My ChurchSuite User Guide

Access to My ChurchSuite is by email invitation from OLSD using the email address you provided when you registered. Your invitation email contains a personal login link that is used to set your preferred password and access My ChurchSuite for the first time. 

If you share an email address with other family members, you’ll each receive a personalised invitation to your shared email inbox – be sure to use the invitation personally addressed to you to set your password.  Follow the on-screen instructions to set you password.

Navigating My ChurchSuite

My ChurchSuite can be accessed either through our free app, available for both iOS and Android or via any web browser.

App navigation follows familiar navigation principles – clicking “Back”, scrolling content vertically, swiping content horizontally, single-clicking menus and actions, etc. My ChurchSuite is fully responsive, which means that content re-sizes automatically to suit smaller screen devices like laptops, smartphones and tablets. 

To log in from a browser, navigate to login.churchsuite.com and follow the on-screen instructions to search for ‘Our Lady of Lourdes and Saint Dominic Savio’. Next, choose My ChurchSuite as the “system” (NOT “ChurchSuite”), and enter your email address and password combination. Passwords are always case-sensitive. Click Reset your password to request a password reset email. If you experience login issues – perhaps an invalid email-password combination – contact media@olsd.org.uk. 

Once logged in, you’re taken to the My ChurchSuite Home page.  Navigate around the sections using the Menu on the left.

Logging out

If you need to log out of My ChurchSuite, simply use the option at the bottom of the menu:

This is where you can view and edit your details, communication preferences and privacy settings.

From here, you can review and update your details, perhaps to add missing information. Add as much or as little information as you feel comfortable sharing. To update or change your details in each section, click the Edit button, update the information you need to and then click Save.

To add a profile image, if you don’t already have one, click Edit image, then Add.

If you already have a profile image and wish to change or delete it, click Edit image, then choose the relevant option – Edit or Delete.

Communication options and Privacy settings

Your Communication options determine the methods by which OLSD will be able to send communications to you. While your church may be able to send certain communications without requiring your consent (e.g. a parent/carer communication relating to a child), other messages will be consent-dependent. With this in mind, do remember that opting out of receiving general communications may prevent OLSD from communicating with you, meaning you may miss out on important church communications. Therefore, we encourage you to opt-in – communications will be kept to a minimum.

Your communication details – email address, phone number and physical address are also held here. It’s important to keep these up to date so that OLSD can contact you and, for UK customers, your address may be linked to your Gift Aid Declaration, so it’s key that your details are kept up to date.

Click Edit to review and update your communication details and options.

Make sure to click Save to save any changes you made.

While your details are never visible to anyone outside of your church, your Privacy settings enable you to choose which of your basic contact details you are happy to be visible to other members of your church when they also access My ChurchSuite eg other members on a rota. Note that only your address, telephone, mobile and email can be set visible – other personal details, such as your date of birth or marital status, are only ever visible to you. Click Edit to review and update your privacy settings.

Be sure to click Save to save any changes you made.

Don’t be invisible!

When first logging in to My ChurchSuite, you may see the following message on your Home page informing you that your privacy settings are such that you are invisible to others in My ChurchSuite.

Being invisible means that…

Additional information

Depending on the settings chosen by your church, you may also be able to view and/or update some additional information. This may include mailing list preferences, membership status, areas of interest and so on.

Follow the same pattern of clicking Edit, updating the information and clicking Save.

Delete Account

Finally, if you wish to exercise your right to erasure or right to be forgotten, and you don’t want to have a My ChurchSuite account any more, you can click Delete account at the bottom of the page.

You’ll be asked to confirm your request to be deleted and the pop-up will inform you of the consequences of this action.

It’s important to remember that when you request for your account to be deleted, your church may still have another lawful basis for continuing to process some or all of your information – for example, a ‘legitimate interest’ may apply to maintaining membership lists such as an Electoral Roll or a ‘legal obligation’ may apply in respect of donations and Gift Aid records – the lawful basis for processing personal data and the scope of processing is defined by the  church’s Data Protection Policy and outlined in our Data Protection Statement (Privacy Notice).

My Children

The My Children section is visible to parents/carers whose children have been linked to them in the church database, enabling them to manage each child’s details. Parents/carers may also be able to add new children without needing to ask someone in the church office to do this for them, depending on your church’s settings.

