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Information about “MINISTER ASSIGN PROGRAM”
MINISTER helps you schedule readers, altar boys, communion ministers,
head ushers, and greeters for the Catholic Mass.
The scheduling process takes into account the preferences of the
people scheduled, vacations, and assignments of other family members.
The schedule is suitable for inclusion in the church bulletin. It can
handle up to 600 people and any reasonable number of masses. Schedule
Sunday masses, weekday masses, and special masses that appear on an
irregular basis, such as Christmas and Easter.
Schedule an additional minister-type schedule of your own definition.
Display and print labels, phone lists for substitutes, or the entire
database.
FILE0954.TXT
Disk No: 954
Disk Title: Minister Assign Program
PC-SIG Version: S2.0
Program Title: Minister Assign Program
Author Version: 5.7
Author Registration: $95.00
Special Requirements: None.
MINISTER helps you schedule readers, altar boys, communion
ministers, head ushers, and greeters for the Catholic Mass.
The scheduling process takes into account the preferences of the people
scheduled, vacations, and assignments of family members. The schedule
is suitable for inclusion in the church bulletin. It can handle up to
600 people and any reasonable number of masses. Schedule Sunday masses,
weekday masses, and special masses, such as Christmas and Easter, that
appear irregularly.
Schedule an additional minister-type schedule of your own definition.
Display and print labels, phone lists for substitutes, or the entire
database.
PC-SIG
1030D East Duane Avenue
Sunnyvale Ca. 94086
(408) 730-9291
(c) Copyright 1989, 1990 PC-SIG, Inc.
GO.TXT
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║ <<<< Disk No. 954 MINISTER ASSIGN PROGRAM >>>> ║
╠═════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════╣
║ ║
║ To print the installation instructions and documentation for ║
║ MINISTER, type: COPY MPMANUAL.TXT PRN (press enter) ║
║ ║
║ ║
║ Please Note: The THI USER LIBRARY has been moved to disk #1114 ║
║ due to space limitations. We apologize for the inconvenience. ║
║ ║
╚═════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════╝
(c) Copyright 1990, PC-SIG Inc.
MPMANUAL.TXT
Liturgical Minister Assignment Program
Version 5.7
Jun 1990
Manual Revision 10 Jun 1990
Written by : Tom Hayes
940 Heather Lane
Hoffman Estates, IL 60195
708-884-0514
If you find this package useful in coordinating your
minister staff a registration fee of $30 is expected.
See the end of this manual for registration information
and a registration form. Help for registered users is
available from the author at the above address and
number evenings between 7:00 - 10:00 pm central time
and on weekends.
Chapter 1
Introduction
The Minister Assign Program was designed to lighten the
task of coordinating and assigning ministers for the various
functions at Sunday or weekly liturgies. The program allows
a parish to assign liturgical ministers (Servers, Lectors,
Eucharistic Ministers, Ushers, Head Ushers, Greeters and an
additional ministry of your choosing) in a chronological
fashion but still give full attention to an individual
minister's time schedule and changing Mass schedules by
incorporating the following features:
1. A minister can specify "Bad Days" of the week where he
or she is unable to serve because of work or other
commitments. The minister will never be scheduled on
these days.
2. If a minister is going to be on vacation for a period
of time, the "return to service" date can be specified
before which no assignments will be given him or her.
3. A similar scheme is adopted when the minister is to be
away for just one weekend in a month. The "away"
weekend is noted and no assignments are made for this
person at any time during that week.
4. If a family contains more than one minister,
individual family members are never scheduled at
different times on the same weekend.
5. A minister can select a "preferred" mass at which to
serve. This selection can be "Adamant" or not. If
the selection is adamant this means that if the
minister's requested mass is not available, an
alternate assignment will not be made. If the
minister is not adamant, the same attempt will be made
to give the minister the requested mass but, if it is
not available, another mass will be assigned.
6. A minister can also specify up to three "Bad Masses",
that is, a particular mass or group of masses that he
or she cannot serve. This is to allow for people who
might be staffing the nursery or performing some other
ministry at a particular time each week.
Minister Assign Program V5.7 Introduction
7. If a person serves in more than one ministry, say,
Lector and Eucharistic Minister, assignments will not
be made any more frequently for this person, but they
will be rotated among the ministries for which the
person is commissioned. So, if on one week a person
serves as a Lector, the next time this person is to
serve an assignment as a Eucharistic Minister will be
attempted. The person may get a lector assignment
again if a Eucharistic Minister Assignment is not
available, however.
8. For each mass in your schedule you are able to specify
the number of ministers of each type that should be
assigned. This feature is helpful at my church since
an extra Eucharistic Minister is assigned to bring the
Eucharist to the choir loft for the one mass the choir
is present. (Interesting note: The choir loft is
occupied only if the choir is singing and then only by
the choir. The fire marshall will not permit general
occupancy of the loft because there is access by only
one staircase. I suppose it's OK for the choir to be
trapped by the fire...).
9. The program is able to handle weekday as well as
Sunday masses. It is possible to assign different
groups of people to each mass, for example, the grade
school servers can be assigned the daily masses and
the high school boys the weekend masses by simply
defining each server's "bad days" appropriately.
10. The program is able to accept "temporary" masses, that
is, masses that are not part of the normal weekly
schedule such as special Holy Days. The "temporary"
mass record is stored with the other masses and
automatically deleted when the date of the mass
passes.
11. The assignments are made monthly but the assignments
are actually computed on a weekly basis within that
month. No person will ever get more than one
assignment in any week even if an assignment goes
unfilled. For the purpose of accomodating the
Saturday evening Anticipatory Liturgy, a week is
defined as running from Saturday to Friday. To assure
that complete weekends are assigned, the program will
include days from the forthcoming month to maintain a
complete Saturday to Friday assignment block.
