Experience.FellowshipOne.com

 I really want to make this as easy as possible, but I'm continually running into road blocks.  I am wondering how others are setting up an event like this:

 

VBS we have multiple RLC for each grade like 1A, 1B, 1C, 1D for first grade.  Each group has a maximum of 25 participants.  When creating the weblink registration form I would like the registrations to be spread across all 4 RLCs.  I'm not finding anywhere in the documentation where this is possible.  I can let the registrant select which group they want their child to be in, but what prevents them all from choosing 1A, or even select 3A (for third grade) by mistake?

This really looks like the only way to go, since if I don't ask the question for a specific group(RLC) they are not assigned at all, but only to the activity.  We really try to keep this organized so when the kids show up the first night they already know which group they are in and know where to go, so this option is not feasible.

How are others setting up their VBS registration or similar activity?

Thanks

Mark 

 

 

The only way that you could do this using the WebLink registration process is to setup a form for each grade and room.  That way you could use the Max registration limitation to your benefit and tie them all back together using aggregate forms.  I would not recommend this approach because of the redundancy of work it will cause when setting up the forms.  The best thing to do is have it known that the first night of VBS is where they are "assigned" to a particular group.  Use the online registration to track who signed up so that you can estimate how many people will be attending.  Also I am not sure if you are charging for VBS or not.  If you are then online payment for the event is very helpful.  When setting up the event be sure to use "Load Balancing" in the setup of the groups in Fellowship One.  This will automatically balance out the rooms across a particular age group say 1st Grade. 

The real trick is to have the registration point to a particular group and then at the point of check in assign them to a RLC such as 1a or 1b.  This is how they do it at Fellowship Church.  One issue that I have found when registering my kids is when they want to be in the same group with their friends.  Fellowship Churches stand on this is that they need to check in together at the same time the first night.  This is not written in stone because if necessary on the second night they will move someone's assignment.   

I hope this helps,

Matthew McMaster 

I am not sure you can ever make registration simple when you register a lot of kids and they have requests for friends to be in their group. We are launching online registration for over 1800 kids this week. They will be divided into small groups of 8-10 kids. Each kid can request by name 1 or 2 friends for their group. For this year we have created 400 RLC's. We will be using a Form report to Excel to give us kids and their requests. A team of two will review this daily to make name and spelling corrections as kids register. They will then either use Excel macros or sorting to match kids and assign to a group. Each assignment will be done one by one. For 2008 we may discuss with Fellowship the use of Data Exchange to import the assignment after we do Excel macro routines. It is a lot of manual work but worth it when you are trying to impact kid's lives.

Matthew

 

I have a similar issue and would like to describe and get your opinion.  We are hosting a large serve day -- could be as many as 3000 - 4000 people attending.  I have 4 major areas of service -- 150-180 work stations that can accomodate only 8 people, 3 large events which are open ended registration and 30 other serving opportunities which will accomodate from 10-20 people each.  It is critical I maintain the capacity limitations on each work station and the 30 additional serving opportunities.  I know it would be a lot of work to create a form for each opportunity but if I do will that keep my capacity limitations in place?   

Hi JRW, This sounds awesome! If you really need to ensure a max capacity on your work stations, you are right, you will need to create a form for each station. The good news is that you really only need to create one form and then use the Clone Form feature to copy it as many times as needed. The trick is going to be making it easy for people to register. With the Aggregate Form feature, you can aggregate forms into logical categories (possibly by the 4 major areas of service?). Each aggregate form would then have a separate button or hyperlink to access it from your work day web page. The only thing that worries me is the 150 - 180 work stations. This would be a monster drop-down list for users to choose from. Are some of the work stations duplicated? I.E., once one has closed down you could add another to the aggregate form? God bless!

---

Tara Coulson
Learning Specialist
Fellowship Technologies

Tara

 

Thanks so much for the quick response!  Couple of other questions -- if an individual selects one of the 150-180 work stations and they want to register 5-6 people -- will each of those registrations take the count down from the maximum of 8 per station or will it only take one off the total count?  Also, if I have maximum capacity limits set and a station fills -- does it automatically close or is that a manual process?  As far as the 150-180 stations -- I could probably work around how people sign up for those to minimize the number showing at one time.  I did think it would create a "monster drop" down.  But if we did keep that option -- can the groups or stations be listed in alphabetical order?

 

Thanks again.  

We too are facing a similar situation!  We are expecting approx 800 kids who will be placed in 40 different small groups (up to 20 kids in a group)   We have looked at what type of information we want to be able to get out of F1 once camp is over, so because of this we have broken camp into four activity groups (Preschool, Kindergarten-1st Grade, 2nd-3rd Grade, and 4th-5th Grade)  There are 10 Small Groups (RLC's) for each of the four activity groups, but when we go to assign the kids to their Small Group (RLC) we have 40 different groups to choose from.  Is there anyway that Activity Grouping can be added to the Participant/Staffing Assignment page...that way we could limit the number of rooms that show when we assign the kids to their groups.

Ok, so I'm a total nube on webforms, I want to set this up for VBS, I'm not really concerned with RLC's, I'm willing to handle that on the first day. What we will have is grouping per grade. Do I create one form with a selection for grade or separate forms for each grade associated with the particular activity, or does it not matter because the RLC's are allocated when you show up.

 I do want to know who's in which grade/age group since there are is a max attendance for certain age groups.

Any help in getting me started is greatly appreciated.

The way we set ours up is that it is one form and the question is asked for them to pick their grade/age group. (and we break it down even further by last name alpha within each grade)  The assignment is then given based on the answers to that question and you can run your reports for the "RLC" that you set up for that grade.  We have over 5000 kids each year for VBS and use pretty much every room in our church building - it helps to have the room number on the confirmation email so they know what part of the building to go to on that morning.  There is still some manual moving around involved when they want to be with certain friends or teachers, but it is still easier to have the RLC assigned and then move a few than to not assign at that level and move all of them.