attendance will show up in the involvement graph in Fellowship One in future iterations so be looking for that. And currently we are working on Core Reports M1211 and M1300 to reflect Groups 2.0 attendance.

Sara, thanks for your feedback!  We are definitely working on different ways for Group Leaders to be able to add members to a group without going through the formal "Invitation" prospect workflow.  We'll also be visiting the challenge of individuals not having an email address.  Thanks again!

Glad to see some more progress on attendance, especially when it comes to portal users. I see the previous comment that mentioned that attendance data will be added to a couple core reports and that's great. Our pastors are waiting for an overview of the attendance in groups. I was wondering if there will be an easy way via a snapshot screen or report to see which group leaders have not reported attendance in X amount of weeks?

We haven't switched over to Attendance 2.0 as a means of reporting attendance because we ask our Group Leaders to submit some comments along with their attendance. I saw in the Roadmap that this is coming soon for Attendance 2.0. Can you give me a hint as to when? :) Also, is there a way to enter group attendance through FellowshipOne rather than InFellowship? Thanks!

Thanks Mark for the quick reply. We are a small church with a small staff that doesn't have people in positions to support purchasing "span of care". I probably should have mentioned that in my first comment. Will those features you mentioned be available through the portal & thus our pastors? (trends of attendance over time for example). Thanks again.

please clarify, are these features currently available through infellowship or are they still in preview mode? i got the impression from the last training session that this was a 'look but don't touch' iteration

Any word on timeline of when this might be available in Canada?

Hi Guys – awesome update!  We're currently doing a slow rollout of Groups 2.0 to our congretation and small groups, and wanted to use the attendance feature on only a select few groups.  It appears that enabling attendance (via group type) is a global 'swtich' for all groups of that type.  And, as it also appears that the attendance 'reminder emails' are automatic and this feature is not something we can disable.  This would be very confusing to the group leaders who haven't yet been trained on (or even told about!) using InFellowship for attendance tracking.

So, a feature request – would it be possible to turn on/off attendance tracking (as an override to the setting in the group type) at the individual group level?  That way, I can turn on attendance tracking for the first few groups for our rollout (and can leave the group type 'attendance' setting off for the rest of the groups until we get them up to speed).  This wouldn't be dissimilar to the way we can set 'global' permissions for a group type but then can add additional viewers/managers at the individual group level.

I know we can always create new, temporary, group types to kind-of duplicate this functionality, but it seems a little less elegant (and more work) than just having the option at the group level.  Mostly, though – I'd love to turn on the attendnace feature and be able to keep the group type structure we've set up.

Hope this makes sense!  Thanks again for all the work you're doing – the tool is second to none IMHO.

God bless,

Matt

Matt, thanks for your feedback and the kudos!  Using a new Group Type would really be the best approach to slowly rolling out Groups Attendance.  It is a bit of initial setup for the Group Type, however, the Move Groups functionality makes it a painless process.  When using the Move Groups functionality, the group will retain the same characteristics as long as the new Group Type supports it.

You can use the move groups functionality by going to Groups › Administration › Group Types, clicking on a Group Type and then choosing Manage/Move Groups under Actions.

Ultimately, Group Types are used to control the inFellowship experience.  This new Group Type would allow Groups Attendance to be used while the other Group Type continues as normal.

Great job all! It looks really good and am excited to see the progress. I tested this all in the Staging environment and could not find any history. If look at an individual from InFellowship or in the portal I can see attendance for a few weeks but no history. Could not figure that one out?

Rose, Try looking into one of your group leader's history. They will naturally have more because history deals (at this time) with group activity dealing with prospects so a regular memeber in a group won't have much  history, if any. A leader, on the other hand, will have plenty because their history records when they invited someone or accepted someone and when they correspond with a prospect or took notes on one.

Dee, I would definitely recommend using Groups 2.0 and Groups Attendance for your Home Fellowship Groups.  Your Adult Bible Groups might need to continue to use the Activity structure so that you can utilize the online registration.  In the future, we will be enhancing both Online Registration and Activities.  It's a bit farther out on the road map to speculate on a date.

Alan, as we're rolling Groups Attendance out in iterations, this functionality will be in an upcoming release.  It will allow you to see attendance trends for a selected group or multiple groups in the Portal.  As well, in inFellowship, Span of Care Owners will be able to see this type of information for their groups.

Alan, this definitely should be released within this quarter - Q4-2011.

Hey, when is reporting coming out for Attendance on Groups 2.0? I tried the M1211 on the portal and the attendance information does not show.

Santosh, our Reporting Team is actively working on adapting key core reports for including Groups Attendance.  I'm sure that we'll announce when they're available as soon as they're ready.

We use check-in to help with attendance tracking for some of our classes/groups, so we are holding off to make a big change to the new groups 2 to keep us from having to administer two types of systems. Are there thoughts as to when check-in will be connected to Groups 2?

Dennis - while integrating check-in with the new attendance piece is where we are heading, it will be a while before that becomes a reality.  We will keep you up to date with all the latest roadmap information via the blogs on this site.

I have put in some attendance (using the staging environment) and can clearly see that recorded on the Dashboard even though only a couple of weeks. However when I went to call up someone's record in the portal (also staging) could not see any record of attendance for that person under Groups Involvement. I can see they belong to a group. What am I missing here?

+1 to Megan's suggestion.

Rose -- When you click on the group name are you able to see the new History & Attendance tabs? 

Is there a convenient way to merge the attendance data from the "old" groups to Groups 2.0? We have stressed the importance of keeping attendance with our group leaders for tracking and accountability and with the attendance not following automatically from the old to the new, we lose not only valuable information but some credibility. Thanks for addressing this important matter.

