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Getting Started with ChurchSuite
This guide will show you how to get set up with ChurchSuite initially, and walk you through the key parts of it that you might expect to use as a member of the church.
Don’t think of this as required reading! Lots of things in ChurchSuite are quite self explanatory or can be worked out by just exploring it and trying things. This guide is here if you get stuck on something, prefer following instructions, or just fancy seeing what ChurchSuite has to offer in more detail.
If you have any questions about things mentioned here, contact Beth or Tim at admin@stkmail.org.uk
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Note that the instructions below assume you’re using a laptop or desktop. You can use ChurchSuite on a mobile phone or via the ChurchSuite app and still do nearly everything, but the process might look slightly different.
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To get started, you should have received a link to log in to ChurchSuite from the admin team. If you’ve not done that yet, please find that email and click the button in it that says ‘Go to MyChurchSuite’. You’ll then be asked to enter a password: enter one following the requirements listed on the screen and click ‘Next’. If you don’t have that email, contact us at the address mentioned above.
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You’ll then be taken to the ‘dashboard’ of MyChurchSuite. There’s only one more thing you need to do to set up your ChurchSuite account, and that’s give your consent to show up in the ChurchSuite system because by default, no one else in ChurchSuite can find you. This means you don’t show up in the address book and can’t be added to rotas until you give your consent. Ideally, upload a photo of yourself too!
To fix this, click ‘Privacy Settings’ at the top of the screen. (if you don’t see it, you can go to ‘My Details’ on the left side of the page instead and scroll down to ‘Privacy’.) Then select which of your details you’d like other church members to be able to see. Note that only ‘Make my name visible’ needs to be ticked in able for you to be found by others and make use of ChurchSuite. You can optionally select other details here too — it’s your choice, but remember that this information can only be seen by other church members, much like the members address book currently, so I’d recommend it. Once you’re done, click ‘Save.’ That’s all you need to set up to successfully be ‘on’ ChurchSuite, but if you want to use it further, check out the sections below.​
This ‘dashboard’ is the main page you’ll see when you log in. You don’t need to do much with it, but it has a few helpful things: a list of particularly notable upcoming events to draw to your attention, an overview of your contact details, and a preview of your most recent communications from the church.
On the left hand side of the screen is a menu with buttons to take you to the different parts of ChurchSuite. The rest of this guide is divided into sections relating to these parts. Let’s start with the one you’ll want to look at when you first log in to ChurchSuite:
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My Details
This section is sort of like a ‘settings’ page for ChurchSuite. You can do things like change your personal details (useful if you move house or change your email address or phone number), add a profile photo that will show up next to your name throughout ChurchSuite, or change your password. But there are two things in particular to draw your attention to:
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Communication
This is where you set preferences for what communications you get via ChurchSuite. You’re basically giving us permission to contact you by specific means — we need you to explicitly opt-in here. I’d recommend allowing all of these to begin with, and then if you get some communication you decide you don’t need, disable it down the line.
Important note: to get reminders about your rota shifts, you need to select either ‘Receive rota reminder emails’ or ‘Receive rota reminder SMS’ here.
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Privacy
As discussed in the Quickstart guide, ChurchSuite acts as a directory of everyone in the church membership, but you can, if you like, change what’s visible to others in this section. But please remember that this functionality is really no different to having these details in the church’s member’s address book. And only other church members can see this information.
Additionally, if you’re married, you can set your spouse under the ‘Spouse/Partner’ section (provided they’ve also set up their ChurchSuite account) and, once they’ve confirmed this at their end, you’ll be able to view each other’s rotas.​
My Rotas
This screen is where you can view your upcoming rota shifts, see details of all rotas, enter your unavailability, and swap shifts with others. It’s divided into three sections accessible via buttons at the top:
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1. Next Serving
This is simply a list of your upcoming shifts for the next few months. Each shift has an ‘accept’ option and a ‘decline’ option. The important one here is ‘decline’ — if you wish to turn down a shift for whatever reason, let the rota organiser know by clicking this. You can also click ‘accept’ to confirm to the rota organiser that you’re able to do this shift. This is less important, but could still be useful to assure the organiser that you’ve seen the rota and are happy with it, so feel free to make use of it for their benefit.
