Scheduling rules and limits
Every screen in the Ministry Scheduler that names a candidate — the board, automatic scheduling, self-signup, replacement invitations, trades — asks the same question of the same rules. This article is where those rules live: the parish-wide defaults, the family policies, the pairing rules, and the warnings you will see when one of them is stretched.
Turning the Ministry Scheduler on
Navigate to Admin Dashboard → Settings → Ministry Scheduling.
- Enable Ministry Scheduling turns the whole module on and makes the Ministry Scheduler menu appear.
- Enable volunteer portal lets volunteers use the self-service features — their schedule, availability, preferences, open positions, replacements, and trades.
Turn both on. The portal switch is disabled until Ministry Scheduling itself is enabled, and your saved portal choice is preserved if you toggle the master switch off and on again.
Turning off Ministry Scheduling hides the module for everyone, including ministry leaders. It does not delete anything, but volunteers lose access to their own schedules until it is turned back on.
Parish-wide defaults
The rest of the Ministry Scheduling settings page sets the defaults every ministry inherits.
Serving limits
| Setting | What it does |
|---|---|
| Maximum services per liturgical weekend | The most services one volunteer may serve across a Saturday-vigil-through-Sunday weekend. Leave blank for no parish-wide cap. |
| Minimum days between assignments | The shortest gap between one volunteer's assignments. Leave blank for no parish-wide minimum. |
| Week starts on | Sunday or Monday. Used by the schedule board's week paging and by weekend limits. |
A volunteer may set stricter limits for themselves in their own preferences, and the stricter one always wins. A volunteer cannot loosen a parish cap.
Replacements and trades
- Replacement mode — First to accept serves or A leader picks among volunteers. Each ministry can override this in the catalog.
- Trade approval — Leader review required or Complete automatically. With automatic completion, an agreed trade between two still-eligible volunteers goes through with no leader involved.
Both replacement requests and trades close shortly before a service starts — two hours by default — after which a volunteer must contact the parish office and the leader is notified.
Volunteer changes
Volunteer changes decides which volunteer edits apply right away and which arrive in the requests inbox for review. Four categories are set independently:
| Category | Sensible default |
|---|---|
| Availability | Apply right away — a volunteer knows when they are away. |
| Preferences | Apply right away. |
| Contact details | Send for review — these feed the parish directory. |
| Ministry membership | Send for review — joining and leaving a ministry is a leader's decision. |
Notices
- Reminder lead days — comma-separated days before a service, such as
3or7, 1. - Credential expiry notice lead days — comma-separated days before a credential expires, such as
30, 7. - Notification history retention (days) — how long completed notification and print records are kept.
Published names
Public name display sets the default for shared schedule links — Full names, First name + last initial, or Role counts only (no names). Each link can still choose its own policy. See Publishing and sharing schedules.
Fairness history
The fairness window controls how far back the scheduler looks when judging whether someone is over- or under-served. A longer window is more forgiving of a busy month; a shorter one reacts faster. If automatic scheduling refuses a run because the scope has too much history to evaluate, shorten this window.
Family scheduling
Families are scheduled as families, not as unrelated individuals who happen to share a surname. Open a household under Admin Dashboard → Households and use the Family scheduling panel.
When several family members serve offers five modes:
| Mode | Effect |
|---|---|
| No preference | The family is not treated specially. |
| Prefer the same service | The scheduler tries to place them together. |
| Require the same service | They must be placed together or not at all. |
| Prefer different services | The scheduler tries to spread them out. |
| Require different services | They must not be at the same service. |
Apply across the whole weekend decides the scope. When on, a Saturday vigil and the next morning's Mass count as one occasion; when off, the rule applies only within the same service.
Two further settings:
- Most services this family serves in one weekend — a household-level weekend cap, or No limit.
- Keep an adult free — blocks scheduling that would leave young children in this family unattended during a service. Set how many adults who must stay free and the age below which a child counts.
Require the same service is the setting most parishes actually want for a family with young servers — it means the parents are at the same Mass rather than making two trips. Use Prefer rather than Require if the family is flexible; a hard requirement that cannot be met simply removes them from consideration entirely.