12. The assignments for each month are written to
individual weekly files (for example,the assignments
for the second week in November, 1987 are written to a
- 2 -
Minister Assign Program V5.7 Introduction
file named "NOV87-2.SKD") so that they may be easily
merged with the file containing the copy for the
weekly bulletin to eliminate the necessity of retyping
the assignments.
13. Single line "telephone number" listings of the
ministers can be displayed or written to a file for
later printing for distribution as minister substitute
lists. This listing can include all the ministers or
be sorted by ministry.
14. Likewise, complete information for each minister, such
as name, address, mass preference, ministry(ies), bad
days, etc. can be displayed or listed as above.
15. A new feature for version 5 is the addition of the
ministries of Head Usher and Greeter. Realizing that
people might mature slowly into a position of
responsibility, the Head Usher is separately defined
and a separately scheduled ministry. The ministry of
Greeter is different from the other ministries in that
you have the option of assigning the greeters
individually in exactly the same fashion as the other
ministers or as complete family units. Some churches
like the idea of using complete families as greeters
vs. individuals and you can choose which scheme you
wish to follow.
- 3 -
Minister Assign Program V5.7 Getting Started
Chapter 2
Getting Started
The diskette you have contains the following files:
1. Mp.exe - the minister assign program.
2. MpConfig.exe - A "start up" program to set default
drives and names.
3. MpManual.txt - This user's manual.
4. Mp.Hlp - The on-line help file.
5. MpPrint - A program to print the files the "MP"
program generates.
6. MpCnv4-5.exe - A program to convert version 4 data to
version 5.
The first thing you should do is make a copy of the
diskette you received and always work from the copy. After
all, you paid cash money for my program (I hope!) and it
would be a shame to have your computer "eat" the only copy
of the program you have. There are three sections below
labelled "One diskette drive", "Two diskette drives" and
"Hard Disk". Pick the section that corresponds to the
configuration of your computer and follow the instructions
there.
One diskette Drive
- Insert your MS-DOS diskette, the one you put in when
you first turn your computer on and type "Format"
followed by a carriage return. This will tell the
computer that you want to prepare a new diskette to
receive information (files) that you are about to copy
to it.
-
DOS will tell you
- 4 -
Minister Assign Program V5.7 Getting Started
"INSERT A NEW DISKETTE FOR DRIVE A
AND PRESS ANY KEY WHEN READY"
- Take out the DOS disk and insert a new blank diskette
in your disk drive and then press a carriage return.
<cr>
- After format is done, the computer will ask "Format
another (y/n)?" Just type "n" for "no" and press a
<cr>.
- You are now ready to copy all the minister files from
the program diskette to the new, blank one you just
formatted.
- Remove the new blank disk from the drive and re-insert
your MS-DOS diskette into the drive.
- Type the command "DISKCOPY" and a <cr>.
- DOS will prompt you with the following instructions on
how to copy a diskette. (For the narrative to follow,
the "source" diskette is the original one with the
minister program on it and the "target" diskette is the
new, blank one you just formatted.)
"INSERT SOURCE DISKETTE IN DRIVE A"
"PRESS ANY KEY WHEN READY"
Press any key. The computer will read as much of the
diskette as it can and then ask you
"INSERT TARGET DISKETTE IN DRIVE A"
"PRESS ANY KEY WHEN READY"
Swap the diskettes, putting the target diskette in the
drive and then press <cr>.
- This scenario will repeat several times as DOS asks you
first to put the source diskette in the drive where it
will read a portion of it then ask you to put the
target diskette in so it can write the information it
just read back to the target diskette.
- The amount of swapping back and forth you do depends on
the number of files on the diskette and the amount of
memory in your computer.
- After copying, DOS will ask you if you want to make
another copy. Just type "N" and press the carriage
return.
- 5 -
Minister Assign Program V5.7 Getting Started
- Jump down to the section after "Hard Disk"
Two Diskette Drives
- Insert your MS-DOS diskette in drive "A", (the diskette
and the drive you use when you first turn on your
computer).
- Type "FORMAT B:"
- DOS will tell you to "INSERT A NEW DISKETTE IN DRIVE B
AND PRESS ANY KEY WHEN READY". Put a new, blank
diskette in drive b and press any key. (I usually
press the carriage return, <cr>.) The drive will turn
while the computer prepares the new diskette to accept
information (files).
- When done DOS will ask "FORMAT ANOTHER (Y/N?)" to which
you should type "n" for "No" and press <cr>.
- Take out your DOS disk from the "A" drive and replace
it with the original diskette with my minister program
on it. You should now have the minister program
diskette in drive "A" and the new, blank, formatted
diskette in drive "B".
- Type "COPY A:*.* b:" (Don't type the quotes.) Also,
make sure you did type the colon after the "B". This
tells DOS to copy all of the files on the "A" drive to
the "B" drive with the same file names. If you omit
the colon, DOS assumes that you want to copy all of the
files on the "A" drive to one big file called "B",
located on the "A" drive. (Not quite the same thing!)
- After the copying is completed you can put your MS-DOS
diskette and the original program diskette away and put
the copy you just made in the "A" drive.
Hard Disk
- You probably should create a new directory on your hard
disk to store all your minister data. To create a new
directory type "MKDIR \MP". This will create a new
directory on your hard disk with the name MP (For
Minister Program).
- 6 -
Minister Assign Program V5.7 Getting Started
- Then type "CD \MP" to change your working directory to
the new minister directory you just created. This is
probably a good time to mention the DOS command,
"PROMPT". If you are not familiar with it take the time
to read about it in your DOS book. The command lets
you change the DOS prompt "C>" to something else if you
want. If you type "PROMPT $P$G" the DOS prompt will
show you the name of your current directory. So after
changing to the newly created "MP" directory, the
prompt should read "C\MP>". This just gives you a
better idea of where you are on your disk.
- Put the minister program diskette in drive "A" and type
"COPY A:*.* c:". This will copy all the files from the
diskette in the "A" drive to the newly created
directory on your hard disk.
- Put the original minister diskette in a safe place.
