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Planning a Special Service

You can create a one-time special service for events like Christmas or Easter. Services, Check-Ins and Calendar all allow you to create new special events through a new service type or an existing service type, depending on what works best for you.

New Service Type

If your special service is more like a special event, create a service type where you can schedule all special services and set the frequency to none.

Here are some examples of when to use a new service type.

  • if your teams are different for your Special Services

  • if you are doing a Christmas musical, a prayer night, or a night of worship where your teams are very different than your normal service.

  • if you have multiple special event services per year and want to group them together more easily.

  • if you want to set this up once and then use it each time.

  • if you have different staffing needs, such as allowing kids volunteers to sign up anywhere.

Existing Service Type

Most of the time, you will want to create a plan within an existing service type.

This includes when you want to:

  • add an extra time to your normal services time, like a Sunrise Easter service.

  • have your regular service at a different time, like a Christmas Eve service on Friday night instead of Sunday morning.

  • have a service any other time where your teams are mostly the same or are an extension of your regular service.

  • use the same team structure and volunteers as your weekly services.

Use the sections below to create a special service in your existing service type.

Copy an Existing Plan

If you want to use a plan similar to what you used for a special service in the past, you can copy the times from that plan to create your new plan.

Go to the past plan, and then create the new plan by copying those times.

modal_add plans_copy times_arrow.png

Tip

Create a template for special services that happen each year, like Christmas or Easter.

Add or Change Times

The times in each plan can be completely different from other plans in the same service type.

For example, if your Christmas Eve service is on a Friday night and has its own rehearsals, delete all the other times from that one plan and add in the correct times.

Add or Copy Teams

Most of your teams should be the same, but if your special service needs additional teams (for example, an orchestra at a Christmas service), you can create a new team or copy a team from another service type.

After the service is over, archive the team, and when you want to use the orchestra again, you can restore the team.

Note

You could leave the team in your service type and ignore it in future plans since only see teams with people scheduled to them are seen in the plan.

Go from One Service Time to Multiple

If you have regular services that happen at one time, but your special service has two or more service times, you can temporarily split your teams to schedule different people at each time. From the team settings, enable split teams, and ignore the option to create time preferences.

Once split teams are enabled, you can schedule people for separate service times, which will give you a conflict if you try to schedule someone for both times.

conflicts.png

After your special service is over, you can unsplit the team by unchecking the box. The special plan will no longer reflect split teams, but you will not lose the history of your split team. Select any person in that team to see the individual times they were assigned to.

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Note

If you re-split the team again in the future, the old plan will go back to how it looked when you originally set it up.

Schedule Guests

In your regular plans, it's best to assign people to a team before scheduling them. In a one-time service, though, you can schedule people who don’t serve regularly without adding them as team members.

For example, if you have an expanded choir for the Christmas Eve service, you might not have enough people on your regular choir team to fill all the positions. To schedule people to a team for just one plan, you can schedule them as guests.

schedule a guest.png

Tip

You can also assign tags to people to identify them more easily without adding them to a team.

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