Church settings
Church settings is where a Church Admin decides who should hear that a new homebound parishioner needs a visit, and how quickly the second group of volunteers hears. Clergy can open the page and read the values. Volunteers do not sign in here. Choose Save before you leave. The next parishioner you add uses the saved values. People already on the list are not re-notified because you changed a setting.
What actually sends a notice
Saving a new parishioner starts the notices. There is no separate release step, and the designated intake person is not asked to approve the request before volunteers see it. Editing a parishioner later does not run this same notice list again.
Two kinds of people can be told:
- Church admins and clergy whose role is checked under Volunteer notification roles. They are told immediately. Travel radius and preferred visit times are not applied to them. They must be active. If they have turned off new-visit alerts in the mobile app, they are skipped.
- Volunteers, and only when Volunteers is checked under Volunteer notification roles. A volunteer is included only when every item in the next list is true.
A volunteer is in the notice only when:
- They are an active volunteer at the parish (or at a sister parish, when the parishes share requests).
- Their new-visit alerts are on in the mobile app.
- The parishioner has a map point, not only a typed street address. Volunteer distance cannot be calculated without it.
- The volunteer’s travel radius, measured from the location on their profile, reaches that map point.
- At least one of the parishioner’s preferred days and times matches a day and time the volunteer marked as available. Morning, afternoon, and evening have to agree, not just the day of the week.
Volunteers who pass that list and have no assignment are told immediately. Volunteers who pass that list and already have an assignment are told later. The wait is Second notification delay, counted from the moment the parishioner is saved. The default is 24 hours. That later notice still goes out when the time is up. Accepting the visit in the meantime does not cancel it.
If the parishioner has no map point, volunteer matching stops. Church admins and clergy who are checked can still be told. If Volunteers is unchecked, no volunteer is queued even when they would have matched.
Which settings change the next parishioner
| Setting | Effect on the next new parishioner |
|---|---|
| Designated intake person | The name is saved. Notices do not wait for this person, and this person is not notified because of this field. |
| Intake roles | The checkboxes are saved. The notice list does not read them. |
| Staged volunteer notifications | The checkbox is saved. The two waves described above always run. Clearing the box does not send every matching volunteer at once. |
| Volunteer notification roles | This chooses who can be told. See that section. |
| Second notification delay | This sets the wait before volunteers who already have an assignment are told. |
| Third notification delay | The hour is saved. A later notice to every volunteer, ignoring radius and availability, is not sent. |
Designated intake person
The list is people already on the parish. None is the empty choice.
Use a name when one person should own the first pastoral contact: call the parishioner, confirm the address and the days they can be visited, and make sure the record is complete. That is the job the field is for. The mobile app describes the same job as “call or visit a new parishioner before the request is released.”
Choosing a name does not give that person a task in the app, and it does not hold the request. Volunteers who match are told when the parishioner is saved, under the rules above. The named person is told only if they also qualify some other way, for example because they are a Church Admin and Church admins is checked under Volunteer notification roles.
Leave None when you do not want a single owner recorded. The page then points you at Intake roles as the group that should hear instead. Those roles are saved, and they are not what the notice job uses. Use Volunteer notification roles for the people who should actually be told.
Intake roles
Volunteers, Church admins, and Clergy. The usual starting value is Church admins only.
The note on the page says these roles are notified when a new parishioner is entered, if no designated person is set. That is the choice the field is storing: a group, instead of one name. Checking a role here does not add that role to the notice. Unchecking Church admins here does not stop Church Admins from being told if Church admins is checked under Volunteer notification roles.
If you want Church Admins to hear about every new parishioner immediately, check Church admins under Volunteer notification roles. Intake roles will not do that.
Staged volunteer notifications
The note on the page says: after release, tell matching volunteers who have no open assignment first, and if the box is off, tell all matching volunteers immediately.
Keep the box checked when that is the policy you want on record. The live behavior is already the two-wave split: people with no assignment first, people who already have an assignment after the second delay. Clearing the box does not collapse those waves into one immediate notice. The second delay still applies.
Volunteer notification roles
This is the list the notice job reads. Check every role that should be allowed to hear about a new parishioner. The usual starting value is Volunteers only.