- If you do not know what I'm talking about with
"directories on your hard disk" ask the people where
you bought your computer or read the DOS Manual.
- Remember the command "CD" is to change directories on
your hard disk. A directory name always begins with a
backslash "\", so in the future any time you want to
run the Minister Program you have to change to the
minister directory, MP, first with the command, "CD
\MP". To get back to the original directory, called the
"root" directory, type "CD \". The "root" directory has
no name so you use the backslash by itself.
Everybody
To be a competent PC operator you should be familiar with
the following DOS commands since you will need to use
them in running this and other programs on your PC.
COPY, DATE, DEL, DIR, DISKCOPY, FORMAT, PRINT (more on
this one later), PROMPT, TIME, TYPE. Take the time to
read about them.
At this time you should be ready to run the programs.
For you floppy users, (I mean floppy disk users) you should
have the copy of the diskette you just made in the "A"
drive. The hard disk people should be in the "MP"
directory. The first thing you have to do is run a program
called "MpConfig" which is going to ask you some questions
about your computer, your name and the name of your church.
You only have to run this program once, or when some
- 7 -
Minister Assign Program V5.7 Getting Started
information that you entered changes. So type the command:
MpConfig
After typing "MpConfig", the configuration program will load
and ask you for the name of your church, your name, and the
letter of the drive you want the program to use to store
your minister and mass data, and store the reports that the
program generates and a few other things. This program will
create a file called "MpConfig.dat" that will store the
information you are about to enter.
The church name you enter (up to 20 characters are
permitted) will be printed on the header of the minister
reports generated by the "Mp" program. Your name is used to
address you, the prime user of the program. It is not
uncommon to use a cute name like "Your Highness". After all,
no one will see it but you.
You will then be asked on what drive you wish to store
your data. The program checks the computer to see what
drives exist and will only let you use legal drive letters.
A new option has been added to this query, that of "Default
Drive", selected with the option "0". The default drive is
the one shown as the DOS prompt. "A>" or "C>" is typical.
Choosing this option will have the Minister Program attempt
to read and write to whatever drive happens to be the
default drive at the time you start the program. Please
note that the file "MpConfig.dat" that is generated by the
"MpConfig" program must be on your default drive when you
run "MP".
The program will query you for a default telephone area
code that it will automatically add to the beginning of each
minister's telephone number. Next, you will be asked for a
default number of servers, Eucharistic Ministers, Lectors,
Ushers, Head Ushers and Greeters that should be assigned to
each mass. The numbers you type are simply initial values
assigned to each mass as the mass information is entered.
It is a simple matter to change the number of ministers
assigned to a mass on a mass by mass basis from the main
program if different masses have different staffing
requirements.
You will then be asked if greeters should be assigned
by family or individually. If greeters are assigned by
family, on weekends where a family is chosen as a greeting
family, no one in that family will receive any other
assignment. A yes or no will set this parameter. Please
note that if you choose the "family" option, the number of
greeters that you enter as the number to be assigned at each
- 8 -
Minister Assign Program V5.7 Getting Started
mass will refer to the number of families NOT the number of
individuals. You may have to alter your "Greeter" numbers
somewhat as a result.
My program also permits you to define your own ministry
that you would want to be included in the assignment
scheduling process. The name of this ministry can be up to
nine letters long but it cannot start with one of the
letters used as names for the other ministries, that is, S,
E, G, H, L, or U (for Server, Eucharistic minister, Greeter,
Head-usher, Lector, or Usher). Some suggestions for
additional ministries might be Traffic, Cantor,
Refresh(ment), or A/V (Sound cannot be used because it
begins with "S"). If you do not want to define an additional
ministry just press the carriage return, <cr>, to bypass
this option.
There is another question that has to do with the type
of monitor, b/w or color, that you will be using with the
program. Although the program can sense if you are using a
color card or a monochrome card, it has no way of knowing if
you are using a b/w monitor with a color card. What would
happen is that the program would "think" you were using a
color monitor and adjust the display accordingly. Using a
b/w monitor with a color card would make text hard to read.
With this new option you can explicitly state what kind of
display you would prefer.
The "MpConfig" program will then ask for city
abbreviations. There is a feature in the "Mp" program used
when entering your minister's names and addresses that will
allow you to use an abbreviation for the city. Usually, the
ministers all live in a few surrounding towns, so a small
list of city abbreviations cuts down on the typing you have
to do to enter your minister data into the program. By
entering a city abbreviation defined in the "MpConfig"
program the "Mp" program will look up the city, state and
zip code and enter them in the appropriate spaces in the
minister record. Up to 10 one or two character
abbreviations are permitted. Please note that the case of
the abbreviation is significant. "P" is a different
abbreviation than "p". I originally wrote this program while
living in Champaign, IL, a town with 2 zip codes, 61821 and
61820. So I made the city abbreviations "c1" and "c0"
respectively.
Once you are done answering the questions in "MpConfig"
and optionally adding city abbreviations, exit "MpConfig" by
typing "E" which will create the "MpConfig.dat" file on the
default drive and return you to the MS-DOS "A>" prompt (Or
whatever your default drive letter is).
- 9 -
Minister Assign Program V5.7 Getting Started
From now on you do not have to run "MPConfig" again
unless you want to change some of the information you
entered, like your name or perhaps to add another city
abbreviation. You can simply start right here by running
the minister program, MP. To start the Minister program
type:
Mp
When the program loads for the first time you will be warned
that some files are missing. This is normal. The program
is looking for the files, "MpMin.dat" containing the
minister data and "MpMass.dat" with the mass data for your
church and, of course, you have not entered any minister or
mass data yet. Just say you want to continue by typing "y".
Important note for version 4 users !
