TouchPoint Reopening Strategies
In our last blog post, we highlighted general ideas and perspectives to reopening our churches in a safe and efficient manner. This week, we’ll dive deeper into specific features you need to know about before allowing your congregation to enter the building. We’ll provide links to our help documentation that will help with implementation.
Registration
One of the most common aspects of the re-opening process has been the implementation of a registration. Registrations provide your staff with invaluable information such as who plans to attend and how many people you should expect. TouchPoint provides several types of registrations to fit your churches needs.
- Join Organization registrations are the most common registration types in the system. They provide flexibility and allow your team to ask unlimited questions that may be important for you to know.
- User Selects registration type may be a good option for churches providing multiple services. Using this method a registrant can come to one form and register for multiple services. The system will automatically place those registrants in the appropriate organization.
- The registration option we’re recommending the most for churches that are re-opening has been the often underused Record Family Attendance. The Record Family Attendance method is fast and efficient. The registrant simply selects which members of their household will be attending the event and submits the form.
Do consider, however, that you cannot add questions to the Record Family Attendance form. It is only used for collecting the number of people that will be attending.
- Finally, be sure to configure your registration confirmation email to provide important instructions on where to park and how to enter.
Communication
Clear communication is important. TouchPoint makes it easy to create send emails and text messages with the information your congregation needs for a successful first day back.
- TouchPoint makes it very easy to email everyone in your database important information about the re-opening process. Simply go to People > Basic Search and convert the search without any criteria to the Search Builder. This will give you access to the Blue Toolbar where you can access the email features.
- When emailing your congregation the link to the registration form, it is imperative that you include the properly configured Register Link which will allow registrants to access the form without having to find their record.
- Our new Email Builder will allow you to create beautiful, mobile responsive emails for members of your congregation that may be accessing the form from a mobile device.
- TouchPoint also makes it easy to text your congregation via our Twilio integration. Text is a great option for quickly disseminating important information.
Check-In
Many of the churches we’ve worked with have expressed the desire to check individuals in as they are entering the building. Most of our customers are aware of the methods used for checking in children, but here are some other methods that may be more useful for these unique circumstances.
- iPad Attendance
is found on the meetings page and allows staff to check people into a meeting right from a tablet. Those that registered for the service will be displayed alphabetically. The screen includes an alphabetized sort feature to make the process more efficient.
Note* guests that are not already in the system cannot be checked in via iPad Check-In. For this reason, we recommend using it in conjunction with Ticketing Attendance.
- Ticketing Attendance is a special method of attendance that allows a volunteer or staff member to search the database via first and/or last name. This method will also allow you to add individuals to the database in case they did not register for the meeting.
- The standard Check-In process should only be used if it is manned by a single volunteer or staff member to limit the transmission of germs.
Reports
- For our churches that will be checking people into the service, we recommend using the Week at a Glance report which will give you a real time look at how many people have checked into each service.
- You’ll also need the registration report to track those that have registered and the selections they’ve made.
As always, TouchPoint is anxious to serve your church as you re-open the doors to the community. Please let us know how we can help, or, if you have some ideas you would like to share, please post them here!