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Use the Contact Form to request tech support or send questions or comments about CV-Schedule. I will post them here in the Forum along with my answers.

Topics:

Family ministries
Family ID numbers; Daily Mass schedules
Font selection
Corrupted database file
Thanks
Unavailable dates, Saturday and Sunday counted as two separate dates
Unavailable dates; Saturday Vigil Mass being counted as "date"
Reports in order by date?
Miscellaneous questions
Problems with special Mass
Order of listing on sign-in sheets
Unfilled slots in schedule
Problems with clones

Family ministries

Cliff,

I am the chairperson for Eucharistic Ministers at our new parish. In my previous parish I used Excel to schedule the teams of E/Ms and now am responsible for working with other ministries to create our schedules.

I was thrilled in an Internet search to find CV Schedule. It seems to be the answer to my prayers. Haven't gotten into it much yet, but will tonight. I will let you know how it goes, but thanks a lot for your efforts.

Thanks for writing. Let me know if you need any assistance.

Best regards,
Cliff Leitch

Cliff, HELP!!

Well, I have gotten a file from our church database and manipulated it to put it in the right form for CV Schedule.

Our ground rules are that we want to assign family members to serve together, and there are no Mass preferences allowed. I set all mass preferences at "2" and all schedule codes at "A" with all partners empty. Families are never (? Well almost) scheduled together. All unavailable and must serve dates are blank, alternate ministries are blank, families have a family id, and member ID is an integer 1,2,3 etc.

What have I done wrong? Thanks for your help.

It sounds like the "Partners" field is the key to fixing your scheduling problem. The program has a lot of flexibility to control how families are scheduled and the partner groups control which family members will be always scheduled at the same Mass. (See the examples in sections 12.2 & 12.3 of the manual.)

Mass preferences at "2" and all schedule codes at "A" is OK.

Be sure each family has a unique "Family #".

Using 1,2,3,... instead of A,B,C,.. for "Fam memb ID" should be OK as long as you use the same characters in the "Partners" field.

Hope this helps!

Best regards,
Cliff

Thanks Cliff. If I am reading correctly then, I must include partner entries for the program to schedule family members together. Is that right? I thought that having them serve together was the default, and only needed to do that is some members served separately.

I tried entering partners for one family and it worked, but was hoping to avoid making the 350 partner entries, which unfortunately I can not figure out how to do automatically.

Thanks again for your help.

Yes you are right -- setting up partner groups is the only way to force all family members to serve together. The default, without partner groups, is to schedule family members independently except that any family members scheduled will be at only one Mass per date.

Best regards,
Cliff

Family ID numbers; Daily Mass schedules

Dear Cliff:

My fellow parishioner is out of town for several weeks (he has studied CVSCHED and knows much more how it works than I). For a trial, I've got the tentative September weekend and daily schedules printed out revealing a couple of things I'm not acquainted with. How may I view or print out the family ID numbers; I've had to add a couple of names since he left and don't know the next available number. Unfortunately he did not use the collection basket numbers, but invented his own. Do you suppose that I ought to go back in and use the church's assigned number?

The next thing I ran into was the daily schedules. I can't seem to find how to enter the days of the week when liturgists will or will not make themselves available. For his own use, he entered in the name field the day numbers, i.e. 2~6 = Monday through Saturday; 2~5 = Monday through Friday; 345 = Tue. Wed. Thu. etc. Obviously, the computer can't use that code. Does this mean that the only way to assign daily Masses is by manually changing the assignments in the word processor?

Thanks for your help.

Each time you modify the database, CV-Schedule automatically creates database listing files in the C:\CVSCHED directory named 1-PEOPLE.db, 2-PEOPLE.db, etc. You can open these with your Word Processor to view the ID numbers, etc. (Beware that you cannot make changes to this file -- for that you have to edit the Personnel Database from within CV-Schedule.)

There is no specific mechanism for selecting which weekdays someone is available. However, you could do this by setting up each weekday Mass (in the Masses Database, Chapter 10) as a different Mass. Example: enter the time of Monday's 8:30 AM Mass as "830M", Tuesday's as "830T", etc. These time designation will then appear in the Personnel Database (Chapter 12), and you can, for each volunteer, mark the Masses he/she is available for.

