MSP offers the ability to track attendance and participation. By tracking attendance with MSP, you can easily generate reports and send personalized emails thanking people when they fill in or letting no-shows know they were missed. And if your ministers use the Web Terminal, you can even display their attendance record online for them to see. Tracking attendance increases accountability, lets your volunteers know that their service is important, and helps you avoid scheduling people that repeatedly don't show up.
In the Plus Edition, you can use the Sign-In Kiosk to track attendance with MSP and send emails to ministers who didn't show up.
- Using the MSP Kiosk, have volunteers sign in as they arrive to serve. Here, volunteers can sign in, fill unfilled positions, or sub for someone who did not show up. Best of all, this data is automatically entered into the schedule!
- Go to the Announcements pane in MSP and select "Use template". Select "Preconfigured" and choose the "No-Show Follow Up" template.
- When you preview, a dialog box will pop-up where you can specify the date range over which you want to report no shows.
Step by step: Manually tracking attendance with MSP to send emails to ministers who didn't show up
- Open the schedule inside MSP that covers the previous weekend. Locate the positions on the schedule where a last-minute substitution was made, or a volunteer did not show up. (Note: MSP has the ability to print sign-in sheets, which can be helpful in tracking which volunteers don't show up over the course of each weekend.)
- If a minister did not show up and the spot went unfilled, you can right-click on the name and choose "Flag as did not show up" or click on the red flag at the top of the scheduling window. If a substitution was made, right-click on the minister's name who didn't show up and select "Make swap..." or highlight the minister's name and click the icon with the green arrow located at the top of the scheduling window. From the list that appears, choose the name of the minister who filled in. They will be added to the schedule and flagged as "Extra (No show)". This indicates the original minister was the "no show" and they were the "extra".
- Go to the Announcements pane in MSP and select "Use template". Select "Preconfigured" and choose the "No-Show Follow Up" template..
- When you preview, a dialog box will pop-up where you can specify the date range over which you want to report no shows