Online Knowledge Base
Setup Questions
Purchasing and Licensing
- How are MSP and VSP different?
- MSP Scheduling Tip: Use the Scheduling Roadmap for guidance on every step of the scheduling cycle
- MSP Scheduling Tip: Get personalized help setting up the Web Terminal for your church
- What is the best product for me?
- What is the price / cost of the program?
- I'm ready to purchase - how do I proceed?
Installation
- MSP Scheduling Tip: Transfer MSP to a new scheduler
- MSP Scheduling Tip: Help fellow schedulers by sharing MSP with other churches
- How do I install MSP on my computer?
- How do I uninstall MSP from one computer install it on a different one?
- How can I see which computers have MSP installed for my license and uninstall an installation if necessary?
- How do I uninstall MSP from a computer I no longer have access to?
Database Questions
- I made a mistake. Is there a way to undo? (Restore from Auto Backup)
- Execution Error when using the Filter box
- How can I send a screenshot to tech support?
- MSP Scheduling Tip: Allow multiple people to run MSP at the same time
- MSP Scheduling Tip: Password Protect MSP
- MSP Scheduling Tip: Using MSP in "Read-only" mode
Volunteers
- MSP Scheduling Tip: Change the word "Volunteer" to a term that better fits your church
- MSP Scheduling Tip: How to tell if a volunteer has been flagged to be scheduled more often than others
- MSP Scheduling Tip: Quickly find a volunteer in a list by typing his or her name
- MSP Scheduling Tip: Customizing the "Quick view" in the Volunteers pane
- Why do some of my volunteers appear in parenthesis?
- How can I edit multiple volunteer records at one time?
Custom Fields
Families
Ministries & Subdivisions
- MSP Scheduling Tip: Create ministry folders to stay organized
- MSP Scheduling Tip: Keep assignments in particular ministries private
- MSP Scheduling Tip: Easily schedule your church's choir with MSP
- MSP Scheduling Tip: Using Titles to schedule different types of ministers
- How can I add subdivisions without deleting positions from the current schedule?
- How can I remove subdivisions without deleting positions from the current schedule?
Overview and Setup Videos
- Bird's Eye Overview (Video)
- Creating Ministries (Video)
- Labelling Positions (Video)
- Using Titles (Video)
- Creating Service Times (Video)
- Creating Volunteers (Video)
Synchronization and Importation
Synchronization with Management Software
- Syncing with Management Software (Video)
- What programs does MSP synchronize with?
- My church management program isn’t on the list of program MSP syncs with- can you add it?
- Why can’t the “Auto Detect” button find my church management program database?
- Why do I see everyone in my database during the synchronization?
- During synchronization I get a "[Microsoft][ODBC Driver Manager] Invalid string or buffer length" error.
Importing from Files
Scheduling Questions
Scheduling Videos
- Posting and Printing Schedules (Video)
- Scheduling 201: Running Your Next Schedule (Recorded Webinar)
- Painless Ministry Scheduling
- Scheduling 101: The MSP Scheduling Cycle (Recorded Webinar)
- Coordinate Ministries and Avoid Conflicts (Webinar Recording)
- Effective Ministry Scheduling (Webinar Recording)
Scheduling Preferences
- MSP Scheduling Tip: Avoid conflicts by disabling profile request forms while scheduling
- MSP Scheduling Tip: Using the preferred serving frequency setting on a "by ministry" basis
- How can I ensure that people are not scheduled two weeks in a row?
- How can I allow volunteers to be scheduled for two positions at one service?
- Scheduling one person for multiple postions
- How does the "Schedule this ministry in combination with" option work?
Scheduling Families
- MSP Scheduling Tip: Add a can't serve time to an entire family at once
- MSP Scheduling Tip: Allow some families to be split up in ministries that are marked to have families always scheduled together
- Options to schedule Families together
- How do I ensure that a family is always scheduled together?
- How do I ensure that family members are not scheduled at different times on the same weekend?