Hope this helps!
Cliff

I don't want to foul up the databases so it would be appreciated if you would confirm (or change) my understanding on how to proceed.

A. On the main menu, Marc has 3 headings filled out - 1. Sunday; 2. Daily #1; Daily #2. Starting in October we go back on the winter schedule of 8 and 10 AM Monday through Friday and 8AM on Saturday. He divided the daily Masses into the first through the 16th and dail #2 - 17th through the end of month.

B. As I understand your Email, I should probably go into Daily #1 deleting what Marc had done and start entering: Time Mo8 - days 2; time mo10 - days 2; tu8 - days 3; tu10 - days 3; we8 - days 4; we10 - days 4.

C. I believe that the limit is 10 so I would restart under "Daily #2: th8 - days 5; th10 - days 5 etc.

D. Assuming that after I've deleted the original data under Daily #1 and Daily #2, the personnel pages will then be ready to enter their individual preferences. So much for that!

I had great difficulty in revising schedules according to the wishes of the ministry heads when using the word processor, that I built templates in spreadsheets. My templates were built so that I can just copy a spreadsheet which contains (for daily Masses) headings for first day of the month on Monday, on Tuesday etc. so that I just delete the lines not for that month. Of course I had to enter manually the schedules which was quite easy since I copied to clipboard, 8AM for example and used the paste command into the proper cell. I also sorted to give me separate templates for EMs, lectors and servers. I printed using guide lines which made for very easy reading. I've used MSWorks.

Is there any way that you could add to your program so that schedules might be read directly into spreadsheets? That would be a great advantage.

Thanks ever so much for any advice you can give me.

Yes, if you want to schedule a different set of people for each daily Mass, what you say sounds correct.

I can't think of any way you could import the schedules into a spreadsheet. One thing that does help when editing the schedules in a word processor is to use "typeover" mode instead of "insert" mode. That way the spacing doesn't get messed up when you make a change.

Best regards,
Cliff

Your CVSCHED program apparently can only make RTF output files in the "modern courier" font. Although I have about 80 fonts, we don't seem to find anything compatible with it; therefore we cannot add or delete any of the assignments within the word processor. Would you please advise a solution to this problem?

As I understand the problem, you are able to make schedules and print them, but cannot change them with the word processor. Is that right? I don't have an exact answer, so let me ask for some more information that may help diagnose the problem:

Which operating system are you using: DOS, Windows 3.0, Windows 3.1, Windows 95?

Which word processor program are you using: WordPerfect, Microsoft Word, etc.? Which version number? Is it a DOS or Windows version?

What printer are you using? Make & model? Laser, ink jet or dot matrix? Is it a PostScript printer?

I have not yet been able to think of a reason why you would not be able to edit one of the files created by CV-Schedule. Maybe the above information will help. Meanwhile, here is some information about CV-Schedule that might help:

1) You can use the Formats Database (see Ch. 13 in the CV-Schedule manual) to change the font, font size, margins, etc. of the 3 files that CV-Schedule outputs.

2) The font MUST be a fixed-spacing font, like Courier, or the output files will print with crooked columns.

3) CV-Schedule does not "do anything" with the formatting information you put in the Formats Database except to copy it into the .RTF file for use by the word processor.

4) Once the files are imported to the word processor, you should be able to select the text and change the font & size to anything you want -- the same as with any other document.

5) All word processors designed for Windows 3.1 or later should support "Courier" font since it is a standard "True Type" font.

6) My church uses WordPerfect 6.0 for DOS and that works OK with CV-Schedule also.

7) I know that some of the older DOS word processors only support printer fonts and don't have a full set of standard fonts built in. If that is the case, it might take some experimentation to find a font & size that would work.

Please give me as much information as possible, and I will try to think of a solution.

Best regards,

Cliff

Thanks for your thoughtful response. I believe the answer lies in the fact that my associate was using MS Publisher rather than a regular word processor.

I've been leaving it up to him to develop the program for our use. However, since writing to you, I copied the file into MS WORKS and had no trouble with editing especially after changing the "insert" key.

Our July scheduling is now posted, so he will go ahead with August and September with my old setup as a backup until we get things running smoothly. One thing he is trying to workout is the four locations in the church where each of the four Eucharistic Ministers are assigned stations.

Thanks again.