Children’s details

Primary parents/carers can Edit and manage the details of each of their children.

To do this, click View on the relevant child:

From here, you can review and update your child’s details, perhaps adding missing information such as pertinent medical conditions, allergies, additional needs and photo/video consent. Only parents/carers and authorised church/group leaders can view this information. To update or change your child’s details in each section, click the Edit button, update the information you need to and then click Save.

To add a profile image for your child if there isn’t one already, click Edit image, then Add.

Choose the image file from your computer and click open – your image will be uploaded.

Parents/carers

A primary parent/carer of a child can manage the details of the child’s parents/carers, as well as adding additional parents/carers.

To manage the details of existing parents/carers, click the action menu (3 dots) to the right of the parent/carer’s name and click Edit.

Here, you can edit if the parent/carer is a primary point of contact and define their relationship to the child; remember to Save your changes.

The action menu also allows you to remove a parent/carer if required.

To add a parent/carer linked to a child, click Add.

Next, choose if the person is In My ChurchSuite or Not in My ChurchSuite. If a parent/carer is in My ChurchSuite, you can search and select them in the Person field.

If they are not in My ChurchSuite, enter the relevant details and communication preferences.

Lastly, select if the parent/carer is a Primary point of contact, along with the Relationship type, and click Add.

Communication options and Privacy settings

When editing a child’s details, primary parents/carers can set Communication options, opting their child into or out of receiving church communications and/or rota reminder communications. Do remember that opting out will prevent your church leaders from being able to keep in touch with the child by these methods, meaning they may miss out on important church communications! Typically, churches only communicate with parents/carers about children but as children get older, it may be that your church copies your teenagers into communications – speak to your church if you have questions about how they’ll communicate with parents/carers and young people.

While your child’s details are never visible to anyone outside of your church, or in the Search for Others area in My ChurchSuite, your child’s Privacy settings enable you to choose which of your child’s basic contact details you are happy to be visible to other members of your church when your child is a member of their Small Group or serves on a rota. Note that only your child’s address, mobile and email can be set visible – other personal details, such as their date of birth or additional information, are only ever visible to you. 

Photo/video consent

Depending on your church’s settings, you may be able to view or manage your consent to allowing your child’s photo to be used internally to the church and externally.

This is where you can view and manage your serving commitments. Note that you will only see the My Rotas section if you’re part of an active ministry, have future serving dates on a published rota, if there are rotas published that you can sign up for, or if you are an overseer for an active ministry.

Next Serving

Selecting My Rotas from the Menu opens the Next Serving tab.

The Next Serving tab shows your serving commitments for the next three months.

Those with linked family members can also access their family’s Next Serving dates.

Clicking on a rota date will take you to the full rota, which we’ll talk through in the Rotas section below.

Rotas listed in red indicate a clash, where you’re set to serve on more than one rota on the same date/time. Of course, it’s perfectly possible to serve on multiple rota dates at the same time, but some clashes may require you to decline or organise a swap. For rotas with ‘accept/decline’ enabled, you’ll have the option to respond to serving requests.

Previous Accepts are distinguished with a green tick icon; Declines are distinguished with a red cross icon, with the rota name in red strikethrough styling. Declining will send a decline notification to your rota’s overseer. Red strikethrough styling is also used to distinguish dates where unavailability has been added. You’ll continue to see declined and unavailable servings listed until your ministry overseer either replaces or removes you from the rota or you organise and process a swap – explained later.

Finally, you can use the iCal and Google buttons to subscribe to a feed of your serving dates.

Rotas

The Rotas tab contains a list of all the Rotas you either serve on, are part of the ministry team for or oversee. Once a rota expires, or your final serving date on a rota passes, that rota will cease to show in the list. You may also see follow-on rotas when an existing rota is expiring soon.

Clicking through into a rota from the Next Serving or Rotas list opens the rota to view. The rota view is divided into tabs, showing the rota Dates, the rota’s underlying Teams (members and roles) and further rota Details.