If you are upgrading from version 4 to version 5 you
need to run the upgrade program "Mpcnv4-5" before you
continue. There is a change in the file structure of the
Mass data file, "MpMass.dat" to allow for the listing of the
three additional ministries, Head-Usher, Greeter, and the
self-defined ministry. Run the upgrade program by typing
"MpCnv4-5". The conversion program will ask you for the
drive letter containing the data file "MpMass.dat". After
that it will rename the current data file to "OldMass.dat"
and create the new version of "MpMass.dat" where the old one
was. If you do not do this before running "MP" the old mass
data will be unreadable and version 5.0 of "MP" might
destroy the "Preferred Mass" data from your minister data
file. If you have any questions write or call me first. It
is always a good idea to back up your data files onto
another disk so if something goes wrong during the data
conversion process you can always re-create your data
files. If you are starting out directly with version 5.0
and do not have any 4.0 data files around you can ignore the
above paragraph and any references to the "Mpcnv4-5"
program.
If you don't know how to back-up your files (make
safety copies of them) it's back to the DOS book to study
the COPY command.
After the opening block, which will show you the
current date, current time, and the version number of your
program, (not to mention my name, address and phone number)
the program will display the main menu.
- 10 -
Minister Assign Program V5.7 Getting Started
These are your Minister commands, Your Highness (or whatever...)
Minister count = 0
A - Add new minister
B - Bad Days Checking (On/Off)
C - Change minister information
D - Delete a minister
E - Exit this program and update files
H - See this command Listing again
H<command> - Help with a specific command
L - Last Served Date Change Utility
M - Mass schedule changes
Q - Quit program...no updates
R - Reports and Lists
S - Scheduler
U - Update Minister & Mass Records - NO EXIT
Enter Minister Command ('H' for Help) -> _
This entire program is menu driven and contains three
menus. This one, the "Minister" menu, offers the most
choices of actions. The other two menus, "Reports" and
"Mass", will not be used as frequently. The "Reports" menu
enables you to generate listings of the ministers, sorted by
ministry, either in a one line format with telephone
numbers, and the minister's "preferred mass", if any,
suitable for duplication and sending to your ministers as up
to date substitute lists, or mailing labels, or complete
hard copy of all the information stored for each minister as
the ultimate back up.
Another report is a listing of the mass preferences
indicated by each minister and whether they are adamant
about that selection or not. (Don't panic, Adamant mass
selection is explained later.) To select a particular
action type the letter of your choice and press the carriage
return key (sometimes called the "Enter" key and abbreviated
throughout this documentation by <cr>. Remember, when you
read to type "<cr>" it means a carriage return and not the
characters "<cr>". {I thought this was obvious but you would
be surprised at how many people type everything, the left
and right brackets, the c & r characters and the double
quotes!} {Another question I receive from PC newcomers is
in response to the "Press any key to continue" prompt.
- 11 -
Minister Assign Program V5.7 Getting Started
There is no key on the PC keyboard called the "Any" key.
Usually the space bar or carriage return will work just
fine.}
- 12 -
Minister Assign Program V5.7 Entering Mass Information
Chapter 3
Entering Mass Information
The first thing you should do is to enter your mass
schedule. To do this select item "M", Mass Schedule Changes
and press the <cr>. You will be greeted with a new menu like
this:
These are your Mass editing commands :
A - Add a Temporary or Permanent Mass to schedule.
C - Change # of Ministers to assign to a mass.
D - Delete a mass.
H - See this menu again.
E - Exit this procedure.
L - List All Masses.
T - Change Time (and Date) for a Mass.
Enter Mass command ('H' for List) -> _
There are two types of masses you can enter, temporary
or permanent masses. A permanent mass is the normal
recurring type that is celebrated at the same time each
week. For this mass you have to enter the day of the week
and the time of the mass. The correct date will be computed
on a week by week basis.
A temporary mass occurs only once, say, a Holy Day or
special celebration such as Christmas Midnight mass
(regardless of the time Midnight mass is celebrated). These
masses have specific dates and are not recurring. These
masses can have ministers assigned to them just like the
- 13 -
Minister Assign Program V5.7 Entering Mass Information
permanent ones except that these masses are only included in
the "masses to be assigned this week list" once at the
appropriate time and then deleted from the mass list
automatically after the date of their celebration has
passed. There is no time restriction as to when you may
enter a "Temporary Mass". You can do it years in advance if
you want but ministers will be assigned to it only once on
the week in which the mass occurs.
From the Mass menu type "A" for "Add" and a carriage
return <cr> and you will be asked if you want to add a
Temporary or Permanent mass. Indicate your choice by typing
"T" or "P". What you are about to do is to enter your normal
weekly mass schedule so all your entries will be Permanent
masses. The Mass "Template" presented is slightly different
for a temporary or permanent mass. For a temporary mass you
enter the date, month and year that the Mass is to be
celebrated as well as the time. For a permanent mass just
the day of the week and time are entered. The program will
prompt you for the correct format.
*** Anytime you enter a date in the program, use the
format MM-DD-YY or MM-DD-YYYY. So Nov 3, 1988 can be
entered as either "11-3-88" or "11-3-1988". When asked
for a day of the week use the first three letters. So
Sunday is "sun", etc. When entering the day and time
for a mass the prompt shown is "DDD HH:MM ->". Here you
are being asked for the day, hour and minute of the
mass, respectively. For example, to enter a Saturday
evening mass to be celebrated at 5:30 pm enter "sat
5:30p". Don't forget the "p", otherwise, the mass will
be listed at 5:30 in the morning! Since most of your
masses are on Sunday mornings a time without a suffix
("a" or "p") will default to AM. Also, note the space
between the day and the time. The colon, ":", between
the hour and minutes is also necessary as shown.
You will then be asked how many ministers should be
assigned for that mass. Simply enter any reasonable number
(fewer than 100) and press the <cr> after each one. If you
are initially entering this mass into your list of masses,
the default number of ministers of each type that you
entered while running "MpConfig" will be displayed in angle
brackets '<>' next to the prompt for you to enter a value.