- How can I scheduled family ministers that attend mass together but do not want to serve together because of watching small children?
Creating a Schedule
- MSP Scheduling Tip: A guide to color-coding on the schedule
- MSP Scheduling Tip: Focus on a particular ministry when viewing the schedule
- MSP Scheduling Tip: Easily move an entire service to a different day
- MSP Scheduling Tip: Removing a single position from a service on a schedule or schedule skeleton
- Is it possible to have two live schedules at one time?
- Why won't MSP let me have two schedules with overlapping dates?
Auto-Scheduler
- MSP Scheduling Tip: Auto-schedule just particular ministries and service times
- Can I schedule just one ministry at a time?
- How can I remove all of the auto-placed positions at once?
- How can I leave services unfilled in the schedule so I can go back and manually schedule them later?
- Why are some positions left unfilled in my schedules?
- I've been doing quite a few test runs for schedules. When I am ready to do the real schedule, is there some way to clear the historical information on file?
Distribution Questions
- Using the Distribution Report to add a position for volunteers to maintain balance
- Using the Distribution Report to remove a position for volunteers to maintain balance
- MSP Scheduling Tip: Using the Ministry Distribution Report to ensure a fair distribution of services
- How can I set up MSP so volunteers are more fairly distributed across service times?
- How can I see all the days one particular person was scheduled?
- Why are some people getting scheduled twice before others are scheduled once?
Scheduling Conflicts
- MSP Scheduling Tip: Uncover scheduling conflicts before finalizing the schedule
- How can I catch conflicts where volunteers are scheduled twice in one week?
- Why is my Conflict Report listing the "Family Split" error when just one family member is scheduled, but not when two or more family members are scheduled (without the rest of the family)?
Exporting Schedules
- MSP Scheduling Tip: Save your export settings when printing or posting schedules
- MSP Scheduling Tip: Rearranging the order in which ministries appear on schedules
- Can I export a separate schedule for weekend and weekday services?
- Do my volunteers always have to be alphabetized in my exported schedules?
- Can I customize the schedules that are generated to our own special format?
- Can I include phone numbers after the names of my ministers in exported schedules?
Editing Existing Schedules
Rotational Scheduling
Preassignments
- MSP Scheduling Tip: Accommodate specific schedule requests for future schedules prior to generating a schedule skeleton
- MSP Scheduling Tip: Exporting a list of your preassignments
- Rotational Scheduling (Video)
- How can I preassign a volunteer for just one particular date?
- How do I set up a volunteer to be scheduled exactly one time every week?
- How do I set up a preassignment for a whole team of people?
Teams
- Can a volunteer belong to more than one team?
- How can I generate a list of teams for a particular ministry, or a list of all my teams?
- How can I schedule two teams to rotate automatically every other week?
- Weekly team rotations are NOT showing up on the monthly services
- Team won't get scheduled because 1 of the people is not available...
- Why is it that if someone on a team requests dates of unavailability the scheduler does not honor these and still schedules them?
Communication
Emailer
- What is a Token?
- MSP Scheduling Tip: Manage your volunteers' automatic email settings from their profiles
- MSP Scheduling Tip: Using filters to group volunteers matching certain criteria
- MSP Scheduling Tip: Copying and pasting text within MSP
- MSP Scheduling Tip: Sending an email to only those ministers scheduled at a specific service
- MSP Scheduling Tip: Easily email individual volunteers from your default email client
Text (SMS) Messaging
Automatic Reminders
- How do I know if automatic emails are going out or if a specific volunteer got an automatic email?
- How can I turn on automatic email reminders?
- MSP Scheduling Tip: Update the "From address" used for automatic emails
- MSP Scheduling Tip: Personalize automatic emails sent through MSP
- Is there any way to make the automatic emailer send out the available positions letter on more than one day?
- How can I send an email to volunteers to let them know of pending swaps for the coming weekend?
Service Planning
Service Planning
- MSP Scheduling Tip: Point volunteers to resources related to their scheduled services
- What is the service plan view?
