5  Getting Started

 

CV-Schedule is straightforward to set up and get running smoothly. However, if you don’t feel comfortable working with databases and computers, consider recruiting a computer-knowledgeable volunteer from your church to help with the initial setup. You probably have someone who works a lot with computers, or perhaps a college student, who would find this project to be easy and fun!

 

If you need technical support to get CV-Schedule up and running, please refer to Appendix V.

 

Before creating your Personnel Database, it is a good idea to poll your volunteers to find out:

·    Their Service preferences

·    What types of Special Services they are willing to serve

·    Their Family Ministry preferences

·    Any special scheduling requirements

 

CV-Schedule can easily handle complex scheduling requirements and still fill all the slots in your schedule. Also, you will have better turnout and cooperation when you try to satisfy everyone’s preferences. Appendix II has a sample form you can adapt to poll the volunteers in your Church.

 

Before actually making your first schedule, you need to install CV-Schedule on your hard disk and set up the Ministry Database, the Regular Service Database, and the Personnel Database. Here are step-by-step instructions to get you up and running.

1) If you have not already done so, install CV-Schedule on your computer. See Chapter 2.

 

2)  To start the program, double-click the CV-Schedule icon  on the desktop. You will see the Main Menu screen shown below.

 

 

 

You can Select a Main Menu item 3 ways:

a) Click on it with the mouse. (Move the Mouse pointer over the button then press and release the left mouse button.)

b) Hold down the <Alt> key and press the key corresponding to the underlined letter on the item you want to select. (Example: Hold down the <Alt> key and press the C key to select “Compile a New Schedule”.

c) Use the Tab key to step through the buttons and push the Enter key when you get to the one you want.

 

TIP: Any error messages will be shown in the white area at bottom. If you get any error messages while running CV-Schedule, see Appendix IV for explanations and solutions.

 

TIP: Unless you have already created Database Set 4, the CV-Schedule Installer automatically installs a set of sample databases for Database Set 4. You can try these out and experiment with them before beginning to create your own database sets. To use the sample databases, select Database Set 4 in step 3 below.

 

3) Select the Database Set you want to work with. You can choose one of four possible Database Sets to work with. The first two are pre-defined to be the Sunday Service Database Set and the Weekday Mass Database Set. You can redefine all four to be anything you want them to be, though. See Chapter 8 for more about Database Sets.

 

4) Now, please read Chapter 6, “Working with Dialog Boxes.”  Every screen displayed in CV-Schedule appears in the form of a dialog box.

 

5) Select Options to customize the program. You can choose to call church meetings “Mass,” “Service,” “Worship,”  or anything else you want to. You can also rename your four Database Sets, and set up the phone dialer. See Chapter 7 for more about Options.

 

6) Select Ministry and set up the Ministry Database that has information about all the Activities or Ministries your church uses. Ushers, choir, lectors, readers, Eucharistic Ministers and altar servers are typical Ministries. See Chapter 9 for details of the Ministry database.

 

7) Select Regular Service (or whatever you named your services to be) and set up the Service Database that has information about all your regularly scheduled Services, and how many volunteers from each Ministry are needed. See Chapter 10 for details of the Regular Service Database.

 

8) Select Personnel and set up the Personnel Database that has information about all your volunteers such as name, phone number, Ministry and Service preferences. See Chapter 12 for details of the Personnel Database.

 

9) Now you are ready to make your first trial schedule. Select Compile New Schedule.  A dialog box will appear where you can enter the starting date for your schedule and the number of dates to schedule. (Enter the date in the form MM/DD/YY. Example: 10/29/08)  In a few seconds your first schedule will be completed! A message in the space at the bottom of the Main Menu will tell if any slots in the schedule could not be filled. See Chapter 14 for more details about compiling schedules.

 

10) Select Backup to make a backup copy of you database files. A dialog box will appear to ask you enter the location for your backup files. The most common choice is to backup to a removable disk or USB drive. But you can also backup to a folder or network location. See Chapter 15 for more about backups. If  you want to quit the program without backing up your files,  just select Exit.

 

11) Now click the arrow at the right of the View Files box and select Schedule. This will open the schedule you just created in your word processor program. You can manually make any last minute changes you wish and print the schedule from your word processor program. You can do the same with the Sign-in Sheets. If the schedule doesn’t fit on a page or doesn’t look right, see Chapter 13 for tips on reformatting.

 

12) Don’t worry if you had unfilled slots and/or some of your volunteers were scheduled incorrectly; that is normal for the first try. See Chapter 17, “Scheduling Problems and Solutions,” for tips on getting everything just right. Once everything is “fine tuned” to meet the needs of your church and your volunteers, it will run smoothly month-after-month, year-after-year.

 

13) If you need to make changes to the databases to fix scheduling problems, edit the Ministry, Regular Service, Personnel and Formats Databases as needed. Then click  Recompile Previous Schedule and repeat steps 11-13 until everything looks right.

 

14) Now you can add additional Database Sets such as Weekday Masses, etc. (see Chapter 8) You can also add Special Services such as Christmas Day, Ash Wednesday, Ascension, Confirmation, Easter overflow, etc. (see Chapter 11). At any time, you can add, delete or modify Personnel (see Chapter 12 ), Ministries (see Chapter 9), Regular Services (see Chapter 10), or Special Services (see Chapter 11.)