Difficulties balancing schedule
Explanation of the Scheduling Process:
The scheduling process goes through the pool of ministers in three passes.
Pass 1: Attempts to schedule all families together that have the “Keep Together” box checked.
Pass 2: Attempts to schedule all Single people with the “Keep Together” box unchecked.
Pass 3: Attempts to fill all remaining holes with people who have the keep together box checked and treats each person as an individual. In other words if the family has more than one minister it will fill as many of the family members as it can. The program will acknowledge all other rules such as vacation, max per month, availability, and vacation dates.
Availability:
When setting the availability of a person it is recommended that everyone have the same priority (scale of 1-100). The only reason for changing the priority would be for a minister that is going to be available for more than one event. For example a person could be a lector at the 9 and 11 mass, giving them a lower priority for one of the events will allow others who are only serving at one event to get a higher chance of being scheduled. This way if there is still a open slot they will fill it on Pass 3.
Max per month:
A max of 2 per month is recommended to allow as balanced of a schedule as possible. If you do not have enough ministers to fill the slots on a 5 weekend month you can change a few to 3 per month to allow the program to do its best to fill those slots. Our recommendation is to have enough ministers to fill the ministries in a four weekend month. This will result in a few empty slots on a 5 weekend month, which will take minutes to fill in. If you give certain people a max per month of 3, on a 4 week month it is possible that they will be scheduled 3 times and another person will be scheduled only once or not at all. By setting the max per month to two you are allowing the software to balance the people in the events.
Single people:
All single people should have the “KEEP TOGETHER” check box unchecked. This will keep them separate from the families and allow them to be scheduled equally. If they have the box checked they will be available for scheduling on pass 3.
Other notes:
If you are finding that some people are being scheduled more than others please look at the settings between the two people. It is a very common mistake for the max per month to be left at 5. In some cases churches just do not have enough ministers to fill the number of ministries needed. A simple formula to make sure that you are in the ballpark is to do a head count on the number of ministers that you need in a four week month. So if at 9AM you need 10 ushers that would mean that you need 40 ushers for the month, and if you wish for people to only serve twice a month you would need 20 ushers for that mass alone. On a five week month you would need at least 25 ushers. If people are available for more than one event you can see how this can create the appearance some people are scheduled more than others.
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