- How do I edit the service plan?
- How do my volunteers access the service plan?
- How can I keep particular ministry assignments private when looking at service plans?
- Liturgy Plan for Weekends ONLY
Resources
Notes and Sequences
Service Planning Videos
Special Services
Managing Special Services
- How do I add special services to my schedule?
- What is the difference between a "one time only" service and a yearly service?
- How can I create a schedule for just my special services?
- Why are volunteers not able to add a yearly service preference to their profile?
- Why are my special services not showing up on the full schedule online?
- Questions about ad hoc services and emails
Scheduling Special Services
- Holiday Scheduling (Recorded Webinar)
- How can I leave my special services empty so volunteers can sign up online?
- How do I specify that only particular volunteers are scheduled for my special services?
- How do I get the auto-scheduler to use volunteers' weekly service preferences when scheduling special services?
- Why are people getting scheduled twice in quick succession for yearly (special) services?
- Why are my volunteers being scheduled at special services that are not listed in their preferences?
Web Terminal
Web Terminal Videos
- The Web Terminal for Volunteers (Video)
- Updating Your MSP Profile for Volunteers (video)
- Web Terminal for Ministry Leaders (Video)
- Managing the Web Terminal (Video)
- Rolling out the Web Terminal: An A-Z Guide (Recorded Webinar)
- 4 Easy Steps to Get Your Church Online (Recorded Webinar)
Web Terminal
- How can I customize the text in the Web Terminal to make my messages stand out?
- How can I help a volunteer who is having trouble logging in to the Web Terminal?
- Point volunteers to a tutorial on how to use the Web Terminal
- MSP Scheduling Tip: Easily integrate MSP with your church's website
- MSP Scheduling Tip: Help volunteers connect to the Web Terminal by placing a banner on your website
- How can I create a custom token?
Web Forms
MSP App
Ministry Leaders
- MSP Scheduling Tip: Keep Ministry Leaders in the loop
- MSP Scheduling Tip: Edit schedules, track attendance and add new positions using the Web Terminal
- What is the difference between an Admin to MSP, and a Ministry Leader?
- How do I set up Admins and Ministry Leaders?
- How do I assign a Ministry Leader?
- What schedules can Ministry Leaders see and edit online?
Usernames, Passwords and Preferences
- Setting my volunteer password
- How are volunteers assigned their Web Terminal usernames and password?
- How can I send Web Terminal User Names and Passwords to only new volunteers?
- How can I change a volunteer's Web Terminal username and password?
- How can I keep volunteers' contact information private to other ministry members when logged into the Web Terminal?
- Why can't I see the Web Terminal password for my volunteers? The Web Terminal password reads "[secret]"
Schedules on the Web Terminal
- MSP Scheduling Tip: Easily replicate your Live Schedule Posts for a new schedule
- MSP Scheduling Tip: What is the difference between a live schedule and a Live Schedule Post?
- How do I post a schedule to the Web Terminal (online)?
- How can I make sure my church's website always links to the most recent schedule?
- What does "Copy Link to Last" do?
- How can I keep schedules separated and viewable to only volunteers qualified for the particular ministry?
Subs, Swaps and Trading
- I'd like to try the swap feature but I'm not sure how it works! What happens when a volunteer requests a swap?
- How can I request a sub on behalf of one of my volunteers?
- How can I cancel a Swap (Sub) request?
- How can I set up the Web Terminal so that volunteers can trade positions?
- How can I make swap request notification emails go to everybody in the ministry, even if they don't have the related service as a preference?
- Volunteers get a blank screen when volunteering or requesting a sub online
Rosterizer and Mailing Labels
Rosterizer
- MSP Scheduling Tip: Exclude certain volunteers' information from rosters and schedules
- MSP Scheduling Tip: Personalizing schedules and rosters
- Rosterizer (Video)
- How can I email or create a roster just for inactive volunteers?
- How can I create a list of volunteers who can serve at a particular service time?
- How do I create a list of only people who are scheduled during a specific time period?