You will need the Full Write Service Plans permission, or be a group admin for a team on the plan, to send serving requests. The permission at one or more of the plan's campuses covers every team on it, while a group admin can send requests only for their own team.
Once finished assigning volunteers to all needed positions, you can send serving requests that notify volunteers they are assigned to serve and let them respond to each assignment (accept, decline, and others).
To send a request to serve, click Send Email, next to Schedule Actions. Select the time of the service plan, along with the appropriate statuses and serving teams, then click Next to continue. Recipients can then be reviewed and managed by adding individuals as needed and viewing anyone who has been excluded. The request may be sent as either an email or a text message, and the option can be switched as needed. An email or text messaging template can be selected, including scheduling templates if applicable. Once everything has been reviewed and is ready, click the blue Send button to send or schedule the request.
If text messaging is enabled on the account, you can also indicate whether you want to send a text message (assuming the volunteer has a mobile number on their profile).
Note: If a volunteer's primary mobile number is opted out of text messages (the Opt in for text messages? box is unchecked on their profile), One Church Software automatically sends the request to an alternate mobile number on their profile, if one is available.
With more than one organization, each volunteer gets one email, sent under the organization that owns their plans (or your default organization if the plans belong to more than one). Texts go only to people opted in with that organization, and are skipped if it has no verified number. See How does texting work with more than one organization?
Important: a login is not needed to respond to serving requests. Volunteers can respond entirely without access to One Church. However, having a login will allow them to view the associated service plan.
Once the requests are sent, volunteers with a Not Contacted status change to Pending, which indicates they were notified.
Important: volunteers who have a Pending or Accepted status are granted read-only access to the service plan. This means they can see not only the order of service (if any) but also who else is scheduled on that plan (pending and accepted assignments only).
Tip: To send serving requests to volunteers from multiple service plans, load the plans in the multi-plan grid and then choose Send email from the grid's Actions menu.
Responding to a request
Whether the volunteer gets the request by email or text message, the message includes a link to where they can respond to each individual assignment.
Clicking the Respond button takes them to a page where they can review each assignment and respond to each one. The view plan link lets them open the associated service plan where that assignment can be found.
The following responses can be chosen in the dropdown for each assignment:
Accept - the volunteer accepts the assignment and plans to serve.
Find Replacement - the volunteer cannot make it but would like to find someone else to take their place. See How can a volunteer find a replacement or swap assignments with someone else?
Swap with Another - the volunteer cannot make it but would like to switch places with another volunteer scheduled on a different day. See the same article for details.
Decline - the volunteer is unable to serve. They can include an optional comment if they wish to share more details on why they are unable to make it.
Response Notifications
Whenever a volunteer responds to a serving request, the group admin on that team is notified via email. To quickly see who the team admins are, click the group name in the Serving area of a service plan, and a side menu displays their names.
To add or edit team admins, select Go to Group and open the group's Members tab. Then toggle the Admin? field to Yes. Admins are listed at the top of the Members tab.
Important: if a team has no admins, no one is notified when a volunteer responds to a request.
Note: A serving reminder is sent if an individual has accepted an assignment. If they have a pending status, they are sent a response reminder. Assignments with a Not Contacted status never get any automatic communication.