Church Rosters

• Access to roster pages should not require logging in, if all you want to do is read the roster. Changing roster entries, or accessing volunteer details will. For information see GwucWikiFirstTimeReaders.

• Participation in rosters is an important part of belonging to a community, as well as an important part of running a community. If you have questions, please ask a coordinator or a member of Church Council.

• Rosters at GWUC are listed in the table below. For each roster:
  • If the roster name is a link, then the roster is available on line. This enables you to:
    • See when you are rostered.

    • Allocate yourself to a date of your choice, by simply entering your WikiName

    • Change an allocation if you have arranged a swap.
  • If there is a link to a preferences page, you can use that to:
    • change your preferences regarding duties, reminder emails and the allocation process.

    • These rosters share a common page, RosterUnavailable, where you can register your unavailability.

  • In each case, these functions can also be done by contacting the coordinator of the roster.
• As elsewhere in the wiki, clicking on a person's name will take you to their contact details, provided you are logged in.
• Details of the duties involved are either listed on or linked from the roster page.

• For further information, see ChurchRostersHowTo. A proposal to ChurchCouncil about the review being implemented is online at RosterProposal.

• The email reminder system is now operating as in the following table.
• in the status column:

  • automated - the roster has automatic allocations applied to it once a week. Email reminders for next week's duties are sent, and email alerts are also sent to anyone who is allocated a new duty. The "+n" figure indicates that allocations are done for at least the next n weeks.

  • semi-auto - the roster is updated once a week as a blank shell to allow manual allocations. Email reminders for next week's duties are sent, however email alerts for new allocations are not sent (since these are done manually).

  • manual - the roster has no automatic processes applied to it. Email reminders (including alerts) are not sent. These rosters can be made semi-auto or automatic, once coordinators approve the move. (This process is easily performed.)
    

  • not on wiki - the roster is maintained off line - no email of any kind is sent regarding these rosters, other than by coordinators themselves.

• It is intended that eventually all manual and semi-auto rosters will be converted to automatic rosters, although perhaps with minimum allocation periods (of 4 weeks, to make sure that the published rosters on the office door do not have any vacancies).

Notes

1. Times are shown for normal weeks. Special Events and Liturgical Calendar Occasions may change these. Note that regular Sunday times are abbreviated to S8,S9,S11,S4,S7 representing 8am, 9:15am, 11am, 4:30pm, and 7pm respectively.
2. semi-automatic and manual rosters cannot perform "allocation alerts", as the system has no way of knowing when manual allocations are made. It is left to the responsibility of the person making a manual allocation to alert the rostered person concerned. A one week reminder will still be sent.
3. automatic rosters with an allocation of 4 weeks are effectively semi-automatic. The 4 weeks is inserted to ensure that there are no vacancies left when the roster is published to the office door. Otherwise, the roster relies upon the roster coordinator inserting names manually.

Further Explanation

Status

The Status field indicates where in the long-term plan for rosters the particular roster is at.

Automatic is the long-term goal, with all information in the roster being supplied automatically once a week. The '+n' field indicates that automatic allocation is done for the next 'n' weeks. This is in fact a minimum figure - individuals specifying longer allocation periods will be allocated automatically for their specified period.

Semi-auto means that the roster is updated once a week as a blank shell to allow manual allocations. Email reminders for next week's duties are sent, however email alerts for new allocations are not sent (since these are done manually).

The boundary between automatic and semi-automatic rosters is simply one of how far automatic allocation goes. Currently, semi-auto has 0 (zero) weeks of allocation, in other words, no automatic allocations are made, but otherwise, email reminders are sent, and the roster blank entries are extended to the standard 52 weeks ahead. Any amount of allocation (1 week or more) makes the roster "automatic", and it is intended that eventually (once everything settles down) all rosters will be automatic for at least 4 weeks.

The sound roster is an example of this. While revision 32 of the roster is indeed marked as an auto-update, no automatic allocations were made, and the only real change was to delete the most recent duties (Good Friday and Easter Day), and to add 2 blank entries for 19 Apr 2015.

This parameter of the number of weeks for which allocations are made is thus the defining criterion for "automatic" versus "semi-automatic". The point of the latter category is just to give roster coordinators the flexibility of making the allocations themselves. I suspect that once everyone understands this, we won't need the semi-auto category anymore, but all rosters will become 13 weeks or more and thus "automatic".

Manual rosters are just that. All entries and adjustments are made by human interaction - no automatic processing is applied.

not on wiki means that all roster maintenance is done outside the wiki. No on-line form is maintained.

Consolidated Roster

This field indicates that entries from this roster are collected together and automatically forwarded to the ChurchOffice for publishing in paper form on the Office Notice Board, outside the ChurchOffice.

TODOs

1. wiki Home Page updater and automatic removal of non-members (deceased, xfers, etc.)
2. ditto, wrt Carters
3. audit of Preference pages against database roster group memberships
4. Clarification of music groups and their names, in both wiki and database
5. New version of this page aimed at tyro users
6. flagging of communion leader
7. Continuation of documentation
8. bugs in email reminder code

CategoryRosters