Sorry you are having a problem with CV-Schedule. It sounds like the personnel database file has become corrupted for some reason. I think this may fix it:

1) Make a backup copy of 1-PEOPLE.DB (just in case)
2) Start CV-Schedule
3) Click "Personnel" to edit the personnel database
4) Delete the pages that cause the error message and any that are blank (click the "DEL" button or push the <F6key).
5) Click the "Save" button again

Hopefully that will fix the problem. You can now re-enter any people that were lost.

Note that the "Scheduling code & optional prefix" box on each page must contain an A,B,C,D or E followed by either a +, -, or blank. Anything else will cause the error message you saw.

Best regards,
Cliff

Thanks for writing! Let me know if you need any assistance with CV-Schedule.

Best regards, Cliff

We just downloaded your program and have a few questions.

What if people have several weekends that they are not available, weekends that are not consecutive? (For example, April 5-6, April 19-20, etc.) How do we note that?

Is there a way around a Saturday Vigil Mass being counted as "date"? Why are Saturday and Sunday counted as two separate dates and not one weekend?

Is there anyway to avoid someone being scheduled for more than one Mass per weekend? Apparently I have someone who is flexible and more available than other people and she was scheduled for our Vigil Mass and our Sunday night Mass every weekend? Is there any way to fix this? I tried the "E-" to schedule her less, but it only took her off one day.

Your advice would be most appreciated. Thanks for putting this together. We've been searching!

Thanks for writing about CV-Schedule.

Unfortunately, there is no way to set "unavailable" dates that are not consecutive.

I think there is a simple solution for your other two issues: Schedule the Saturday Vigil Mass as if it were on Sunday. We do that at our church and there is no confusion as long as the time is different from the Sunday Masses. (In the Regular Mass/Service database, enter the Day(s) as "1" instead of "7".)

Now each weekend will take up only one "date" and will all be in one column on the schedule. More importantly, this will prevent having any volunteer scheduled more than once in a weekend.

I hope this helps.

Best regards, Cliff

Unavailable dates; Saturday Vigil Mass being counted as "date"

We just downloaded your program and have a few questions. What if people have several weekends that they are not available, weekends that are not consecutive? (For example, April 5-6, April 19-20, etc.) How do we note that?

Is there a way around a Saturday Vigil Mass being counted as "date"? Why are Saturday and Sunday counted as two separate dates and not one weekend?

Is there anyway to avoid someone being scheduled for more than one Mass per weekend? Apparently I have someone who is flexible and more available than other people and she was scheduled for our Vigil Mass and our Sunday night Mass every weekend? Is there any way to fix this? I tried the "E-" to schedule her less, but it only took her off one day.

Your advice would be most appreciated. Thanks for putting this together. We've been searching!

Thanks for writing about CV-Schedule.

Unfortunately, there is no way to set "unavailable" dates that are not consecutive.

I think there is a simple solution for your other two issues: Schedule the Saturday Vigil Mass as if it were on Sunday. We do that at our church and there is no confusion as long as the time is different from the Sunday Masses. (In the Regular Mass/Service database, enter the Day(s) as "1" instead of "7".)

Now each weekend will take up only one "date" and will all be in one column on the schedule. More importantly, this will prevent having any volunteer scheduled more than once in a weekend.

I hope this helps.

Best regards,
Cliff Leitch

IS THERE ANY WAY THE REPORTS CAN COME OUT IN ORDER BY DATE.

I NEED TO DO 12 WEEKS AT A TIME AND THE DATES COME OUT OF SEQUENCE. AND THERE IS A SECOND LINE UNDER EACH NAME FOR SECOND READER. I DO NOT USE THIS CAN THIS BE REMOVED SO THE REPORT WILL NOT BE SO COFUSING. I HAVE AN IBM P133 WITH MSOFFICE. THE SCHEDULE LOOKS GOOD AND IT WAS EASY TO SET UP BUT CAN THE REPORTS BE MADE EASIER TO READ?

THANKS,

Thanks for writing about CV-Schedule.

It is normal for the schedules to be created in sequence by date (see Appendix VI in the Manual), so I must not understand the question. Can you give some more detail?

To get rid of the second line under the names, go to the Regular Mass/service database and erase anything that is in the "Suffix" columns for that ministry. Do the same with all pages of the the Special Mass/service database. When you create a new schedule the extra lines should be gone.

