Service requirements
A service requirement answers one question for one service: who does this Mass need? Two lectors, four altar servers, six extraordinary ministers, one sacristan. Once you have written that down for the 10:00 Sunday Mass, every future occurrence of that Mass inherits those positions, and building a schedule becomes a matter of filling them rather than remembering them.
Before you begin
- Your ministries and roles must already exist. See Ministries, roles, and members.
- The Mass schedules you want to staff must already exist under Admin Dashboard → Masses. Service requirements attach to those schedules; they do not create them. See Managing schedules.
The Service Requirements page
Navigate to Admin Dashboard → Ministry Scheduler → Service Requirements. The page lists every requirement you have created, showing the service it covers, the roles it staffs, and how many positions each occurrence produces.
Creating a service requirement
- Click New service requirement.
- Under Which service?, choose the Mass schedule this requirement staffs. Choose Not a recurring service (one-off events only) if you are staffing something that is not on a recurring schedule — a wedding, a funeral, a parish mission.
- The Name fills in automatically from the service you chose. Click Rename if you want something more descriptive.
- Under Ministers needed, click Add a role for each role this service needs, and for each one set:
- Role — which role fills these positions.
- How many — the number of positions at every occurrence.
- Priority — Required, Important, or Optional (explained below).
- Volunteers may sign up — No, Yes, or Yes, with approval.
- Required credentials — any certification a person must hold to fill this position.
- Click Preview to see what the requirement will produce on the next occurrences of the service.
- Save the requirement.
Positions are created per occurrence, not per schedule. A requirement of four altar servers on a Mass celebrated every Sunday produces four positions every Sunday, for as long as schedules keep covering those dates.
Priorities
Priority tells the scheduler — and you — which gaps actually matter.
| Priority | What it means |
|---|---|
| Required | Filled first. If a required position is still open, the service is flagged as short-handed, and the schedule cannot be published without acknowledging it. |
| Important | Filled after required positions. An open Important position is visible but does not block publication. |
| Optional | Filled only if people are left over. |
A typical Sunday Mass has one lector as Required and the second as Important; four servers where two are Required and two Optional; and the full complement of extraordinary ministers as Required because Communion cannot be distributed without them.
Letting volunteers sign themselves up
Each role in a requirement carries its own Volunteers may sign up setting:
- No — the position is filled only by a leader, a team, a standing arrangement, or automatic scheduling.
- Yes — an eligible volunteer who claims the position is assigned immediately.
- Yes, with approval — the volunteer's claim arrives in the Requests inbox as a sign-up waiting for a leader's decision.
Volunteers see the positions they may claim in Sacramentum Go under Serve → Open positions. Sacramentum only offers them positions they are actually eligible for, so a volunteer never sees a slot they would be refused.
Self-signup is the single biggest labor saver in the whole scheduler, and it works best when you start narrow. Turn it on for one or two roles where the parish is comfortable with whoever volunteers — ushers, greeters, choir — and leave it off for the roles you want a leader's eye on.
Required credentials
Under Required credentials, add the certification keys a person must hold to fill this position — safe_environment is the common one. Use a lowercase key made of letters, numbers, and underscores, and use the same key you record on the members' credentials.
The constraint is enforced everywhere: a volunteer without a current, unrevoked credential of that type cannot be assigned by a leader, cannot claim the position, cannot be placed by automatic scheduling, and cannot accept a replacement invitation for it.
Previewing what a requirement creates
Click Preview on any requirement to see the next occurrences of the service and the positions they will produce. This is the fastest way to catch a requirement pointed at the wrong Mass schedule, and it is worth doing before you build your first schedule of a season.
If an occurrence has been changed for a particular day — a holy day with extra ministers, a Mass moved to a different church — the preview marks it Changed for this day.
Editing and retiring a requirement
Edit a requirement at any time. Changes apply to positions generated from then on; positions that already exist in a schedule keep what they had until you regenerate them.
Reducing a role's count is deliberately careful. Once a position has been scheduled, it cannot simply be deleted — Sacramentum sets How many to 0 to retire it instead, and positions already assigned keep their history. If a filled position blocks a reduction, release the assignment first, then reduce the count.
To stop using a requirement entirely, archive it. Archiving stops it from generating new positions and leaves everything it produced in the past untouched.
Changing a requirement after a schedule has generated its positions puts that schedule out of step. Sacramentum flags this at validation time as Staffing requirements changed after positions were generated. Regenerate the schedule's positions to bring it back in line.
Standing arrangements
Under each requirement you will find Standing arrangements — the recurring commitments that place a person or a team on this service automatically whenever a schedule is built. The Herrera family always takes the Saturday vigil; the Tuesday crew covers the first Tuesday of every month.
Standing arrangements are covered in full in Teams and standing arrangements.
Troubleshooting
A schedule generated no positions
The most common cause is that no service requirement covers the Masses in the schedule's date range. Check that a requirement exists for each Mass schedule you expected to staff, that it is not archived, and that its Which service? points at the right Mass schedule. The schedule's Skipped occurrences list names the reason for each occurrence it passed over.
Positions were created for a Mass that was cancelled
They were not — cancelled occurrences are skipped, and the schedule records the reason as The Mass is cancelled. If a Mass is cancelled after positions were generated, the positions are withdrawn and the assignments are reversed when the schedule next reconciles.
I cannot lower the number of positions
A position in that role is already filled. Release the assignment on the schedule board, then lower the count. If the role is no longer used at all, set How many to 0 to retire it.
What's next
- Teams and standing arrangements — record the commitments that repeat
- Building a schedule — generate positions and fill them
- Automatic scheduling — have Sacramentum propose the assignments
Related articles
- Ministries, roles, and members — the roles a requirement draws on
- Managing schedules — the Mass schedules requirements attach to
- Open positions — what self-signup looks like to a volunteer