Question

Photo of Amber McCoy

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Child Check-In & Special Needs

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I know we aren't the only church that has special needs classes during Sunday mornings.  How do you all have your child check-in configured for the special needs (ours is called Special Friends)?  I thought I had it figured out by setting the Special Friends to be check-in by Ability but I was getting questions on everyone so I made some changes and I got most of the kinks worked out, I think.  However, my question is- Our Special Friends area doesn't have an age requirement/limit.  They have people as young as 5 up to 30. So when I set the age range to 5-100, it auto assigns everyone (even adults) to the special friends class.  It also assigns any kids that don't have a grade but have an age to Special Friends.

 Is there a way to only assign the handful of kids to the special friends class and it not show up as an option for anyone else?  Like in my mind, it would search for the ability "special friends" and only those who have that ability level assigned to them are given the option to check into special friends, if that is blank, it searches "grade" and assigns accordingly, if that is blank, it searches "age" and assigns accordingly, if all those are blank, they get a "sorry" message that they aren't able to check-in. 

Is this something I am thinking too hard about or something that isn't possible.  Or am I overlooking something simple? 

In this case, Dannie should be in the Kindergarten class but since we only have her age (6), it is auto assigning her to Special Friends. {Side note- I only have Nursery - 5 year olds by age, after that, it goes by grade}   It is also assigning her sister, Nataleigh to special friends even though she should be in the nursery (to be fair with Nataleigh, they haven't given us a DOB so the system doesn't know she belongs to the Nursery). We have a DOB for Sean (the dad) but since he is within the 2-100 age range, he is auto-assigned there as well. 

Screen Shot 2018-09-18 at 3.41.09 PM.png


In this case, All of the children are correct but it is pulling the mom (Kim).  

Screen Shot 2018-09-18 at 3.35.17 PM.png

  • Photo of Shawn Ross

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    Here you go Amber

    Children's

    • Check In Rule: None
    • Labels: blank

    Children's > Overrides

    • Inherit From: blank
    • Check In Rule: Already Belongs
    • Labels: Child, Child Notes, Child Pickup Receipt
    • Groups: Discovery

    Children's > Nursery/Pre-School

    • Inherit From: Check In by Age
    • Check In Rule: None
    • Labels: Child, Child Notes, Child Pickup Receipt, Bag Tag
    • Groups: 0-10 months, 11-16 months, 17-23 months

    Children's > Pre-School

    • Inherit From: Check In by Age
    • Check In Rule: None
    • Labels: Child, Child Notes, Child Pickup Receipt
    • Groups: 24-29 months, 30-35 months, 3yr Olds, 4yr Olds, 5yr Olds

    Children's > K-5

    • Inherit From: Check in by Grade
    • Check In Rule: None
    • Labels: Child, Child Notes, Child Pickup Receipt
    • Groups: Kindergarten, 1st Grade, 2nd Grade, 3rd Grade, 4th Grade, 5th Grade

    We have different areas for a ministry delineation (Children's an area, Youth an area). The sub-areas enable us to view them in Attendance Analytics/Reporting in a particular way and define different settings for a ministry area delineation (Check In Rules and Labels)... Children's Nursery does one thing, whereas Children's K-5 does something slightly different.
    We run check in using the iOS app (defining the printer in the settings applet), or Windows (using pre-rock computers, all future check in with printing will be iOS)

    Tip: When setting up your group locations, you can get flexible with it. For example, at our smallest campus we have multiple groups with the same Location, whereas the largest campus is mostly a 1:1 ratio of Group to Location

  • Photo of Thomas Stephens

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    We do special needs check in. We run special needs like we do all of our early childhood (birth-prek). What we setup was an attribute in the childhood information category. These attributes are our age breakdowns. Our main reason for this was two fold. We didn't want kids moving up throughout the year. This usually overloads the last room before the kindergarten room. Since kids get older all year long but school doesn't start until August. The second reason was this gives each campus a way to move kids around to balance rooms or hold kids back that need help back.

