Tutorial: Team Leader "Manage Your Team" Walkthrough

Audience: Worship team leader (or any serving team leader) responsible for filling Sunday positions Time needed: About 15 minutes You'll need: Permission as a team leader on at least one serving team — ask your church admin if you're not sure

What You'll Learn

By the end of this walkthrough, you will know how to:

• Find your team page and understand what's on it
• Read the Out-of-Office badges on your roster so you don't accidentally schedule someone who's away
• Understand how the system rotates through your team (Fair Rotation, Round Robin, or Manual Only)
• Edit the team's schedule template — the position list new events can auto-fill with
• Open the Schedule Grid to see your team's coverage across upcoming weeks at a glance

You don't need full admin access for most of this. Team leader permission is enough to manage your members and templates. A couple of settings (the team's scheduling rotation) live on an admin-only tab — we'll point those out as we go.

Step 1: Find Your Team Page

Time: 1 minute

1. Log in to your TimelyChurch admin panel.
2. In the sidebar, expand People and click Groups.
3. The page lists every group at your church. Click the Teams filter tab near the top to narrow it down to serving teams.
4. Click the name of your team — for example, Worship Team or Sound Team.

You'll land on the team detail page. A breadcrumb at the top reads Groups — [your team], and a row of tabs runs across the main panel: Group details, Members, Templates (plus a few more depending on how your team is set up).

Tip: Some tabs are admin-only. If you're a team leader without full Groups admin access, you won't see the Group details tab — you'll land on Templates (or Members) instead. That's expected. If you don't see your team at all, you may not have leader permissions on it yet. Ask your church admin to add you as a leader on the Group details tab.

Step 2: Read Your Roster (and Out-of-Office Badges)

Time: 3 minutes

1. Click the Members tab.
2. You'll see every member listed with their assigned positions.
3. Look for the amber Out N days · next [date] badge next to names — these appear automatically when a member has marked unavailability in the next 60 days. The badge shows the count of upcoming blocked dates plus the soonest one.
4. Hover over a position chip on a member's row to see exactly which positions they cover.

The amber badge counts:

• One-off unavailable dates the member added in their portal
• Dates blocked by an active recurring unavailability pattern
• Dates inside any vacation date range they added

A member with no upcoming blockouts has no badge — they're fully available for the next 60 days.

Tip: Encourage your team to set their availability in advance. The Out-of-Office badges only show up when they've put it in the system — which makes your life so much easier.

For more on how members manage this, see Recurring Unavailability.

Step 3: Understand Rotation (Fair Rotation, Round Robin, or Manual Only)

Time: 3 minutes

The rotation strategy controls who the system suggests first — and who it auto-fills — when filling a position.

Heads up: Rotation settings live in the Scheduling Settings card on the Group details tab, which is admin-only. If you're a team-leader-only user, you won't see this tab. Ask your church admin to set the rotation for your team, or to grant you Groups admin access. The options below are what your admin will see.

1. Open the Group details tab.
2. Scroll to the Scheduling Settings card.
3. Choose a Rotation Strategy:
   • Fair Rotation (recommended) — TimelyChurch tracks who served least recently and suggests them first. Everyone gets equal turns over time.
   • Round Robin (fixed order) — the system cycles through the team in a set order.
   • Manual Only (disable auto-fill) — turns auto-fill off so you assign everyone by hand. Use this for very small teams where rotation doesn't matter.
4. Set Min Days Between Serving (default 7) to keep the same person from being scheduled too frequently.
5. Set Max Times Per Month — a soft cap so no one serves every single week. Leave it 0 for unlimited.
6. Optionally turn on Enable auto-scheduling and the related checkboxes (notify on auto-assign, auto-confirm, auto-pick a replacement on decline).
7. Click Save Scheduling Settings.

Step 4: Edit Your Team's Schedule Template

Time: 4 minutes

A schedule template is a reusable position list you can apply when setting up events, so you don't rebuild the same lineup every week. Templates can also be set to auto-apply to specific event types.

1. Click the Templates tab. The heading reads Schedule Templates.
2. You should see your team's existing template(s). The one marked Default is suggested first when creating events. If none exists, click New Template and create one.
3. Click the chevron (⌄) on a template row to expand it and see the positions it includes.
4. To edit the template's name, description, default status, or which event types it auto-applies to, click the ⋮ menu on the row and choose Edit Template, make your changes, then click Save Changes.
5. In the expanded view, manage positions:
   • Click Add Position to add a role. Pick the position, set Number Needed (e.g., 2 for two vocalists), add an optional note, and click Add Position.
   • Click the ✕ next to any position row to remove it.
6. The ⋮ menu also lets you Duplicate the template, Set as Default, or Delete it.

Existing events that have already had a template applied won't retroactively update — the template only flows forward to events you create or update afterward.

Step 5: View the Schedule Grid

Time: 4 minutes

The Schedule Grid is your "everything at a glance" view. It shows who's serving across the next several weeks so you can spot gaps before Sunday morning.

1. In the sidebar, expand Planning and click Events.
2. In the Events page header, click the More (⋮) button and choose Schedule Grid. This opens the Events planning hub on the Schedule Grid tab.
3. The grid loads with:
   • Rows: each team member, grouped by team
   • Columns: the upcoming weeks (toggle the window between 4, 8, or 12 weeks)
   • Cells: a status circle per week — ✓ Confirmed, ? Pending, ✕ Declined, – Unavailable, or a faint dot for an available, unassigned slot. A legend at the bottom explains each.
4. Use the date arrows and the 4 / 8 / 12 wk picker to move and resize the window.
5. Use the Team filter button to narrow the grid to just one team if you lead more than one.
6. Click Auto-fill N open in the top-right to have the system fill available slots from your rotation (they'll go out as pending for volunteers to confirm), and Remind to nudge anyone with a pending response.
7. Click Export PDF if you want to print or share a snapshot with a co-leader.

Tip: Open the Matrix every Tuesday morning. Spotting a thin week on Tuesday gives you five days to fix it. Spotting it Saturday at 9 PM does not.

For deeper coverage, see Schedule Grid and Roster View.

What to Do Next

• Send Tutorial 03: Set Your Availability to every member of your team so the Out-of-Office badges fill in.
• Bookmark Tutorial 04: Need Attention Sub Invite for the weeks when someone bails last-minute.
• Read Volunteer Swap and Trade Requests so you know how to handle peer-to-peer trades when team members swap among themselves.

You've got this. Your team will love how organized things feel.