Processes
iKnow Church isn’t just about the numbers, figures and statistics, of church leadership, although they are very important. iKnow Church is also a great tool for helping leaders to keep a finger on the pulse of the pastoral care, within our church. One way that it can help us with this, is by using Processes.
Processes are automated procedures, which aid communication and prompt team members with tasks to complete. An example of this, is a follow up process for a new visitor to church. Using iKnow Church, we can set up a Process, to inform a member of the Welcome Team that a new person has been added to the database. Once informed, this team member can contact the visitor, to catch up with them. They can mark that this task has been completed, which, in turn, could trigger stage 2 of the Process. Each Process can be as long, or as short, as we need it to be.
Create a Process
In order to set up a Process, go to Settings, and click Processes.
If we are in the Administrator Role, we will see 2 sections, Global Processes and Local Processes. If we are in any other Role, we will only see the Local Processes.
Global Processes can be set up, and used in any location in our iKnow. Local Processes can only be used in the location we set the Process up for.
We can click Add Global Process, or Add Process, to begin building a new Process. We’ll need to give it a name, and click Save.
Our new Process will now be added to the page, and we can begin to build it. To do this, click the orange pencil icon alongside the Process.
Triggers
We now need to decide how we want to trigger this Process.
There are several options, in the Process Trigger dropdown, which we can choose from.
Journey Steps - Journey Steps can be customised for our church, so we can use any of them to trigger a Process, when they are completed.
New Person - This is when a new person is added to the database, and the New Person tick box is ticked.
Manual - The Process is manually triggered, within a person’s profile. This might be related to more circumstantial situations, such as expressing a wish to join a serving team.
New Person (via Small Groups) - This is when a person is added to a Group, through the Attendance tab, in Groups.
New Prayer and Praise - The Process will be triggered if someone adds a new Prayer and Praise item, from their iKnow Dashboard.
New Form Response - The Process will be triggered when someone completes, and submits, a Custom Form.
Add Steps
The next stage, is looking at what we want the Process to actually do. Click Add Step, in the top right of the window.
Give the first step a name. This should be something short and descriptive, to explain what the step is. Next, choose who we want to be responsible for this step. We can select an individual, a Team, a Group, or a Circle.
For Manually triggered Processes, we can also set this as, Set to Manual. This would mean that, when we manually trigger the Process, we can select someone to be responsible for this occurrence of the Process. All future steps for this occurrence of the Process, will also be assigned to that person, unless we specify otherwise.
The Process will send an email to the person responsible for this stage, so we need to make it clear what we want them to do, by adding text under Your Message.
If we have created any email Templates, in Branding, we can set the process to send this email automatically, by selecting a Template. So, if this is a new person Process, we might want to send an email that thanks the person for coming to church, and lets them know when, and where, we regularly meet.
Finally, set whether we want a Delay between this process being triggered, the team member being informed, and if we want the person responsible for this step to be able to stop the Process, at this point. We can repeat this process, to add more stages, as needed. Once we have added all our steps, we need to click the Save button, at the top right of the page.
Share a Global Process
If we have created a Global Process, we can click the Share button, to specify which locations this Process will be available to. We can also Enable Auto Sharing, so if we were to add any new locations, this process would be automatically added to it.
My To Dos
Team members will be made aware of tasks which have been assigned to them, by email. However, each church member can have a to do list of multiple tasks. This is also how it is noted that a task has been completed. To access the to do list, each church member can click on My To Dos from the dropdown menu at the top right of the page.
Once we’ve completed a task, simply click the task name. We will then be able to see contact details of the person, the Contact button, which will allow us to contact them through the Communication Suite, the Complete button, which allows us to mark the task as complete, and the Stop this Process button, if Process Stopping has been enabled for this step. If there is one, the next step of the task will be triggered, according to the Delay set on it, when we click the Complete button, unless we have clicked Stop this Process. The task will then be moved to the, My Completed To Dos, list.
If a stage of a Process is assigned to a Team, Group or Circle, it will appear in the to do list of each member of the Team, Group or Circle. It will be marked as Unassigned, until a team member chooses to take responsibility for the task, by clicking Assign To Me. This will remove it from everyone else's list, and will leave it on the relevant team member’s to do list.
We're also able to see a list of outstanding tasks for others, within the Church. We’ll need to go to Settings, then Processes, and we'll see an Options tab towards the top of the page. By clicking here, we can set that we want our Network Overseers to see all the to do lists for people in their groups, or for a particular Circle to see the To Do Lists of everyone in their Location.
By enabling this option, everyone within the selected Circle, or the Network Overseers, will be able to see the To Do lists of those in the relevant Location or Groups, when they access the My To Dos area of iKnow. They won't be able to interact with another person's list, but will be able to have oversight, and see the workload that each person has assigned to them.
Processes Summary
If we need to see how Processes are progressing, we can see an overview of our Processes, by going to Settings, and then Processes.
Click on Processes Summary, to see an overview of all Processes which are in progress, or the Summary button, alongside a Process, to see the progress of a specific Process.
Here, we can see who is responsible for each task, whether its being worked on, or if it’s overdue. We can also generate a PDF, should we need this.
By clicking on Completed Tasks, we can see a list of all tasks and processes which have been completed, and produce this as a PDF, too.