A typical rota team leader will have access level 1 or 2 for all teams and level 3 or 4 for the teams he is responsible for. The person responsible for the whole rota will have access level 5 for all teams.

Rota teams

A rota team is a type of service used for certain events, e.g. Worship, Preacher, Traffic regulation etc. A certain team can be working in certain event groups but not in others. This is why you have to select the event groups for each rota team. Furthermore you have to select one or more groups containing the people who are ministering in this team.

There are two different kinds of teams: "For single events" is the default which means for each single event you may assign one or more people from this team to this event. On the other hand using the mode "For whole weeks" lets you assign a person for a whole week. When creating a rota this person will be assigned to all events this team is serving.

It is possible to manage whole teams for a given rota team, e.g. worship team 1 and worship team 2. kOOL lets you select a whole team instead of having to select all members of the given team. In order for this to work, you have to create subgroups for the group assigned to the rota team: Group "worship" has two subgroups "team 1" and "team 2". If you have the group "worship" assigned to the rota team "worship" the people select will only show two entries "[team 1]" and "[team 2]" but not the single people assigned to these subgroups. When sending an email to all scheduled people each member of the selected group will receive an email.

Preparing events for rota scheduling

Not every event has to be scheduled with the rota module. In kOOL you can select for each event whether you want to schedule it or not. For this you have to edit the event and tick the rota checkbox. If most events of a single eventgroup are to be scheduled you can tick this checkbox for the eventgroup so newly created events will automatically be active for rota scheduling.

If no rota team is active in an event group, this event won't show for scheduling. So make sure, at least one team is assigned to this event group.

Scheduling

If all teams and event groups have been prepared you are able to schedule. For each event you'll find two input possibilities for each team active in this event. With the select you may select one of the team members and with the text field you may enter an arbitrary text, e.g. "Guest speaker" or "No worship". As soon as you select a person from the select or hit the enter key after entering a text, this entry is stored and shown at the right.

To delete a scheduling just move your mouse over this entry and click the delete icon. This change will also be saved immediately.

You may select which events and teams you would like to see when scheduling. Just tick or untick the appropriate entries in the submenues to only show certain team and event groups. You may store the displayed teams and event groups in presets so you can switch between different views more easily.

Similarly you may select the timeframe you want to view at once. Either select the desired timeframe at the upper right corner of your screen, use the + and - signs or click on the red calendar icon to select a certain month or date. By clicking on the blue calendar icon, all past events of the selected time frame are hidden.

Opening and closing events for scheduling

Each event or week can have two statuses: open or closed. By default all new events are open for scheduling. A simple click on the red lock icon for a given event/week will disable any scheduling. To open or close several events/weeks at once, you may use the icons at the top right.

Scheduling single events

When editing an event in the event module it is possible to display the current scheduling for this event and also edit it. To do this just click on "Schedule rota for this event" to open the scheduling.

Exporting rotas

Your scheduled data may be exported in different formats. For each event you'll find an excel icon which creates a an excel file for this single event listing all currently visible rota teams.

In the header section you'll find several export methods which include the currently visible events and rota teams. So make sure to display all the wanted events and teams before exporting.

List of events (XLS): This export is similar to the export for a single event. But instead of just one event, it lists all of the selected events each with all it's teams and the according scheduling.
Table events/teams (XLS): This export creates a table with the events as rows and the teams as columns.
Table weeks/teams (XLS): If only weekly teams are displayed this export allows you to get an excel list of the currently visible weeks as rows and the selected teams as columns.
Table teams/events (PDF): This PDF export shows all events as columns and the teams as rows.

Sending emails

There are two different ways of sending email with the rota module.

Whenever you create an export file you'll find a link "Send file" in the download dialog. With this you open up more options to directly send this created file by email

Alternatively you may just want to send an email without an attached file. Then you may click the @ icon instead. This may be for a single event or for all of the shown events.

When sending an email out of the rota module you'll have the following options:

Recipients

Scheduled team members: All people currently scheduled in the exported or selected events (single event or currently visible events).
All members of selected teams: All members of currently visible rota teams, not just those scheduled in one of the selected events.
All leaders of selected teams: All leaders of the currently visible rota teams.
ALL rota team members: Every person assigned to any rota team.
ALL rota team leader: Every leader assigned to any rota team.
Members of manually selected teams: Manually select teams whose members you'd like to send an email to. (Use Ctrl or Shift key to select multiple teams)
Leaders of manually selected teams: As above but only leaders.
Single person: Select single persons - hold the Ctrl key to select more than one. Only persons show who are assigned to a rota team.

For all these exports the access restrictions apply. So you'll only be allowed to send email to team members of teams you have access level 4 or higher for.

Insert a placeholder

You may include placeholders in your email text. These will be replaced by the actual data upon sending your email.

_SALUTATION: Informal salutation, e.g. Hi
_SALUTATION_FORMAL: Formal salutation, e.g. Dear Mr. or Dear Mrs.
FIRSTNAME: First name of recipient
LASTNAME: Last name of recipient
TEAM_NAME: List of teams the recipient is assigned to
PERSONAL_SCHEDULE: The personal schedule for this person for the selected events. This schedule will only contain those events and teams in which the recipient is scheduled.
TEAM_EVENTS: A list of events in which the selected teams take part.
TEAM_EVENTS_SCHEDULE: As above but with the current scheduling.
ALL_EVENTS: List of all events in the currently selected timeframe.
ALL_EVENTS_SCHEDULE: As above but with the current scheduling.

Insert a text template

If you send the same emails over and over again, you can store your texts as different templates. To do so just add the template's name at the bottom "Save text as template" before sending. The next time you'll send a rota email the select "Insert a text template" will let you insert one of your templates into the text field. If you have access level 5 for the rota module you may store these text templates globally, so all users may use them as well. To do so, just tick "Save globally" before sending. Otherwise your text templates will only be visible for you.

Settings for the rota module

Settings for current user

Default view: Select what you would like to see when selecting the rota module in the main navigation.
List: Number of teams per page: Number of teams to show on one page.
Export: List separator: Specify by which characters the scheduled team members should be separated in a list.
Mark empty entries: If a team serves at a certain event but has no entries yet, this empty spot can be marked in the exports.
Order people select by: Order the select for scheduling people by first or last name.
How to display the names in the PDF export? Select how you would like the scheduled persons' names to be displayed in the pdf export.
Use colors for event groups in PDF export? Set this to yes to show the events with their event groups' colors as background.
Font size for PDF export: Choose the font size for the PDF export.
Show these event fields: When scheduling and in the exports some additional fields about the events may be displayed, select them here.

Global settings

Select roles for each group: Activate this setting to select the members assigned to a rota team not only by group but also by role. If deactivated and a member role (see below) is set, only the people from the selected group and the given role will be used.
Group role for members: Only uses people with this role inside the groups defined for each rota team.
Group role for leaders: The group role that defines the rota team leaders inside the rota groups.
First day of the week: Set the start date for weekly rota teams.
Export weekly teams as events?: Activate this to see the weekly teams' scheduling as events in the event module.