Serve with a Plan
As a volunteer at King’s Cross, we encourage you to keep up with Sunday requests via the Planning Center Services app. Download to your smartphone to have the King’s Cross volunteer schedule at your fingertips!
A member of our staff has already imported you into Services. So, after downloading the app, you should be able to sign in with your current Planning Center profile information (which you should have previously set up from Giving and/or the Church Center App). If you have not already accessed your Planning Center account elsewhere and need assistance activating it, please reach out to rachel@kingscrossva.org.
The leader of whatever ministry you work with will send you requests to serve on a given Sunday, which you can then accept or decline. The Services app will notify you when you receive a request, and you will also receive a Sunday times reminder as the week progresses. (These messages will come via email as well.)
If there is a date you know you are unable to serve, you can set “block out dates” on your calendar. This will help your service leader to know when they should not schedule you.
Services helps the leadership of King’s Cross keep all scheduling, church-wide, in one, easy to manage place, so, we thank you for taking the time to download and learn how this operates!
By the way, if you do not have a smartphone, all Services features work fine on the computer too!
If you are a team leader who is responsible for scheduling volunteers… Please continue reading!
As a team leader, you have special access to schedule and manage your volunteers. In order to do this, navigate to the Plans tab. From there, click on the dropdown menu for Volunteer Services. You can schedule by individual week by clicking on the date that you need, or, you can schedule several weeks at a time (recommended!) by using the Matrix.
Once in a week’s plan, to schedule a volunteer, find your group, then click on a (Number) Needed spot. This will bring up a sidebar that shows everyone who is in your team. No Conflicts obviously means this person is available (or has yet to state otherwise). Yellow next to a name means they are already serving in another position. You can navigate over this yellow mark in order to see where they are service, and subsequently whether they are able to manage two positions on that Sunday. Red next to a name means they have set a block out for that date and cannot be scheduled.
Once set, a green check mark next to a name means they have confirmed, and a yellow question mark next to a name means they have yet to respond. An envelope icon next to a name means they have not yet been emailed by their supervisor to request service.
When you have set up a given week, navigate to the drop down menu to send out email requests. Feel free to add a personal message to the automatic message that appears!
When a volunteer accepts or declines, you will be notified by email. If they decline, do not despair, simply head back to the plan and try again. The position that has been declined will return to saying (Number) Needed.
It takes a bit to get used to the system, but after enough practice, you will get the hang of it! Thank you for taking time to learn how to utilize Services and, in turn, aid the entire volunteer ministry of our church.