A less likely cause of the extra line could be that the lines on the schedule are too long for the printer, and are "spilling" onto the next line. If that is the case, set the margins wider or use a smaller font size to make the lines fit.

I hope this helps!

Best regards,

Cliff

Miscellaneous questions

See the answers below. Let me know if you need any more assistance.

Best regards,

Cliff Leitch

While browsing the net looking for a music database program to use at church, I ran across your program for scheduling volunteers....which is one of my responsibilities. I have read through the manual and have played with it a bit, but have some questions.

1) Are you working on a Windows version? If so, how soon will it be available?

No, I don't have any plans for a Windows version.
September 2008 - the Windows version has finally arrived!

2) We only need Communion Assistants every other Sunday...actually every odd Sunday of the month, unless it is a special Sunday (Easter, Pentecost, etc.). I can't figure out how to do this, if it is possible. I also need to schedule a different set of ushers for Communion Sundays.

It may be possible to schedule some exceptions like this by setting up special events (see 11.1 Setting Up the Special Mass/Service Database), but I don't think you would find it convenient for regular use.

3) We are used to seeing the schedule by date, not by ministry & person. I then publish a roster at the end. Any chance of getting this sort of format?

The sign-in sheets are by date. (see Appendix VI. Sample Schedule and Sign-In Sheet)

4) When doing the next round of schedules, does the program pick up where it left off the schedule before, or does it start over from the top of the list?

Yes, it picks up where it left off, giving priority to volunteers who have not been scheduled for the longest time.

5) I have people who can't serve on, say, the third Sunday of the month. Can this be handled?

This could be handled by Unavailable Dates (12.8), but may not be convenient for regular use.

1) My ushers serve as pairs, but not all of them are families. I could set them up as families, but don't know how that would affect the reader and communion assistant schedules.

I think you could set up the usher pairs as families and force them to serve together.

2) I have a rule that I CAN schedule an usher to read, but CANNOT schedule an usher to be communion assistant. And actually, I try to avoid having the reader and communion assistant be the same. Can this be accommodated?

The same volunteer is NEVER scheduled for more than one ministry per Mass/service, but you can allow that by entering the person twice in the Personnel Database, assigned to different ministries.

Problems with special Mass

I JUST SET UP A SPECIAL MASS FOR CHRISTMAS. I CAN NOT GET IT TO PUT THE PROPER MASS ASSIGNMENTS BY TIME. SOMEONE I SET UP FOR THE 400P MASS IS COMING OUT AT THE 900A MASS. WHAT CAN I LOOK AT TO FIX THIS. I PUT EVERYBODY UNDER CATEGORY F. OTHER THAN THAT IT SEEMS TO WORK FINE. CAN YOU HELP?

I think this is the explanation for the problem you are having with Special Masses:

The Special Masses are not scheduled according to the Times assignments for regular Masses that you have set up in the Personnel Database. Rather, the program picks from the pool of volunteers assigned to the same category as the special Mass. Thus, if your Christmas Mass is category "F", the program will choose from all volunteers who have "F" included in their Specials Categories in the Personnel Database. (The reason is that Special Masses may be at different times from regular Masses, and a different set of volunteers may be available.)

If you want to pick different volunteers for different Special Masses, you can assign a different category for each special Mass: "F" for 400P, "G" for 900A, etc. Then fill in the Special Categories in the Personnel Database to indicate which volunteers are available for which Special Masses.

I hope this helps!

Best regards,
Cliff

Order of listing on sign-in sheets

Dear Cliff:

Your church volunteer program is just what I've been looking for. I have managed to get most of it working and have some of my questions answered by reading your forum. I use the schedule print out only to take the names and transfer them to my own schedule in quatro pro because I have the ministry titles in the 1st column and the volunteers for the two Masses in the next 2 columns. This works fine but I have one problem. The Eucharistic Ministers are broken into 2 groups: 1 person as Team Captain and () people on Cup. I always want the team captain, who is always on the Body of Christ, to be at the top of the sign in list. It doesn't always turn out that way. Can you help?

Thanks for writing about CV-Schedule.

The sign in sheets are always in alphabetical order by last name, so there is no direct solution to the problem you are having. One possible solution is to set up 2 ministries, one for regular EM's and the other for captains. Then assign all the volunteers to both ministries and let CV-Schedule decide who will be the captain. Then they would be listed separately on the sign in sheet.