If you are changing the number of ministers to be assigned
to a mass, the value in the brackets will be the current
value for that ministry at that mass. If you accept this
value simply press the carriage return <cr> to use this
number or enter a different number if your ministry
- 14 -
Minister Assign Program V5.7 Entering Mass Information
requirements change. If you do not want a particular
ministry to serve at that mass, set the number to be
assigned to zero. Presently, at my church we are not
assigning ushers with this program so the default usher
value is zero. Entering different numbers of ministers for
each mass is necessary since some churches might distribute
Communion under both species at only a few masses which
would require a different Eucharistic Minister staffing than
when Communion is distributed just as bread. Any time your
ministry requirements change you can run the '"C"hange
number of ministers to be assigned to each mass' command to
update your mass records. In fact you can change the
ministry requirements between weeks of assigning ministers.
I know of a church that distributes Eucharist under both
species only on the first and third weekends of the month.
So they increase the number of Eucharistic ministers before
they run the first weekend in the month. After the first
week's ministers are assigned they "Suspend" minister
scheduling and go to the Mass Schedule and decrease the
Eucharistic minister count again. They then re-run the
scheduler starting on the second week of the month and so
on. Don't worry about the "Suspend" command. It is
explained below in the section on how the scheduler works.
**** It is important that you add your permanent mass
schedule to the program before you add the ministers if
you are going to utilize the "Preferred Mass" part of
the scheduling program. Internally, the program
assigns a code number to each mass you enter and when
you indicate that a minister has a preference for a
mass, this number is stored with the minister's
records. If you delete this mass from the list, the
code number assigned to that mass also is deleted.
Since this code number is not now associated with any
mass, keeping it in the Minister's records is
meaningless, thus, the program removes it from any
minister records that might have it and sets the
minister's "Preferred Mass" field to "no preference"
and "not Adamant". If you re-enter the mass, even
though it may be at the same date and time, it is
considered a new mass and the internal code number
assigned to it may or may not be the same as the mass
you just deleted. So if you adjust your mass schedule
it might be wise to check that the Ministers'
"preferred Mass" records have not been altered.
Another feature is the ability to change the time of a
mass without causing the "Bad Mass" or "Preferred Mass"
associations with the ministers to change. This would be
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Minister Assign Program V5.7 Entering Mass Information
used if the 7:00 a.m. mass got changed to 7:30. Most
likely, those people who had preferences for the first mass
would feel the same about the 7:30 time slot. By using the
"T" (for time) command you are allowed to change the time of
the mass yet all the "preferred mass" associations would
remain. This is true even if you changed the 7:00 a.m.
mass on Sunday to an 11:00 p.m. mass Saturday night. If
you are changing the time of a Temporary mass with the "T"
command, the program will also ask you for a new date as
well as a new time.
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Minister Assign Program V5.7 Entering Mass Information
Changing Mass Information
The only information you can change about a mass is the
number of each type of minister you can assign to the mass
and the time of each mass as explained above. To change the
number of ministers of each type to be assigned to each
mass, from the "Mass" menu select the "C"hange option, press
<cr> and enter the date and time of the mass you want to
change. Remember that the mass is specified by the day and
the time so the Sunday 9:30 AM mass is entered as "sun
9:30". You will then be prompted for new values for each of
the 6 or 7 ministries. They are entered exactly as though
you were originally entering the information with current
values being displayed and prompted in angle brackets unless
you elect to change them.
To delete a mass type the "D" in the "Mass" menu and
press <cr>. You will be asked which mass you want to delete
and after typing the day and time in the same manner as for
"C"hange above, the stats for the mass to be deleted will be
displayed and you will be asked if you really want this mass
deleted. If you say "No", or anything else beginning with
"N", the delete procedure is bypassed. If you say "Y", the
mass is deleted. I suppose I should tell you that the
permanent files for this program are not updated until you
actually "E"xit the program from the main, "Minister", menu
or use the "U"pdate command described later. If you "Q"uit
the program instead, the minister ("MpMin.dat") and Mass
("MpMass.dat") files are not updated and remain exactly as
they were before you started the current program session.
(Unless you have used the new UPDATE command from the main
menu. But more about that later.) This means that any work
you might have done, adding, changing, or deleting Masses or
ministers, will be lost. However, "Q"uiting the program is
a reasonable way of "practicing" without altering the parish
records.
The "L"ist the Masses option in the "Mass" menu simply
lists all the masses in your data file for perusal. If you
have more than 10 masses, either permanent or temporary, in
your inventory, the "L"ist routine will list the first 10
then indicate that there are more masses and that you should
press any key {there's that "any" key, again!} to list the
next 10 masses and so on.
When you are done entering all your mass information,
exit the Mass menu and return to the Minister menu by typing
"E" for Exit.
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Minister Assign Program V5.7 Adding Ministers
Chapter 4
Adding Ministers
The second part of operating the program is the most
tedious, that of adding all of your ministers to the data
base. Press the "A" (for Add) key and the <cr> and the
screen will display a "template" for you to fill in with
information about each minister. The program will take you
through each field of the template in order and for the most
part is self explanatory.
Incidently, if you accidently pressed the "A"dd key and
did not want to add a minister, just press the carriage
return, <cr>, before entering information into the
first field, "First Name", and the "Add" procedure will
cancel.
When entering alphabetical information, such as names, just
type along. The backspace key enables you to distructively
move backwards in a word in case of typing errors, and the
left and right, "<-" and "->", cursor keys enable you to
move within a word, but not beyond its bounds. Once you
finish entering a field, pressing the carriage return, <cr>,
will move you to the next field. The "Add" procedure will
not permit you to move to previous fields once you have
moved on. If you discover an error after you advanced to
the next field, you can use the "Change" procedure to
correct the error. Getting to the "City" field is where the
city and state abbreviations you entered way back in
"MpConfig" pay off. If you type an abbreviation that exists
in "MpConfig" the program will look up the full spelling of
the city, as well as the state and zip code and fill those
in for you and bypass the prompts for those fields.