In Groups 2.0 when someone is added to a group, there is not a way to post past attendance. This is done by design. I have the need to add a person that was missed when the group was setup and post past attendance. Currently Groups 2.0 does not allow the posting of past attendance once the group has been setup and attendance process has started.

Is there a work around or plans to have a more in depth editing capability?

This is especially important in the initial setup phase.

Thanks

Is there a way to inactivate a group? What happens to the group history and attendance if a group is deleted?

Hi Blair, Here's a possible suggestion. Go to Edit Schedule and click "Stops repeating" and give a date when it stops. The group thereafter does not repeat but still retains historical data. That way you do not need to delete the group, and still retain historical information. Hope this helps.

I have having the same issue as Richard Lee above. If people never responded to the emails but showed up to group, we cannot enter any attendance until the meeting after they manually put in the group. Let us know if there's anyway around it.

I know it's been mentioned, but I would like to second/third/fourth the timely release of a notes function for small group attendance.  It is invaluable for our coaches and portal users to capture a weekly snapshot of what happened during a small group & even what may be happening in an individual's life.  Creating & accessing a historical notes database for each small group &/or individual would be incredible for us.

In reply to Megan on 10.25.11

Another suggestion our Student ministry has is a way to email parents. Since a lot of the students don't check email, most of the leaders want to communicate with the parents. If there was a way to have that option like there is in the portal for group leaders to see parents that would be a huge help and definitely something no other small groups module has.

ANSWER:  Megan, thanks for the feedback.  This definitely sounds helpful.  We'll see what we can do with working into the Product Roadmap.  Thanks!

Dan, fsoule, Richard Lee, & Jleslie,

We've definitely been hearing the importance of being able to post attendance for individuals that are not on the roster the day of the meeting.  We will be addressing this in a couple of different ways.  First, we'll provide the ability to post attendance for anyone added to the roster on the same day of the meeting.  Second, we'll research the implications of providing the ability to change the member's join date for the group.  The join date is what provides the ability to have the attendance posted for an individual.  I don't have a timeframe for when this will be done, but please know that we understand the importance of it.  Thanks!

I have a question about the retention of past assignments. Not all of our groups take attendance as some are just interest groups or compassion groups. We do try to get a list of all members for each group. So what I want to understand is for the future how are we going to keep assignment history? If we do attendance I understand that will always be available. However the group membership of a group will change over time. In order to keep the details of each group current we have to remove members from groups who were involved in the past. If that group has not been taking attendance what will be kept in terms of their group participation/assignment?. In the portal, if you do not do attendance, you can still see past assignments to activities and can either choose to keep them or delete them if they are really old. So what is going to be kept by Fellowship in regard to these past group assignments?

Any suggestions on how I can get attendance for all of our small groups since the reporting is not set up yet? I really need to be able to give something to our small group director so she can see how the attendance is looking.

@Lauren, screenshots of each group's attendance page?

Hi Keely!

Here's a FT Solution by cfizgerald, Best Practice - Inactive Group http://www.fellowshipone.com/support/solutions/11/09/15/best-practice-inactive-groups in this blog she discusses "Moving groups."

I also found this to be helpful, https://help.fellowshipone.com/fellowshipone_Left.htm#CSHID=3261|StartTopic=Content%2FInFellowship%2FGroups%2FView%20Group%20Type.htm|SkinName=NewSkin, I hope you do as well!

Let me know how it goes,
Lory

Our small groups just began using groups 2.0 last week. We are having a big problem with taking attendance because we don't have people "JOIN" the group. Instead, they just show up to any group they wish.  Then we add them to the group the next day, but cannot take attendance on them.  This week we had some additional people attend groups and have the same problem.  Now all of our attendance records will be missing every individual's first time attending a group.  Is F1 developing a way to edit the "start date" of an individual to back date it before the meeting?

That will definitely be helpful, but what if a group meets late on an evening and the leader does not get around to adding the new member until the next day.  Will there be any way to take attendance on that person if they are added on the day after the meeting?

Past Attendance Editing/History/Visitors/Guest to your class -- My question is how do I show that someone visited a Group 2.0? It seems to me that your current design could set up a situation in which we may have 50 people come as fist time guest to our Group 2.0s, in our case Small Groups...and I would have no way of tracking/taking attendance for them. I know that we won't be taking our attendance reports with us on Judgement Day, but in an effort to prove if our strategy of reaching people for Christ is working... we need to know the number of people who are on site every Sunday, not just people who were already setup as "Members" or "Prospects" to a Group 2.0. For the record "I LOVE GROUPS 2.0" Great job!!! Am I missing a piece of the puzzle or has anyone identified a work around?

PLEASE give us the option to disable reminder emails!  It's such an easy fix to a host of problems.

MicahO, can you please describe the problem that needs to be solved with the Post Attendance Reminders?  

As most will agree, attendance is one of the major items that a church can measure concerning someone's involvement or lack of involvement.  For example, if someone has been coming to a small group for several weeks, but is no longer attending... this is a possible life indicator.  Something in there life has changed and it would be awesome if the Small Group Leader or church could understand this and reach out to them.

The reminders are to remind the Group Leader to take a couple of minutes and provide information to the church that the church has deemed valuable.

If you don't find attendance valuable for certain types of groups, such as sports teams, general interest groups, etc., you can place those groups under a different Group Type that does not have attendance enabled.  Group Types are in place to create the InFellowship experience and provide certain rights and permissions.

Another note about the reminders, we've put this in place so that group leaders can be encouraged to enter their attendance so that attendance information can be accurate as possible.  How can the church leadership be able to depend on attendance information if it's not up to date?