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Creating Opportunities

 

To create an Opportunity, go to the Opportunities page, click New and complete the fields: 

  • Opportunity Title: A friendly, concise title summarizing what people are being invited to do.
  • Description: A brief, prose description explaining the opportunity. Tip: Need a little help coming up with a description? Try the Writing Assistant!
  • Group Role: The specific position or job this person would fill for this opportunity.
  • Program: The ongoing church activity that this opportunity is for. The Program connects the Opportunity to the Ministry that oversees this person's role and the Congregation within which they serve.
  • Visibility Level: The value that determines if this Opportunity can be viewed online:
    • 1-Private: does not show on the Portal and is designed for internal use (for example, views, filters reports).
    • 2-Staff Only: does not show on the Portal and is designed for internal use (for example, views, filters reports).
    • 3-Staff & Church: does show on the Portal or Widget with or without logging in, but only those logged in can respond to the Opportunity.
    • 4-Public: does show on the Portal or Widget with or without logging in, and anyone (logged in or not) can respond to the Opportunity
    • 5-Hidden: URL Required: does show on the Portal only to individuals who have the appropriate URL. To create the URL, append your opportunity URL with the Opportunity ID# of the specific opportunity response is for (to get the URL, the Opportunity ID# would be added to the end of your usual event signup link, such as https://my.samplechurch.org/portal/opportunity_detail.aspx?id=####).
  • Contact Person: The individual to follow up with responses to this opportunity. It's best to ensure they have an email and a user account in MinistryPlatform, especially if they will be assigned a task via the Response Follow-Up process.
  • Publish Date: The date the opportunity appears on the Portal.
  • Opportunity Date: The date when this person is asked to serve. Opportunity becomes "inactive" and is removed from the Portal once this date is passed. Leave blank if this is an "ongoing" opportunity.  If the field is changed to be a date in the past, it acts as the End Date field that is commonly seen elsewhere in the Platform. Opportunity Finder sorts Opportunities first by date (starting with ongoing, then soonest to latest) and then by Opportunity Title.
  • Duration in Hours: The number of hours someone responding to this opportunity is expected to serve. This can be assumed to be a recurring value for ongoing opportunities. This field does not show on the Portal.
  • Add to Group: When the person who responds is cleared to serve and their Response record is updated to show a "Placed" value in the Response Result field: If a Group is listed in this field, the person has been added to this group automatically with the Group Role set above.
  • Add to Event: When the person who responds is cleared to serve and their Response record is updated to show a "Placed" value in the Response Result field: If an event is listed in this field, the person is added to this event automatically. If the event is available on the Portal's Event Calendar, a "Volunteer" button appears on the event.
  • Required Gender:  Set a value if this opportunity should be exclusive to men or women. This field does not show on the Portal.
  • Minimum Age: Set a value if this opportunity should be exclusive to individuals over a specific age. This field does not show on the Portal.
  • Minimum Needed: Set a target value for the number of volunteers you need to respond to this Opportunity. This appears as a Record Fact in the list view and is updated as volunteers respond to the Opportunity:
    • Portal: All Responses, regardless of whether they have been Placed, will count towards the Maximum Needed and the Record Fact will reflect all Opportunity Responses.
    • Widget: If you're using the Opportunity Details Widget, the Minimum Needed Record Fact is calculated as the total number of Responses (which have a Response Result value of "Placed") subtracted from the Maximum Needed. Unplaced responses are not reflected in the Maximum Needed Record Fact. Want to place Responses immediately so they're counted toward the Maximum Needed? You can do that by creating a Process to set Responses to be placed automatically. Reach out to Support if you have any questions. 
  • Maximum Needed: Set a target value for the largest number of volunteers (respondents) allowed from this listing.
    • Portal: This field appears in the list view on the Portal. All Responses, regardless of whether they have been Placed, count towards the Maximum Needed.
    • Widget: Unplaced responses are not reflected in the Maximum Needed Record Fact. Want to place Responses immediately so they're counted toward the Maximum Needed? You can do that by creating a Process to set Responses to be placed automatically. Reach out to Support if you have any questions. 
  • Letter Body: Text to be used in the body of the Selected Response Letter found on the Responses page that can be sent to respondents as part of your follow-up process.
  • Letter From: The Contact Person to be used by the Selected Response Letter mentioned above.
  • On Connection Card: If Yes, this opportunity is displayed on the Connection Card Tool.
  • Shift Start: For event-specific opportunities, use this value to distinguish the start date/time of an opportunity when there are multiple opportunities to do the same job in the same event during different shifts (rarely used). This field does not show on the Portal.
  • Shift End: For event-specific opportunities, use this value to distinguish the end date/time of an opportunity when there are multiple opportunities to do the same job in the same event during different shifts (rarely used). This field does not show on the Portal.
  • Custom Form: Provides the option to link an existing Custom Form to your Opportunity. The Custom Form is present when someone expresses interest in an Opportunity on Opportunity Finder. The Custom Form questions are listed after the standard name, contact info, and message fields.

Notification Fields

The following fields are used for the Opportunity Response Notification and Opportunity Reminder Notification.

  • Response Message: Use this field to set an email to send to a respondent no matter how a person is added to an Opportunity. As long as they have a Response, they will get an email with this message if one is applied to this field.
  • Close Responses: When the Response Message is populated, automatically close responses and add Info Sent to the Response Result field for this Opportunity. (The response will not be closed automatically if there is no Response Message assigned.)
  • Date To Remind: The date when respondents should be reminded about the Opportunity. The reminder will go out during your nightly routine so it must have at least one-day lead-time to run (it will not run if set to today's date). The Response must be open (Closed = False) to get an email.
  • Optional Reminder Message: A special reminder message is created for this Opportunity. There must be a value in Date To Remind for this message to be sent. allows the user to override the default reminder message with an Opportunity-specific reminder message.
  • Send To Heads: Send the message to two Heads of Household in the Respondent's Household, if they have a different email address than the registrant. Note: The message will be automatically adjusted to say "Parents Of" the Respondent. This is designed specifically for Opportunities for children—so there is potential for emails to Parents of adults if they are registered for a Send to Heads Event.

Event-Specific Opportunities

As referenced above, Events can be attached to Opportunities. You can do this in one of two ways:

  1. Add the desired Event in the Add to Event field on the Opportunity, OR
  2. Add the desired Opportunity to the Opportunities sub-page of the desired Event.

When an Event is added to an Opportunity, two things happen:

  1. If the Event is viewable on the Portal's Event Calendar page, a “Volunteer” button appears, which directs the user to the Opportunity page to allow the user to respond.
  2. When any Response record related to the Opportunity is updated as “Placed," the related Participant is added to the Event.