The "Phone" field will hold twelve characters without
any concern as to what these characters are. When you
initially enter this field, the default area code you
entered in "MpConfig" will be displayed and the cursor
positioned just after it. If you want to change the area
code simply backspace over it and type in the new one.
The "Family Code" field is used to identify members of
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Minister Assign Program V5.7 Adding Ministers
the same family. My program, in an effort to minimize
gasoline consumption in families with more than one
minister, say a Lector, Communion minister, and a Server,
will never assign members of the same family to different
masses in the same week. This is not to say that they will
always serve together, but, rather that they won't be
scattered among different masses. The family code number is
the method I use to determine if people are members of the
same family. Family members don't really have to be in the
same family, or even have the same address or last name.
The computer will treat everyone with the same family code
as being in the same family. By the way, if some family
members don't care if they are at the same mass with the
other ministers in the same family, simply assign this
person a different family code and he or she will not be
considered part of the same family for scheduling purposes.
When entering a family code the program will give you a
gentle reminder if that code number is being used by another
minister. (After all, is this not what "User Friendly" is
all about?) Answering "Y" or "N" to the duplicate person
code warning will either allow the duplicate entry to remain
indicating that the person you are entering is a member of
the same family as the person with the duplicate number or
permit you to make another choice for family code. Remember
that people with the same family codes will never be
assigned different masses during the same week. Any number
between 1 and 9999 is permissible. If you are assigning
Greeters by "Family" all of those people with the same
family code are considered part of the same family, same
last name or not.
When trying to enter family codes it might become
necessary to look up the family codes of some other
ministers to set a new minister's code to the same value.
If you type a question mark, "?", as the first character in
the "Family Code" field, a window will pop up in the lower
right corner of the screen and you will be prompted for the
last name of the minister whose code you want to see. The
name you type does not have to be unique. For example, if
you type "H", all the ministers whose last name begins with
"H" will be displayed with their family codes. After
scrolling through this list, a window's worth at a time, the
program will return you to the "Family Code" field and
continue to re-prompt you for values until an appropriate
response is entered. At any time by typing a question mark
as the first character in the field you can return to the
window to check other codes.
"Bad Mass" is the date and time of up to three weekly
masses that a minister can not or will not serve. Use the
up and down cursor keys to move among the three mass
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Minister Assign Program V5.7 Adding Ministers
selections. When the number of the "Bad Mass" field you
want to change is highlighted, press the <CR> and you will
be prompted for a mass time that will be considered a "Bad
Mass". Entering a mass day and time that does not exist or a
<CR> will set the associated "Bad Mass" field to "None". A
minister will never, repeat, never receive an assignment for
any of his "Bad Mass" times. After you use the cursor keys
to scroll through all three fields, using the down cursor
key one more time will exit you from this group. It is also
possible to cursor up above the top (Bad Mass # 1) field to
exit this group.
"Last Served" is the date that the minister last had an
assignment. This date is used in the scheduling routine to
decide on minister eligibility for service and is maintained
by the program. You do not have to enter any information
here. When entering a new minister, "Last Served" is set to
yesterday. By "yesterday" I mean the day before you entered
this person into the ministry data base. I had to put some
date here as initial data so yesterday seemed appropriate.
By changing the date in this field you can affect the
eligibility of the minister in the scheduling routine. See
the section describing how the program determines the
minister schedule for more information on the "Last Served"
date.
*** This program makes extensive requests to your
computer for the current date and time so the program
can compute the weeks in the month, leap years and what
yesterday was. DO NOT run this program without
ascertaining that your computer is storing the correct
date and time. If your machine does not have a battery
backed up internal clock, you have to set the date and
time every time you turn the machine on. In the
opening block of the program the date and time as read
from the computer's clock is displayed. If they are
incorrect, exit the program with the "Q" command and
set the computer's clock. If the date and time stored
in the computer are incorrect the dates printed on your
schedules will be wrong. Consult your DOS operating
system manual for instructions on how to set the date
and time if you have been remiss in doing so. Look up
the commands DATE and TIME.
The "Ministries" field lets you indicate for which
ministries the person has been commissioned. You will be
presented with a prompt at the bottom of the screen giving
you a choice of any of 6 ministries, Server, Eucharistic
Minister, Lector, Usher, Head Usher and/or Greeter plus the
- 20 -
Minister Assign Program V5.7 Adding Ministers
extra ministry you might have defined back in "MpConfig".
Simply type any combination of "S", "E", "L", "U", "H" or
"G" (and/or the first letter of your extra ministry)
followed by a <cr> to indicate the person's ministries and
the program will insert the full spelling in the
"Ministries" field.
** There have been some questions as to the number of
ministries you may enter for each minister. The
program fully allows a minister to be commissioned for
more than one ministry, for example, Lector,
Eucharistic Minister and Greeter. If the person you are
entering is so commissioned, enter "LEG", without the
quotes and any spaces between the letters when prompted
for the person's ministries. DO NOT enter the person
three times and indicate a different ministry each
time. The program will assume that these are three
different people who coincidently have the same name
and assign them as such.
The "Mass Preference" field is to indicate if the
minister has a preference for which mass he or she receives
an assignment. In order for the preferences to have any
meaning, there must be a mass scheduled at the day and time
you are entering. This is why you must enter the mass
schedule for your parish before entering any ministers. All
times entered in this program are in hour, colon, minute
folllowed by an 'a' or 'p' format. For example, 7:00 in the
morning is entered as "7:00" (no quotes) but 7:00 in the
evening is "7:00p". The colon is necessary where shown. So
if a minister has a preference for the Sunday 5:30 pm mass
you would enter the date as "sun 5:30p". All the following
are legal time entries (7:00, 7:00am, 7:00a, 7:00 am, 7:00
a). If the program cannnot find a mass scheduled at that
time it will enter "None" in the preference field. You do
not have an opportunity to try again from the "A"dd
procedure to enter a preferred mass. You must use the
"C"hange procedure for that. (I am going to fix that
annoying trait in the next version of this program.)
