Send scheduling emails
Send scheduling emails to let volunteers know when they need to serve. These emails include important plan details, such as a team member's assigned times and any notes that apply to their team. Team members can respond to scheduling emails by accepting or declining the request to serve on that date.
This article explains how to send scheduling emails and how to adjust the prepared notification setting, which prevents team members from seeing plans until you've sent their scheduling emails.
What are prepared notifications?
Team members with an ✉️ email icon next to their name on a plan have a prepared notification status, which means their initial scheduling email is waiting to be sent.
People with a prepared notification status are in a "penciled-in" state, which means:
Scheduled viewers who are unconfirmed and have a prepared notification status cannot open a plan or see it on their schedule until a team leader sends the scheduling email.
Viewers with a prepared notification status can open the plan, but it won't appear on their My Schedule page.
Conflict warnings won't appear for any plan dates where a team member has a prepared notification status.
Team members with a prepared notification status will not appear in People lists of scheduled people for a particular plan date.
This "penciled-in" state allows team leaders to privately edit the plan and choose when team members should see the final schedule and service order.
Important
You can choose whether to make prepared notifications your team's default setting on the team's settings page.
Email your teams
When you're ready for team members to see the plan, notify them by sending a scheduling email. These emails include:
All times to which a team member is assigned
All plan notes to which the recipient's team is assigned
Any plan items where the recipient is assigned as an item leader
Any custom text you'd like to add
Option for the recipient to respond (Accept or Decline)
A link to view the plan
To send scheduling emails from a plan:
Select the Plans page in the top navigation.
If you have multiple folders, select the folder that contains the service type you're working with.
Select a plan from the service type you're working with.
Select the Teams tab.
Choose one of the following ways to send your emails, depending on who you want to receive them:
Email a scheduled team: Select the Send button at the top of a team's scheduled positions to email everyone scheduled for that team.
Email a specific person: Select the ✉️ email icon next to a person's name to send an email to that person only. This only appears next to team members whose prepared notification hasn't been sent yet.
Email everyone scheduled in a plan: Select the ✉️ email icon in the top right of the plan to email everyone in that plan.
(Optional) Edit the email message in the popup.
Select Send [number of team members] to send your email.
You can also send scheduling emails for multiple plans at once using the matrix view. Check out the article on using the matrix to schedule to learn more!
Turn off prepared notifications
Prepared notifications are the default setting for all teams in Services, but you can turn off prepared notifications for either an entire team or a specific person on a plan.
By team
If you have static teams, like speakers, that do not need an email notification every week, you can turn off the prepared notification default on the team settings page.
Select the People page in the top navigation.
Select the Teams tab to view all of your organization's teams.
Use the dropdown in the top left to filter the list by My Teams (teams where you're a leader or member), All Teams, Archived Teams, or specific service types.
You can also search for a specific team by name using the search bar.
Select a team name to open that team's member list.
Select the Settings tab to open that team's settings page.
Go to the Scheduling Defaults section.
Uncheck the Prepared box under the Notification header.
By individual
If you want someone to be able to access the plan without sending a notification, you can turn off the Prepared notification setting for that specific person.
Select the Plans page in the top navigation.
If you have multiple folders, select the folder that contains the service type you're working with.
Select a plan from the service type you're working with.
Select the Teams tab.
Select a scheduled team member's name.
Uncheck the Prepared box in the Notifications section.
Select Save.
Once you do this, the prepared notification ✉️ email icon will no longer appear next to that person's name, and they can access the plan directly from their My Schedule page.