All Things Computer presentation - VBS Preview Event

We’ll be talking in this session about a few different things. I’ll do an overview of the functionality of VBS Tools Online. I’ll introduce the VBS websites and let you know about our presence in social media. I’ll also show you some of the content that is available on the CD-ROMs and DVD-ROMs in the curriculum, and lastly, I’ll introduce you to some websites that might be of help to you as you are planning VBS.
Reminders: VBS tools online is a WEB application, which means that you must have internet access to get to the data. Always be prepared in case you somehow lose internet access the week of VBS.
VBS Tools Online subscriptions last until December 1 st , 2010.
This is the front page of VBS tools online and what you will see after you log in and set up your account. The software will ask you to provide some basic information when you sign in the first time in order to set up your account. There’s the at-a-glance feature that helps you to see some quick statistics, and a “quick report” feature that brings the most frequently used reports to the front page. The menu is pretty self explanatory, and has been organized so that if you really don’t know where to start, you should begin at the top left and work your way through. The Church Profile is the first thing that needs to be set up.
The first thing you’ll be asked to do is fill out your church’s profile, which will include providing location and contact information about your church. Because VBS tools works with both of LifeWay’s themes, you’ll be asked to choose which theme and provide the dates and times of your VBS. All of this information can be changed later, but it is required in order to set up your profile. All required information is designated with a red asterisk. Notice that many of the menu items from the front page are now accessible on the left hand side of the screen, and again, intuitively, you can work your way down to get your information set up. This menu is where you will set up the dates and times of your VBS as well. NOTE: You may be tempted to set your registration end date before your Vacation Bible School begins, but that’s not a good idea! You’ll want to make that date the last date that you will want to enter data into the system. If you don’t, you’ll have to go back into your church profile and change the date in order to enter any data about volunteers or participants.
Bottom half of church profile page.
Once you have set up your church profile, you’ll want to go into the admin section of VBS Tools online.
Under the admin menu, you’ll be able to add users to your VBS tools account, customize your home page, and manage the fields that appear on your volunteer forms and learner registration forms. To start, set up your users by clicking User Management.
To add users, you click on the big purple plus sign. You enter the email address of the user that you would like to add. Then they are sent an email so that they can sign in and become a user - Users can have three security settings: admin, standard, and read only
Administrators have access to all areas.
Standard users have access to all areas except the Church Profile and Admin.
Once you have set up your users, the next thing you’ll want to set up is your customized home page under homepage management.
To customize the home page for your church, you can add information in the text box and hit SAVE PAGE INFO. To view what the page would look like, you can view the “preview” hyperlink at the top of the page. NOTE that you can create a custom email message to send to people who register online.
This is what your page would look like if you were using the Saddle Ridge Ranch theme.
You can find the direct link to your church’s registration page, plus HTML code that you can paste into your website to direct people to your church’s registration page. NOTE: A great way to turn off registration without ending registration in VBS tools is to pull the link from your homepage.
Once you have set up your users and your customized home page, you’ll want to set up your volunteer and learner registration forms. Both of these tools work the same way.
There are three types of fields in your registration forms – Standard, Optional, and Custom Standard fields are required to make the VBS Tools database work. The standard fields include basic things like Name, Address, phone number, etc. Optional fields are field that you can choose to activate or deactivate and require or un-require.
Custom fields give you the opportunity to add any field you want. To add a custom field, click the add new button.
Then choose the type of field that you would want to add: Checkbox, text, zip code, radio button, etc.
Once you have all your fields on your form, you can manage the layout of the form. It’s a simple drag and drop method. You choose what field you want to move, click it with your mouse, and drag them into the order that you would like them to be.
This is how your registration form for your volunteers and your learners would look like if you wanted to print them out.
This is the experience that a user would go through if they were registering a volunteer or learner online.
Note that for privacy concerns, the information is not available for others to see.