The "Adamant" field is used to indicate how adamant a
minister is about serving at a particular mass. When the
schedule is computed, the program makes an attempt to assign
a minister his or her "preferred" mass. If the person is
adamant (Yup) about a particular mass and that mass is not
available an alternate assignment will not be made and the
minister will not receive any assignments for that week. If
the minister is not adamant (Nope) the same attempt to
assign the "preferred" mass will be made but if the mass is
not available, an alternate assignment will be attempted.
If a minister does not have a preferred mass, the search for
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Minister Assign Program V5.7 Adding Ministers
an assignment for that person will be made in the order that
the masses are stored in the program.
*** An interesting situation occurs when two people
with the same family code have different "Adamant" mass
preferences. The person who has gone the longest
without an assignment will get the "preferred" mass if
it is available and no other because the preference is
"Adamant". When it is time to give the other family
member an assignment to his "Adamant" mass, the program
finds that a person with the same family code is
serving a different mass and thus will not grant the
assignment to the second person. This results in the
two people in the same family alternating between the
two "preferred" masses on successive weeks and they
will never serve together.
The "Vacation Until" and "Away Week" fields are used to
indicate the availability of the minister. By default, both
these fields are set to 'yesterday', indicating that the
minister is available for assignment. The "Vacation Until"
field indicates the first date that the minister is
available. He or she will not receive any assignments
before this date. The "Away Week" field is for indicating a
specific weekend that a minister will not be available.
This is intended to be used when the minister tells you,
"Don't schedule me the second weekend in December, I'm going
to visit relatives". Either date can be entered at any time
before the scheduler routine is run for the particular month
or week the dates occur. Please note that when you display
the information for any of the ministers the "Away" or
"Vacation" dates are visible only if the date has not yet
passed. (Another reason to get your computer's date set
correctly!)
The "Bad Day" field indicates the days of the week when
a minister is not able to serve due to work or other
commitments. In our parish there are some people who have
Saturday jobs so serving the Saturday evening mass would not
be possible. Since most of your people follow a Monday
through Friday work schedule, the program initially sets
"mon" thru "fri" as bad days, keeping people free on the
weekends. To change the information indicate that you want
to change a "Bad Day" and if you want to "A"dd or "D"elete
one. Then type the 3 letter abbreviation for the day you
want to change. The program will continue to ask if you
want to change more bad days until you say "N"o.
- 22 -
Minister Assign Program V5.7 Adding Ministers
*** Since the program never assigns a minister on a day
indicated as "Bad", a problem surfaces when you want to
schedule a "Temporary" Mass sometime in the middle of
the week, say, Christmas midnight mass on a Wednesday.
Since most of your ministers will have Monday thru
Friday "bad Days" they will never be assigned this
mass. The command "B" in the main menu enables you to
turn off the bad day of the week check as assignments
are being made. This causes the scheduler to ignore
any bad days that might be listed for a minister and
treat a special midweek liturgy as not occurring on
anyone's "bad days". Note that the bad day check is
always "on" unless you explicitly turn it "off" every
time you run the program. If you have only entered
weekend masses with this program this is not much of a
problem. If you are also scheduling weekday masses,
turning off everyone's "bad day" flag might result in
other people getting a normal mass on a weekday!
After you finish entering information for a minister
you will be asked if you want to add another minister. Type
"y" to enter another minister record or "n" to return to the
main ("Minister") menu. Remember that you can abort adding
a new minister by typing a <cr> immediately after being
presented with the blank "minister" template. Once you
start adding a minister, you will have to add a whole record
before you are allowed to exit.
- 23 -
Minister Assign Program V5.7 Changing & Deleting Ministers
Chapter 5
Changing & Deleting Ministers
To change information about a minister type "C"hange
and press <cr> from the "Minister" menu. You will see the
prompt :
Who ?
Enter the last name of the person you want to change and
press <cr>. Upper and lower case letters are not significant
here. Either case is fine. The information about the
minister will be displayed in the same "template" format as
you saw when you initially entered the information for the
minister. If the name you typed cannot be found the program
will tell you so and return to the Minister menu. In case
the name is not unique, a husband and wife for example, the
program will list all those people whose last name matches
what you typed and you will be asked to choose numerically
among them. The program will wait until you type one of the
numbers displayed. Note that you DO NOT have to type the
complete last name, just enough to uniquely identify the
minister. {Yes, I know "to uniquely identify" is a split
infinitive but it sounds better! "...To boldly split
infinitives no man has split before."} If, in response to
the "Who ?" prompt, you type just "H", everyone whose last
name begins with "H" will be displayed.
The program remembers the name of the last person
either Added or Changed so if you enter the Change procedure
after already adding or changing information the prompt will
look like this :
Who {Tom Hayes} ?
{-The name of the last person you Added or Changed.} If this
is the person you want to change just type a <cr> and the
record for this person will be displayed. If you want to
change someone else type that name after the prompt as you
had done before.
Once the information template for the minister is
- 24 -
Minister Assign Program V5.7 Changing & Deleting Ministers
displayed, the cursor will be located on the left hand side
of the "first name" field label. To move from field to
field use the left and right cursor keys, "<- & ->" (or the
up an down keys). Each time you press one of these cursor
keys the cursor will move forward or back one field of the
minister's record (or up or down as necessary). Please note
that the "up" and "left" cursor keys perform the same
operation, moving the cursor one field backwards. The
reverse is true of the "right" and "down" cursor keys.
These move the cursor one field forward.
When you get to the field you want to change, type a
<cr> and, depending upon the field you are changing, you
will be able to enter data exactly as you did when you
originally entered the information. When you are done
changing a field, press the <cr> again to record the change
and bring the cursor back to the field title area of the
template. From here you can again move forward or backwards
among the data fields. In the case of date or time fields
an incorrect or illegally formatted entry will cause the old
value to remain. Note that it is possible to change the
"Last Served" field at this time. This is a convenient way
of changing the priorities of the minister assignments. See
the chapter on the scheduling process.
