How Teams works
Teams is where you run your volunteers: Worship, Kids, Production, Hospitality, Parking, and anyone else who serves. Each team has its own positions (Drums, Room Leader, Greeter), and you schedule people into those positions for each plan, like “Sunday 9:00 AM”. Volunteers answer from the Teams app or right from the email or text we send them.
It also covers recruiting with sign-ups, a song library and run sheet for worship, clearances like background checks, and check-in so you know who actually showed up.
How it works
- Create a team and give it positions.
- Add people to the team, with the positions they serve in.
- Make plans on the Schedule, one at a time or a run of them from a gathering.
- Fill the spots yourself with Find someone, or let Auto-fill draft them, then Send the requests.
- Volunteers say yes, maybe, or no. If someone says no, auto-replace asks the next best person and tells the team’s leaders.
- On the day, volunteers check in when they arrive, and Reports show who served.
The Teams pages
| Page | What it’s for |
|---|---|
| Overview | What needs attention, how full the next 4 weeks are, and milestones worth a thank-you. |
| Teams | Every team. Create teams and sub-teams. |
| A team’s page | Members, positions, sub-teams, files, docs, settings, and history for one team. |
| Schedule | Plans across the top, positions down the side. Create plans, auto-fill, and send requests. |
| Plan Weeks | People down the side, weeks across the top, so you can spread the load fairly. |
| Plans | One plan: who’s serving, the times, the event, files, and docs. |
| Run sheet | The order of service for a plan, with songs, lengths, and notes for each team. |
| Sign-Ups | Event shifts, open spots, and Open Sign-Ups for people to join teams. |
| Songs | Your song library, with charts, arrangements, and rehearsal audio. |
| Clearances | Background checks, training, and policies people need before they serve. |
| Check-in poster | A QR code volunteers scan to check in. |
| Reports | Attendance, responses, fill rate, load, sign-ups, clearances, and song usage. |
To learn what volunteers see and when, read Requests, answers, and auto-replace.
Who can use Teams
Teams is in the dashboard menu for everyone. To open it, a user needs a Teams permission. An admin turns these on in Users & permissions, under Teams:
| Permission | What it allows |
|---|---|
| Teams and schedules | The whole Teams section, for every team: teams, members, plans, schedules, sign-ups, songs, and reports. |
| Teams admin (settings, every team) | Everything in Teams and schedules, plus everything in Clearances. |
| Clearances (background checks) | Sending clearance invites, recording and reviewing results, and setting up requirements and providers. Give it along with Teams and schedules. Without it, people see only who’s cleared. |
There’s nothing to turn on in Features: Teams isn’t one of the switches there.
Where volunteers answer
Volunteers use the Teams app on iPhone, iPad, and Android, or teams.culminate.life in any browser. They sign in with the same Culminate Life account they use for your church app. There they answer requests, add blackout dates, see the run sheet and charts, check in, sign up for spots, and chat with their team. See the Teams app guide.
People who don’t have the app still get every request by email (and by text, if your church texts people), and can answer with one tap.