- Volunteers. Checked: matching volunteers are told, immediately if they have no assignment, and after the second delay if they already have one. Unchecked: no volunteer is told, even one who lives next door and is free on the parishioner’s preferred morning. Use unchecked only when a coordinator will assign visits by hand and you do not want the mobile app to offer the request.
- Church admins. Checked: every active Church Admin is told immediately, with no radius or availability test. Use this when the coordinator should see every new person, including a record that has no map point or no preferred times. Unchecked: Church Admins are not told by this setting. They can still open Unassigned and see who has no volunteer.
- Clergy. Same immediate notice as Church Admins, with no radius test. Check it when the priest or deacon should see each new request as it is entered. Leave it unchecked when clergy should not get a notice for every new name.
A person who has turned off new-visit alerts in the mobile app is left out even when their role is checked. Church admins and clergy use the in-app new-visit alert. Volunteers are included when either the app alert or the email alert is on.
The first two waves still limit volunteers by radius and by a matching preferred time. Checking Volunteers does not mean every volunteer at the parish gets the first notice.
Second notification delay (hours)
Choices are 6, 12, 24, 48, and 72 hours. The usual value is 24.
This is the wait before the second wave: matching volunteers who already had an assignment when the parishioner was saved. The first wave is not delayed. Church admins and clergy are not delayed.
Choose a shorter wait when open visits should reach busy volunteers the same day. Choose 48 or 72 hours when you want people with a light schedule to have a full day or two to claim the visit before people who are already visiting someone else are asked.
The clock starts when the parishioner is saved, not when someone reads the first notice. The second notice says the parishioner is still looking for a visit. It is sent when the delay ends, including when someone has already accepted.
Third notification delay (hours)
Choices are the same: 6, 12, 24, 48, and 72 hours. The usual value is 24. The note on the page says this is the wait after the second notice before every volunteer at the parish is told, with no regard to travel radius or availability.
That wider notice is not sent. Changing 24 hours to 72 hours does not change who is told and does not add a third wave. The value is stored with the parish for that policy. Volunteers outside the radius, or whose availability does not overlap a preferred time, stay uninformed unless you assign them yourself or they open requests with preferences ignored in the mobile app.
A worked example
Volunteers and Church admins are checked. The second delay is 24 hours. You save Mrs. Allen with a map point and Thursday morning as a preferred time.
- Every active Church Admin with new-visit alerts on is told now.
- A volunteer with no assignment, whose radius reaches Mrs. Allen, and who is available Thursday morning, is told now.
- A volunteer with the same match who already visits someone else is told 24 hours later.
- A volunteer who is free only on Tuesday, or who lives outside their own travel radius, is not told.
- The designated intake person, if you named one, is not given a release button. Mrs. Allen is already visible to the people above.
If Mrs. Allen’s address was typed and never resolved to a map point, the Church Admins are still told and the volunteers are not matched.
Church time zone
When the page also shows Visit reminders, Church time zone is the Windows time zone used for the reminder the evening before an accepted visit. The usual value is Eastern Standard Time. The reminder goes to the volunteer who accepted, when that visit has a day and time, and when they have not turned upcoming-visit alerts off. A visit someone else is covering is skipped. The hour is about 6 p.m. in this time zone, the evening before the visit date.
Confession and Anointing of the Sick
On a parishioner visit, a minister can record that the person asked for Confession, Anointing of the Sick, or both. The notice is separate from a new Communion visit.
Notify clergy
On by default. Active clergy at the church get the notice in the app, by phone, and by email. They open the parishioner and mark Confession received, Anointing received, or both. Turn this off when the priest does not want these notices.
Who is told when clergy are not
This applies only when Notify clergy is off. Church admins sends it to every active church admin. Selected people sends it to the people named below. Those people tell the priest. A church admin can then mark Priest visited on the parishioner after the priest has been.
People who notify the priest
The names used when the choice above is Selected people. If the list is empty, church admins are notified instead, so the request is not left with no one to see it.
How to save
- Open Church settings.
- Set Volunteer notification roles and Second notification delay to the policy you want in effect.
- Use Designated intake person when you want a named owner on the record. Do not expect that name to pause volunteer notices.
- Choose Save. A confirmation appears at the top of the page when the save succeeds.
Preferred days, the map point, and each volunteer’s radius and availability are not on this page. Preferred days are on the parishioner. Radius, availability, and alert switches are in the mobile app.