Once you have set up your church’s info and your customized web page, you’ll want to set up the structure for your VBS by using the departments, classes, and volunteer tabs. This is fully customizable, so you can set up as many departments as you need and call them whatever you want. You’ll see the option to add a new department on the top right hand side of the screen. When you click that, you’ll see that you can add a new department and name it whatever you wish. Enter your department director’s name and email address, and click SAVE.
The classes feature works the same way – go to the top right hand side to add a new class. Enter the class name, choose a volunteer, assign the class to a department, and enter the number of people you would like to have in the class. You can then add more volunteers by clicking on the hyperlink of the class, and adding multiple assistants per class.
Volunteer roles is the next menu item, and it allows you to add and customize the roles that you need for your VBS.
Once you have set up your volunteer roles, you can set up your volunteers. Again, it works just like the other screens – you add a volunteer using the item on the top right hand side of the screen. Volunteers can also be register through the volunteer registration form that is online. Notice that some of these volunteers have “No” beside them. We know that safety and security is so important, so this option requires you to manually approve volunteers who register through the online form. That way, if you want to require background checks, or mandatory training classes, you can know who you have approved because they met your church’s requirements.
The way that you “accept” a volunteer is to choose the edit button beside the volunteers name, then to click the checkbox to accept them.
You can also assign a volunteer role to a volunteer on this screen. Note that you still have to assign that volunteer to the class or rotation that you set up.
The learners screen is where all of the information on people who register to attend your VBS is kept. This screen allows you to easily find location and emergency contact information on people who attend your VBS.
When you click the edit button, you are able to edit the information about a learner and assign them to a class.
To set up rotations, choose “Add a new rotation”. Then click on the hyperlink of the name of the rotation that you would like to create a schedule for.
When you hit “duplicate day” it allows you to easily duplicate the schedule for the rest of the week.
The attendance tracker makes keeping attendance the day of VBS easy.
The Attendance Records report allows you to print attendance sheets for your classes.
This is an example of an attendance sheet that can be printed from the attendance record report.
The attendance count feature lets you see how many attendees are there on a certain day – this is especially helpful for the snack people!
You can send emails from VBS Tools online.
Another helpful feature for VBS tools is that all of the PDFs and downloads that are on the CD-Rom in the administrative guide are also available as downloads from VBS tools.
The reporting system for VBS Tools Online is one of the things that makes it so helpful. There are some pre-determined reports that you can access, but cannot manipulate. But there are also custom reports that you can run either on the learner information or the volunteer information.
From custom learner report, you can select the fields you wish to see, add filters and groupings and generate the report you need.
This is a report I built to identify visitors
There’s also an option to extract learner data, which allows you to open the data in Microsoft Excel or another spreadsheet program. This makes printing nametags, mailing labels, etc. very easy.
Just as a reminder, anytime you need help, there is a big purple question mark on every page that will access help files for you.
The LifeLINE FAQ system is available 24 hours a day, and most questions are answered within 2 business days. You can get to this system by clicking “help” from lifeway.com. You can also call our 1-800 number with questions and they are routed to the correct person. For immediate answers, this is the best option.
We also have a facebook page, which is my responsibility. Many times, it may be a week before I’m able to gather answers for this page, but am happy to answer any questions that I can on this page. I can’t really handle any customer service issues here, so with questions about payments, shipments, etc. you’ll need to go to customer service. I’ll add pictures, videos, and other tips to this page throughout the VBS year. We would love for you to be our fan on facebook.
The Decorating Made Easy Clip Art CD has some helpful PDFs, as well as Clip art.
A thumbnail sheet of all the clip art available is on the CD-ROM
Helpful tip – use the check all/uncheck all selection in order to open and save the files that you need from this CD.
Some things to note – a permission to print letter has been added
Training powerpoints available
Promotional Skits and parent letters
Job descriptions, age group characteristics, teacher devotions
Prayer calendar

All Things Computer presentation - VBS Preview Event

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