Members who serve at your church can see their schedule, answer the dates they have been asked to serve, ask someone to cover, mark dates they are unavailable, and read the service plan, all from the One Church app.
Serving is personal to the member, so it needs them to be signed in. If a volunteer tells you their serving screen is empty, that is the first thing to check.
Answering an assignment
Open Serving
Tap the 3-bar menu in the top left of the app to open the side menu, then tap Serving. Your church may also have placed a button or a home-screen tile that goes straight there.
Sign in if the app asks. Serving opens on the Schedule tab.
Serving has four tabs:
Schedule - the member's own serving dates, and where they answer them. Split into Upcoming and Previous.
Teams - the serving teams they belong to, each showing fill status such as 3 open or Full.
Plans - service plans: the order of service, who is serving, and plan notes.
Openings - unfilled serving opportunities they could sign up for.
Respond to an assignment
On the Schedule tab, look under Upcoming for a card with a Needs response pill on the right. Each card shows the date, the service, the times and the member's position.
Tap the card. The Respond screen opens, reading Let your team know if you can make it. with a progress line such as 1 of 1 answered, because one date can carry more than one position.
Answer each position with one of the two choices:
I'll be there - accepts the position.
Can't serve - declines it, with an optional reason that the scheduler sees.
Tap Send Response to send the answers to the team.
Warning: Nothing reaches the team until Send Response is tapped.
Read the status on a card
Once a response is sent, the pill on each card reports plainly where things stand:
Needs response - the member has not answered yet, or answered without sending.
You declined - the member answered Can't serve.
Waiting to hear back from a name - a cover or swap request is out and unanswered.
Asked a name to cover - a cover request went to that person.
No response - the request expired or went unanswered.
A Conflict flag on a card means the date clashes with another commitment the member already has. Past dates keep their outcome under Previous, so a member can look back at what they answered.
Ask someone to cover, or swap dates
Under the two main choices on the Respond screen sits a link reading Can't make it work? Other options. That is where the less common answers live.
Ask someone to cover - asks another volunteer to take the date. The member's own commitment is released if the request is accepted.
Ask to swap - offers a trade. The app explains it as picking anyone that works: the member takes the other person's date and that person takes theirs.
These are answers to the assignment, so they go out with Send Response in the same way as accepting or declining.
Planning ahead
Add Blackout dates
Blockout dates let a member tell schedulers in advance about dates they cannot serve, so those dates are visible while teams are being built rather than turning into a decline later.
Open Serving > Schedule.
Open Blockout Dates.
Tap Add blockout and choose the dates. The screen explains them as dates the member is unavailable to serve, which schedulers see when building teams.
Tip: Blockout dates are a heads-up to the scheduler, not an automatic block. Encourage volunteers to add vacations as soon as they know them, and to still answer any assignment that was scheduled before the blockout was added.
Read a service plan
The Plans tab holds the service plans a member is part of. A plan shows the order of service as a list of items with durations, section bands and a running total, and song details where your church entered them, including key, meter, tempo and sequence.
A plan also has:
Serving - who is scheduled, and how many spots are still open.
Notes - plan notes, which can also be shown or hidden inline while reading the order of service.
Any attachments your church added to the plan are available from the same screen.
Tip: Responding to an assignment writes to your church's records, so it needs a connection. The app does not hold a response and send it later. If a volunteer says they responded and it did not save, ask whether they had signal at the time.