Site & Navigation
The fastest way to learn where everything lives. There are three navigation surfaces: the top bar (everyone), the user menu (signed-in), and the administration sidebar (staff and leaders).
The top bar
- Brand / home — returns to Home.
- Primary nav — Home, Calendar, Ministries, People, Events. Five tabs, in the order the work is usually done: look at the week, then whose work it is, then who, then what is on.
- More — the overflow menu, for the pages you want often but not constantly: My Schedule, Availability, Serving, Printables, Account, Docs and Administration. Docs is there rather than in the tabs; it is the page you read once and the calendar is the page you read daily.
- Campus selector — pins the whole site to one campus, or All campuses. This is the only campus control; pages no longer carry their own.
- Search — people, activities, ministries and pages. An activity found here opens that activity, not the list it came from.
- Your name — opens the user menu.
The words this portal uses
Five words do most of the work. Two of them used to name the same thing (serving vs a posted list), and People is easy to mix up with the admin records page.
| Word | What it means |
|---|---|
| Activity | Anything on the calendar — a service, a meeting, a holiday, a training night. The Events page lists them and the URL is still /events. |
| Serving | Who is on the roles of an activity's date. The serving grid is where those names go. |
| Posted list | A standing rota with no activity behind it — a cleaning rotation, a pickup run. It is not a second kind of schedule. |
| Calendar | Where you look, and where you act on a day. Click a date for what is on it; Print this view is the wall calendar of what you are looking at. |
| People | The top-bar directory. Look someone up. Adding a record is Member records under Administration. |
A ministry's page offers Serving grid and Posted lists as separate buttons, because they answer different questions.
The user menu
Click your name in the top right. Everything about you is here, whether or not you administer anything:
- My profile — your account, password and details.
- My schedule — where you are serving.
- My availability — when you cannot serve.
- Administration — only if your account includes it.
- Sign out.
This works the same on a phone. Personal pages are not part of Administration: an ordinary member reaches them the same way an administrator does.
Administration
Open it from the user menu, or go to /admin. The sidebar is ordered by how often the work is done — everyday church work first, system administration last — and you only see what your account can actually use. A ministry leader who manages events sees Calendar & events and nothing else; if your account includes no administration at all, the area says so plainly rather than showing a menu that leads nowhere.
| Group | What is in it |
|---|---|
| Overview | What needs attention, common tasks, how the records stand |
| People & families | Member records, Families, Sign-ups & RSVP, Member types |
| Ministries | Members & leaders, Ministry list |
| Calendar & events | Calendar, Events, Event categories |
| Church setup | Church information, Campuses |
| Portal management | Users & access, Announcements, Home page banner, Theme & colours, Header menu, Footer, Quick links |
| Data & maintenance | Import members, Backups & exports |
| Advanced | System information, Development roadmap |
Advanced is deliberately last and deliberately dull. It holds read-only troubleshooting information — configuration files, environment details — useful when something is wrong or somebody is helping you remotely, and at no other time.
Common destinations
| I want to… | Go to |
|---|---|
| Look someone up | People (top bar) |
| Add or edit a member record | Administration → Member records |
| Bring a roster in from a spreadsheet | Import members |
| Download member records, or make a backup | Backups & exports |
| Manage a household | Families |
| Review guest sign-ups and event RSVPs | Sign-ups & RSVP |
| Change the dropdown options (classifications, member types) | Member types |
| Open a ministry workspace | Ministries (top bar) |
| Add or edit a ministry team, and who is on it | Administration → Members & leaders |
| Choose which ministries appear on the public site | Administration → Ministry list |
| See the church-wide calendar | Calendar |
| See what is on one day, and who is on it | Calendar — click the date (right panel) |
| Reopen the layers you use every Sunday | Calendar → Open view… |
| Print the month you are looking at | Calendar → Print this view |
| Print a roster sheet, event list or birthdays | Printables |
| Create an activity on the date you are looking at | Calendar — New event on this day, or Events |
| Create or edit an activity from the list | Events |
| Staff the roles on a date | Calendar's day panel, or the ministry's Serving grid |
| Keep a standing rota with no activity behind it | The ministry's Posted lists |
| Change an activity's colour, or who can see it | Event categories |
| Add or edit campuses | Campuses |
| Update church name, contact and address | Church information |
| Create logins and say what people may do | Users & access |
| Restyle the site | Theme & colours, Header menu, Footer |
Home
Home is the church visiting page — the same public feed for guests and members:
- Everyone sees the welcome rotator, upcoming events, announcements, ministries, and visit/contact information. Signing in is not required.
- Signed-in members also get a For you overlay: greeting, this week, my schedule and next assignments. It never replaces the public feed.
- Leaders also get Lead a ministry.
- Admins write announcements under Portal management → Announcements.
Public vs. signed-in
- Public pages show a safe, limited view — first name and last initial, no contact details or addresses.
- Signing in unlocks contact details and your own schedule.
- What you can see and what you can do are checked on the server every time, not decided by which links are on screen.