MSP contains a very powerful and flexible engine to generate rosters from the information in your volunteers’ profiles. You may choose exactly which volunteers and ministries to include in your rosters as well as which information to include and in what order. You may also choose to organize your rosters by ministry and/or service preference, and whether to list inactive or substitute volunteers separately at the end of the roster. Your rosters may be saved in several formats, including MS Word (.rtf) and Web Page (.html). To generate a roster first click on the Rosterizer heading on the left hand side of MSP’s main screen.
A video tutorial for this topic is also available.
There are many options to customize rosters. Rosterizer settings are organized by panes, which can be accessed by clicking on the headings in the left hand column.
Included Ministries Pane
Using the settings in this pane, you can control which ministries will be included in your roster. You may choose to include all ministries or just some particular ministries. If you have grouped your ministries into folders, you can easily select all the ministries in a folder by clicking on that folder’s name. You can further define which volunteers from the chosen ministries will be included using options in the other panes.
Included Volunteers Pane
After specifying which ministries to include in the Included Ministries pane, you may choose which volunteers will be shown within the included ministries.
Include all volunteers
Note that the volunteers included in the roster will also be limited by the group of volunteers defined in the Included Ministries section. If in Included Ministries you select just the Lector ministry, and in Included Volunteers you select “Include all volunteers,” this means only the Lectors will end up in the roster.
Include all volunteers that pass | this filter…
By choosing the second option, “Include only volunteers that pass this filter…”, you may use MSP’s filtering controls to easily limit the volunteers who will be listed in the roster to just those who meet certain criteria (e.g. volunteers who are qualified Ushers at the Sunday, 8:00 AM service).
Include only the volunteers that are selected below:
If you choose the third option to, “Include only the volunteers that are selected below:” you may handpick the names of particular volunteers.
Filter list with
To create a custom list of volunteers who may not be easily defined using filters, check this box to create the filter and then select all of the volunteers in the box.
Note that when creating a Live Roster Post using the second filter option, when volunteers are added to the database or their records are changed in the database to meet the filter criteria, they will automatically be added to the Live Roster Post on the Web Terminal. However, if using the third option and handpicking the names of particular volunteers, the names on the Live Roster Post will always remain the same.
Included Fields Pane
The Included Fields pane is where you select which information to include in the roster and in what order. You can choose one of the preset common combinations of fields from the “Use combo” menu, or you can create your own custom combination of fields by moving the fields from the “Available fields” list to the “Fields to include” list using the “Add >>” button. The order in which the fields appear in the “Fields to include” list will be the order in which they are arranged in the final exported document. You may click and drag the fields around in this list to change their order.
Show common fields only
Note that you need to uncheck “Show common fields only” (below the “Available fields” box) to see the complete list of available fields.
Show field labels in roster
You can optionally include column headings on your rosters by checking the “Show field labels in roster” option below the “Fields to Include” list.
Available fields
A description of each available field can be found in Appendix A – Guide to Tokens. Roster fields are the same tokens that are used in the Announcements pane and the Web Terminal.
The “Qualified ministry roster codes” filed may be of particular interest. Ministry “roster codes” are a very useful shorthand to indicate in which ministries a volunteer is qualified to serve. You can specify a one or two character “roster code” for each ministry in the Edit Ministry dialog. If you then include the “Qualified ministry roster codes” field in your rosters, these codes are shown to indicate in which ministries each volunteer is qualified to serve.
Field Options…
Many included fields have options that modify the text that they output. For example, the Full Name field may or may not include each volunteer’s title. You may view a list of options for field by selecting it in one of the fields lists, and clicking on the “Field options” button. Note that the field should be added to the “Fields to include” list before setting options. See Appendix A – Guide to Tokens for a discussion of all available fields and options.
If a volunteer does not wish to have their personal contact information such as phone numbers or email addresses listed on rosters, you can mark this information as “Unlisted” inside the individual’s profile in the Volunteers pane. Doing so will eliminate their personal information from the roster. For more information on how to mark information as “Unlisted” for a volunteer, see Volunteer Profile.
List Arrangement Pane
Group volunteers from all ministries into one long list
The controls in this pane determine how the roster is organized. By default all volunteers in the roster are listed in one long list regardless of the ministries in which each volunteer is qualified to serve.
Group volunteers from each ministry into separate lists
If the “Group volunteers from each ministry into separate lists” option is turned on, then the members of each ministry as defined in the Included Ministries pane will be listed separately, one ministry after another. If a volunteer belongs to multiple ministries, then he will be listed once in each ministry to which he belongs.
Subdivide list(s) by first service preference
Checking this option will result in a separate list for each service time (and also one for “No declared preference”) under each ministry. Under each service time will appear only the volunteers who have that service time declared as their first service preference.
List substitutes and/or inactive volunteers at the bottom of the list
Moreover, you may further divide the list(s) of volunteers by choosing to place the inactive or substitute volunteers in each list at the end of the list.
Sort volunteers by last name
This options will ensure all volunteers are sorted alphabetically by last name.
Name Modifiers Pane
This pane contains options that affect allow you to add tags and special formatting to the names of certain volunteer in the generated roster.
Put sub/inactive after the names of substitute/inactive volunteers
You may choose to put “(sub)” after the name of substitute volunteers or to put “(inactive)” after the name of inactive volunteers.
Underline/Bold/Asterisk/Put the following after volunteers who pass this filter…
When you select any of the last four options, the Filter window pops up so you can which names should be modified in the roster.
Document Settings Pane
This pane contains the options that control the file format of the exported schedule, as well as settings for additional text to appear at the beginning or end of the document. The options here are the same as those in the Document Settings pane of the Export Schedule dialog.
Note that if you are generating a roster in MS Word-compatible (.rtf) format which includes four or more fields, the generated document will be in landscape layout by default (i.e., the pages will be oriented horizontally rather than vertically) However, you may easily switch between landscape and portrait layout at any time by choosing “Page setup…” in Microsoft Word’s File menu after the roster has been exported.
If you are creating a Live Roster Post, you can check the option that says, “Hide from volunteers not qualified for listed ministries” to make this roster invisible for anyone not qualified for the selected ministries, as defined in the Included Ministries pane.
Generate Roster
When you are done adjusting the Rosterizer settings, you may click the Generate Roster in the lower right hand corner of the Rosterizer pane to generate your final roster. Rosters may not be saved to the Program Files folder, and doing so will result in being unable to open the file.
Settings
Note that if you plan on using the same settings again, you may save them by clicking the “Save settings” button at the bottom of the pane so that you may retrieve the settings later by clicking the “Load settings” button.