Within the Rota Dates tab, the rota view can be changed to show all dates or just your own serving dates, along with options of which future dates to show:

You can use the Edit my visibility option to override your default privacy settings, enabling you to decide which details are visible to others on the rota – you can edit your visibility on a rota-by-rota basis for each rota that you’re scheduled on.

You also have the option to Email members – ideal for starting the process of organising a swap if you’re not available.

Moving to the rota dates, on each of your serving dates you’ll have actions available – to Add unavailability, Accept or Decline (if enabled for the rota), Organise swap and Sign up to serve on available dates – we’ll talk about all of these in their respective sections later in this article.

You can also access published service plans from the rota Date actions on a date-by-date basis, by clicking the action menu (3 dots) alongside the date. The View plan action is only available on rota dates where there is a published plan.

Unavailability

You can easily block out dates of known unavailability for yourself and linked family members from the Unavailability section. Adding unavailability means you are unavailable for any rotas on the dates selected – it’s not possible to be selectively available or unavailable for certain ministries; however, you can selectively Decline serving requests for certain rotas if your ministry overseer uses that functionality. By keeping your known unavailability up to date, those overseeing rotas can more easily plan and manage their rotas, identify gaps and needs, and better ensure people are not over-serving.

Unavailability can be added from the Unavailability tab, or from the action menu within a rota (shown in the previous section). To add unavailability, click Add unavailability.

On the Add unavailability pop-up, you can add unavailability for a range of Dates and add an optional Description (reason) for yourself and/or for your linked spouse/partner and children. Any clashes arising from family unavailability are shown within the pop-up, alerting you if you or other family members need to organise a swap.

Rota Swaps

The Rota Swap functionality has been designed as a way to update the rota to reflect an arranged swap, rather than a function to initiate swaps. From the rota Dates tab, click the action menu (3 dots) next to your name on the date you’ve organised a swap for and select Organise swap.

Select the person’s name from the Swap with drop-down list and optionally select details of any Return swap you may have agreed to. Saving the changes will update the rota immediately, adding the swapped people to the rota dates with an Accepted status. You can only process swaps with an available rota member who is not already serving on the rota on that date. It is not currently possible to process swaps with children.

After processing a rota swap, an email will be sent to you confirming you are no longer serving on that date and also to the ‘ Swap with‘ person confirming that they are now serving on that date and the role/s they are serving on that date. A further notification is sent to the ministry overseers advising them of the swap transaction.

Note that rota members can’t edit their roles – this is a task that can only be done by a ministry overseer. When swapping, the “swapee” will inherit the original roles of the swapper. If in doubt, contact your rota overseer to advise them what is happening and, if necessary, they can update the rota for you, as they have further functionality that enables them to manage team member roles from within My ChurchSuite.

All Rotas

The All Rotas page is shown at the end of the list of Rotas.

Selecting All Rotas opens the page to view. The page can be further filtered by Service for a selected Date and, for those using Plans, includes published plan page links.

Rota functionality for ministry overseers

If you oversee a rota, you’ll also see the Add rota option in the Rotas tab. Rotas with a ‘pencil’ icon indicate rotas you oversee and may also be serving on; those without a pencil icon are rotas for ministries that you belong to or have future serving dates:

Once a rota expires or your final serving date on a rota passes, that rota will cease to show in the list. You may also see follow-on rotas when an existing rota is expiring soon. Note that draft status rotas – styled italicised in the list – are only visible to those who are ministry overseers and are not visible to the rota’s members until published, enabling overseers to plan, create and fine-tune rotas before publishing them and making them visible to rota members.

In addition to great rota member functionality in My Rotas, designated ministry Overseers have full rota management functionality in My ChurchSuite. If you’re a ministry overseer, this means you’ll be able to:

• Manage teams, team members and roles within your ministry, including adding/removing team members and assigning roles to team members.
• Create draft rotas, publish and distribute them.
• Manage rota members on the rota page, including adding/removing people from rota dates, swapping people, accepting/declining on behalf of rota members and adding/removing dates on the rota.
• Add notes to rota dates to communicate pertinent information about something happening on that date.
• Enable rota sign-up and manage the maximum sign-up numbers for individual dates or the entire rota.
• Add and manage unavailability for all serving team members and themselves.
• Receive notifications for declines, unavailability clashes and upcoming rota expiry.