Paired volunteers
Some rules are about two specific people rather than a whole family — a parent who accompanies a young server, two siblings who serve together, two people who should not be scheduled side by side. Record those under Admin Dashboard → Ministry Scheduler → Ministries, on the Attributes tab, in Paired volunteers.
- Click Add rule.
- Choose the First person and the Second person.
- Choose the Rule: Prefer together, Must serve together, Prefer apart, or Must not serve together.
- Choose a Why: Spouses, Parent and child, Siblings, Caregiver, Mentor and trainee, or Other.
A pairing rule takes precedence over the family's general setting. Click End rule to retire one.
"Must not serve together" is a real pastoral tool and it is worth using rather than quietly working around. Recording it once means every screen honors it — the board, automatic scheduling, self-signup, and replacement invitations — instead of one leader remembering and the next one not.
Roles one person may combine
By default nobody holds two roles at the same service. Exceptions are recorded parish-wide under Ministries → Roles → Roles one person may combine, and are covered in Ministries, roles, and members.
Reading the warnings
When a candidate carries a warning, Sacramentum names the reason in plain language. These are the ones you will see most:
| Warning | What it means |
|---|---|
| You marked this service time as one you prefer to avoid | The volunteer ranked this service as Rather not. |
| This is closer to your other assignments than your spacing preference | The minimum-days-between rule is being stretched. |
| This would exceed the weekend serving cap | The parish or personal weekend cap is being exceeded. |
| Your household would serve more this weekend than its limit | The family's weekend cap is being exceeded. |
| This position prefers a qualification you do not have | An attribute the position prefers — captain, experienced — is missing. |
| You marked this time unavailable after being scheduled | The volunteer added an unavailability after the assignment was made. |
| You already serve in another role at this same service | A double role that a combination rule permits. |
| You declined an earlier invitation for this service | They said no to a replacement invitation for this same service. |
| Your household normally serves together, and this would split you up | A family rule set to Prefer is being bent. |
A warning is not a refusal. A leader can assign over any of them, optionally recording a reason, and the override is kept with the assignment. Hard blocks — an archived membership, a missing required credential, a Require-strength family rule — are not overridable from the board; they need the underlying fact to change.
The layers automatic scheduling reports
When automatic scheduling cannot fill a position, it names the layer where the candidate pool ran out. Those layers map to this article as follows:
| Layer | Where it comes from |
|---|---|
| membership | Status, scheduling mode, and validity dates on the roster. |
| qualifications | Role qualification policy, attributes, and required credentials. |
| availability | The volunteer's own unavailable dates. |
| overlapping services | Already serving at an overlapping service. |
| serving limits | Weekend caps and minimum spacing, parish or personal. |
| household rules | Family scheduling mode, household weekend cap, keep-an-adult-free. |
| scheduling mode | Substitute only, manual only, preassigned only. |
See Automatic scheduling.
Troubleshooting
Nobody is eligible for anything
Check the parish-wide caps first. A Maximum services per liturgical weekend of 1 combined with a Minimum days between assignments of 14 will empty most parish rosters. Loosen the parish defaults and let individual volunteers set their own stricter limits instead.
A family is never scheduled
Their household policy is probably set to Require the same service with a rule that cannot be satisfied — for example, a family whose members are enrolled in ministries that never serve at the same Mass. Change it to Prefer the same service.
A volunteer's own limit is being ignored
It is not — the stricter of the two always wins. If the parish cap is 2 per weekend and the volunteer's is 1, they will not be scheduled twice. If it is the other way around, the parish cap holds.
Settings changes did not affect an existing schedule
Rules are applied when an assignment is made or validated, not retroactively. Run Validate on the schedule to see which existing assignments the new rules would flag.
What's next
- Automatic scheduling — how these rules shape a proposal
- The requests inbox — where volunteer changes go for review
- Ministry reports — see fairness and conflicts across a season
Related articles
- Ministries, roles, and members — memberships, credentials, and role combinations
- Households — where family scheduling policy is set
- Your serving preferences — the personal limits volunteers set
- Settings reference — the rest of the parish settings