Our church has the same problem with lectors. The church secretary just manually marks on the sign-in sheet which lector has first reading and which has second. So, that is another possibility.

I hope this helps.

Best regards,
Cliff

Hi Cliff, Thanks

I am running Windows 95. WP is MS Word 97.

I loaded all the volunteers as prescribed. My first task was to run weekend Jan 2,00 which only has 4 masses. The following weeks the masses increase to five. So I set up to schedule the four masses of Jan. 2nd only.

The Message area, noted that I had a few slots unfilled. Two slots for ushers and three for Greeters. I then noted that one of the volunteer who is marked (X) for Greeter was not utilized. She is scheduled for one primary time (1) and secondary (2) for the other three masses. The volunteer is only marked for one duty, Greeter.

I have changed entries around but the only way I can get her to be scheduled is to change one of her mass time from (2) to (1).

I would appreciate any help you can give.

Sorry you are having problems.

I wasn't able to figure out exactly what is causing the problem, but here are some things to consider:

1) I notice you have used Scheduling code "A" in most cases in your database. With this code, ALL members of the partner group MUST be scheduled at a particular mass, or else NONE of them will be scheduled. Code "A" must be used with care as it can lead to situations where it is impossible to schedule some of the groups because not all members of the group are needed at a particular
mass.

2) When partner groups are used, all members MUST be given the same set of Times preferences: 1 for preferred mass(es) and 2 for others willing to serve. If this is not done, the results of the program may be unpredictable.

3) Families are never split between 2 masses on the same date. (If any family members serve on a particular date, all that serve will be assigned to the same mass.) Therefore, all family members should be given the same Times preferences also.

To fix the problem, you can try, in this order:
1) Be sure all family members and partner groups have the same Times preferences.
2) Try using scheduling code B or C instead of A for the families that are affected.
3) Delete partner groups if they are causing impossible scheduling situations.
4) Give family members different Family #'s if you want family members scheduled at more than one mass on a particular date.

At some point in this process, the scheduling problems should disappear. If you are still having problems, please write again.

I hope this helps.

Best regards,
Cliff Leitch

Hi Cliff,

I have a condition that I cannot find a solution for: I set-up CV-S with five ministries - Mass Coordinator, Usher, Greeter, Lector and Eucharistic Ministers. I have volunteers that take on some or all of these ministries with multiple mass times. The problem is that when I assign the ministries the volunteer ends up just serving one ministry at each mass or serving at two separate masses or at different times then their families.

The ministries are as such:
- Mass Coordinators can also be assigned to serve as Lector or Eucharistic Minister and not as Usher or Greeter.
- Ushers can not be assigned to any other ministry.
- Greeters can also be assigned to serve as Lector or Eucharistic Minister and not as Mass Coordinator or Usher.
- Lectors can also be assigned as Mass Coordinator or Greeter and not as Usher or Eucharistic Minister.
- Eucharistic Minister can also be assigned as Mass Coordinator or Greeter and not as Lector or Usher.

I assigned the ministries up as clones but this doesn't work out. I end up with the volunteer being assigned to multiple masses on the same week-end. More problems, when the family members signs up for multiple ministries at multiple mass times. I also tried using the Scheduling Code "D" but it did not help.

Since I have more slots to fill then volunteers it is important that I get as much use out of the volunteer as possible.

Thank you for the use of your program, as it is saving me a lot of aggravation and time. I could not do the assigning with pencil and paper.

The next-to-last paragraph may tell a lot of the problem. I wrote CV-S with the general assumption that there are more volunteers than slots at any given time.

When you clone volunteers, the two clones' schedules will be uncoordinated, as you found. If you put the two clones in the same
Family #, that should prevent them from serving more than one mass per day. Put them in a partner group with Scheduling Code B or A if you want more control. (Schedule all weekend masses as if they were on Sunday to prevent anyone having to serve on Saturday & Sunday both.)

Another possibility is to set up ministries as combinations rather than individually. For example ministry "Lect-coord" could be both mass coordinator and lector. Ministry "Lect-EM" could be both lector and Eucharistic minister. Volunteers could serve at any of these combination ministries that they are qualified for.

Best regards,
Cliff Leitch

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