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2. Rotas
This is a list of all the rotas you’re part of. Clicking one takes you to an overview of that rota. In addition, there’s an ‘All Rotas’ option at the bottom. This allows you to see who’s serving on all the rotas in church for a given day.​
3. Unavailability
ChurchSuite lets each user maintain a list of dates they are not free to serve, which rota creators can then see when they’re assembling a rota. So for example, before assembling the rota for the next term of a ministry, the ministry leader might ask everyone in their team to make sure they’ve entered their unavailability into ChurchSuite, so they can avoid having to rejig the rota too much down the line. The beauty of this is that once you’ve entered your unavailability once, all rota creators can see it.
Note that unavailability is separate to detecting rota clashes: ChurchSuite does this automatically, warning rota creators when their assignments clash with another rota, so you don’t need to worry about that here.
And now for some commonly asked questions about rotas:
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How do I swap shifts with someone else?
First, you’ll need to agree with someone to swap shifts with you. You can do this privately such as on a team WhatsApp group, or by going to the overview of the rota concerned, and clicking ‘Email members’ which lets you send an email to everyone else on the rota. Once you’ve agreed a swap with someone, go to the relevant rota overview page and click on the shift of yours you wish to swap. A menu will pop up with the option to ‘Organise swap’. Select that and then select the person you want to swap with, and select the shift of theirs you’d like to take in return (or select ‘No return swap’ to simply give the other person your shift.) Click ‘Save Changes’ and you’re done! Swapping shifts works on a trust system, so there’s no need for the other person to accept or reject the swap once you save it. This is why you should agree the swap outside of ChurchSuite first and then record the change in the system using the process just described.
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How do I get rota reminders?
As explained in the My Details section, you need to give permission to ChurchSuite to send you these, either via SMS text messages, or emails. The person in charge of the rota then needs to set up reminders for that rota. You can’t choose when to get the reminders — the rota organiser sets them to be sent at specific times.
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How can I get my rota shifts to automatically appear in my own calendar app?
Glad you asked! If you use Apple’s iCal (on iPhones), or Google Calendar, you can link these to ChurchSuite and get your rota shifts to automatically pop up in there. To do so, simply click on the ‘iCal’ or ‘Google Calendar’ buttons in the top right hand side of the ‘Next Serving’ section.
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What about young people serving on rotas?
Children (anyone under the age of 18) don’t have their own ChurchSuite logins, but can still be added to rotas, as some of the older teenagers in the church are. The adult ChurchSuite account(s) associated with children in the system (ie. their parents) can view and manage their rotas for them. To do this, click the drop-down box at the top of the My Rotas page that shows your name, and select the child account you wish to view. The My Rotas page will then show their rotas and allow you to interact with them from their perspective, so you can process swaps and add unavailability on their behalf. If the child has an email address associated, they can receive rota reminders too. The parent needs to go to the ‘My Children’ page in ChurchSuite, add an email address for the child, and then tick the appropriate boxes under ‘Communication’, like they do for themselves. For more on children in ChurchSuite, see the ‘My Children’ page and the associated section at the end of this guide.
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For more information on how to use Rotas, manage unavailability, here is a really useful 'how to' page (with videos!) that Emmanuel Baptist Church in Leeds have created:
ChurchSuite Rotas – Emmanuel Baptist Church, Leeds
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My Events
Want to know when something is happening? Take a look here. You can click on individual days in the calendar to see what’s on, scroll through a list of all events, or search for a particular thing using the ‘Search’ tab at the top.
Please note: this isn’t an exhaustive list of everything in the church’s administrative diary — things like external bookings or more specific meetings (eg. for a particular ministry team) might not show up here, so don’t view it as completely comprehensive. Email the church office to enquire about building availability, for example. But at the very least, every publicly and internally advertised event in the church will be here.
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My Communication
In the long term, we want ChurchSuite to be the platform through which all official communication from the church comes, so if you want to see if you’ve missed anything, you just need to log in to ChurchSuite rather than trawl through your emails. So what you have here is a list of emails you’ve received via ChurchSuite. We hope to flesh this part of the system out more in future.
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Search For Others
This is quite simple — this is how you search the ChurchSuite address book for other church member’s details.
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My Children
If you have some, this is where you can view and edit the details stored for your children in ChurchSuite. Click ‘Edit’ on a child’s card to do this. Most of the fields are self-explanatory. If your child is on rotas (as some older teenagers may be), enable reminders for them by ticking the boxes near the bottom of the form as you desire.
If you’re a parent, it’s likely that your children’s or youth leaders will give you more specific instructions on how they’d like you to make use of this aspect of ChurchSuite in the future.