You can include choirs and music ministries in your MSP schedule easily with the built-in support for these special ministries. Including these ministries in your schedule enables the automatic scheduler to ensure that members of these ministries are not double scheduled, that their family members are scheduled at the time that the choir sings, and that choir members can receive email and SMS/text message reminders for their scheduled dates.
- Create a ministry that represents the choir and make sure the box next to, "This ministry is a choir (schedule everyone together)" is checked in the Edit Ministry dialog.
- Indicate which volunteers sing in the choir by qualifying them for the new choir ministry.
- Generate your schedule skeleton.
- Before clicking the "Commence Scheduling..." button, you'll want to indicate at which services the choir will sing. To do so, click on a date on the calendar where a choir is needed. Select the appropriate service, and click the "Edit Service..." button at the top of the window. Then select the choir from the list of required ministries, and check the option below the ministry list to indicate that the choir sings at this service. Then click OK, and repeat for any other services at which the choir sings.
- When viewing the schedule inside of MSP, the names of the members of the choir will appear. On printed schedules, the name of the ministry/choir will be shown rather than the name of the individual volunteers.
NOTE: If the choir sings according to a fixed, rotating pattern (for example, the first Sunday of every month), you can setup a preassignment so that the choir is automatically scheduled according to this pattern without you having to indicate each individual service at which the choir sings. Just make a preassignment in the choir ministry for the appropriate pattern that includes any one of the members of the choir, and the rest of the choir will automatically be scheduled in the same fixed, rotating pattern.