    This all works off of attributes. Dataviews for each attribute. Groups synced to those dataviews. Those groups are the check-in groups with the rule set that they have to belong to check-in.

    For special needs we went with a separate attribute but it could be tied into the one above. But the setup is the same. Attribute, dataview, synced group. This makes it so only kids in that group, see it to check-in to.

    I would be happy to explain more and chat with you about it.

    • Amber McCoy

      Amber McCoy

      Thanks Thomas! Currently 2-5 year olds move classes on their birthday. Once they are 5 they stay in the Farm (that is our preschool room) until they start K. K-6 moves grades (and 5yo who start K in the fall) move up grades the first Sunday in June.

      The only other area that uses attributes is our Nursery area (newborn - 2 years).

    • Photo of Shawn Ross

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      Amber, Thomas' method is an interesting idea I had never considered! We kind of went a little different. Here's how we have our check-in configured:

      • Mostly 'stock' age and grade based check in for kids.
      • We don't require kids to be a group member to check in for our normal groups (this burden isn't something we are able to manage and still provide the desired service level)
      • We have a separate area (group type created in the check in configuration) we call 'Overrides'. The check in rule is set to already belongs for that area. These are where we create groups as needed for special needs kids, kids that wouldn't match the age/grade dynamic (maybe they aren't fully special needs, but are a grade behind), or maybe they have something behavioral going on and need a shadow. We started with one group (called Discovery), and as we need to differentiate based on ministry needs we can add more groups (or have 3 groups for our largest campus and 1 group for our smallest campus). The area is 'at the top' of my check in configuration (I don't know if it matters). Having a separate area (group type) for these types of groups also gives us the flexibility to show these groups in a group viewer, etc. as needed (whereas we hide the other check in areas)

      For our configuration this requires what we felt was the minimal amount of manual management/oversight in those special needs situations, without paying the 'tax' of manual management for all of the other areas.

      Hope that makes sense, happy to share more if needed.

      • Amber McCoy

        Amber McCoy

        Hi Shawn- I asked a question below and I think I figured it out and I got it working. Thanks for your starting point answer!

      • Photo of Amber McCoy

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        @Shawn- I think your option may work for us, just to make sure I'm on the same page before I go and start making changes.  You added your "Overrides" to the area marked with the black arrow and not the area marked with the blue arrow?

         Screen Shot 2018-09-19 at 9.25.12 AM.png

        • Shawn Ross

          Shawn Ross

          You're correct. The 'blue' section (like Check-in Test Area) is an area, so we created one of those called 'Overrides" and then groups (green in your picture) below those for each group we needed that used the option of already belongs.

        • Photo of Shawn Ross

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          Here's what ours looks like (we are using sub-areas, but that's not required; it's just the way we roll)

          Check-in Configuration _ Rock RMS - Google Chrome 2018-09-19 10.51.15.png

          • Amber McCoy

            Amber McCoy

            Would you be able to share your settings for your tiers? Specifically your top tier Children's then your Override group? I had our Special Friends group on the same level as our other children's areas (like Nursery, Elementary, etc) but I did not have an overall Children's tier and I wonder if that made a difference and why the abilities kept showing up for everyone and why it kept auto-assigning anyone who didn't fit my age and/or grade criteria into special friends? Also (last one)- could you verify where you added the people that are in the discovery group? I <think> I did that part correctly but not 100% sure now. THANK YOU!!

          • Photo of Amber McCoy

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            Screen Shot 2018-09-19 at 12.18.39 PM.png

            Thanks, 

            I think I achieved the same result setting ours up this way.  I originally had Special Friends in our group hierarchy as a "blue" for the room and the "green" for the actual group but I was having trouble getting the "Ability Level" to work correctly.  Thanks again for your help!

            **EDIT to add** Not sure this is the best way to do this now after messing around with it more- please see my comment above*