To exit the "C"hange routine press the "End" key found
on the lower left of the cursor key area on the PC keyboard
and you will be returned to the main, "Minister", menu.
To delete a minister type the "D"elete command from the
"Minister" Menu and press <cr>. The program will prompt you
for the minister's name exactly in the same manner as for
the "C"hange procedure. After providing the name (or the
code number if there is more than one occurrence of the
name) the data for the minister will be displayed and you
will be asked if you want to delete that person or not. If
you say yes (or anything else beginning with "y") the
minister's record is deleted. Remember that file updates
are not made until you exit from the program so if you
decide that you really did not want to delete that person
you can "Q"uit the program instead of "E"xiting it and the
minister data file ,"MpMin.dat", will remain as it was
before the current program session. (unless you have used
the "Update" command, described below.)
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Minister Assign Program V5.7 Reports and Lists
Chapter 6
Reports and Lists
The "Reports and Lists" option in the "Minister" menu
moves you to the third menu in the program.
These are your Report Commands, your Highness
E - Exit this procedure.
L - Labels.
P - Preference List of Masses.
S - Single line listing of ministers.
W - Whole List (All information for each minister).
Enter Report Command ('H' for List) -> _
The commands in this section are straightforward. All
of them are used to generate some kind of listing of the
ministers. When selecting any one of them you will will be
given the option of including all of the ministers or any
sub-group of them, such as the Lectors and Eucharistic
Ministers. The method for selecting ministers to include is
the same as that used to assign ministries using the "Add"
command. You will get the prompt on the bottom of the
screen asking you to select any of "S", "E", "L", "U", "H"
or "G" (or your special ministry) as the minister type you
want to include. The only difference is that if you type a
<cr> the routine will include ALL of the ministers, not just
the group you selected.
*** Typing a <cr> to select all the ministers is not
- 26 -
Minister Assign Program V5.7 Reports and Lists
quite the same as choosing "SELUHG" since it is
possible to have someone in your listing who currently
is not assigned to any ministry and thus would be
overlooked in the "SELUHG" selection but not in the
bare <cr> which includes everyone, assigned to a
particular ministry or not.
The "L"abels command generates a file on the default
drive (indicated way back in the "MpConfig" program) that
can be used to print mailing labels. Understand that
selecting "L" does not actually generate mailing labels,
just a file that is later used as input to the "MpLabels"
and the "MpPrint" programs also found on the distribution
diskette. The file created by the "L"abels routine in this
program generates a file called "MpLabels.out". It is this
file that "MpLabels.exe" and "MpPrint.exe" will look for
when attempting to generate mailing labels. To generate
this labels file select the "L" option and indicate from the
"Which ministers to include ?" query described above which
ministers to include and press <cr>. The file,
"MpLabels.out", will be created with the mailing labels
information in it. After you are all done with this program
and have exited back to the MS-DOS "A>" (or "C>") prompt,
you can call the printing program "MpPrint" or "MpLabels" to
print your labels for you. Refer to the chapter on
"MpPrint" below for specific instructions on dealing with
labels.
The "P"reference command generates a listing to the
screen or a file showing those ministers that have a
preference for a particular mass. The list is sorted by
mass and after each person's name is the abbreviation of the
ministries to which that person is commissioned and either
"yup" or "nope" indicating whether this minister is adamant
about serving at his preferred mass or not. This is a
convenient way of checking exactly who desires what mass and
if your data base is correct. If you elect to have the
listing saved to a file, the file "MpPrefs.out" will be used
and it will be written to the drive you selected in
"MpConfig". Simply enter the command, "P", to start the
listing and indicate if you also want the listing to a
file.
The "S"ingle Line listing command is used to generate a
listing of the ministers names and phone numbers with one
line for each person. After selecting which group of
ministers you want ("S, E, L, U, H or G") the program asks
if you want the listing to be displayed on the screen or
written to a file. You are asked to choose "S" or "F" in
response to the query. If you choose "S" the listing will
scroll by on your monitor. To stop the list at anytime for
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Minister Assign Program V5.7 Reports and Lists
perusal type any key on the keyboard. Press any other key
to restart the listing. If you choose the "F"ile option,
the listing will be written to the file "MpLists.out" on the
drive selected by the "MpConfig" program. After you exit
the "Mp" program you can print the file, "MpLists.out" with
the MS-DOS "Print" command or the "MpPrint" program. See
your DOS manual for information on the "Print" command.
The "W"hole list command works just like the "S"ingle
line command above but instead of printing a single line per
minister, it prints everything it knows about each minister
in the minister group you selected ("S, E, L, U, H or G"
(your special one) or <cr>). The Whole List information is
written to a file on the selected drive called "MpDump.out".
This is essentially the same information that is displayed
with the "C"hange command in the "Minister" menu. This is a
good way to get a hard copy listing of all your data as an
extra back up. However, there is no substitute for regular
disk-copy back ups of your minister data. (unless you
really enjoy re-entering data after a disk crash.) At least
with the hard copy listing you will have something to read
the data from as you re-enter it rather than the scraps of
paper and index cards you used when you initially entered
the minister information.
The "E"xit command takes you back to the "Minister"
menu.
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Minister Assign Program V5.7 The Scheduler
Chapter 7
The Scheduler
The Scheduler is the heart of the program. To finally
get to do minister assignments select "S" from the
"Minister" menu and press <cr>. You will be asked what month
you would like to schedule with a selection 0..12. The "0"
is there so if you accidently pressed "S" from the
"Minister" menu you can get back out without doing any
scheduling. Once you type a month number, 1..12, where 1 =
January, 2 = February and so on, the program will then ask
you what week in the month you wish to start. Normally, you
would enter "1" but occasionally, you would enter another
week in the month if you "Aborted" the scheduler and wanted
to restart at something other than the first week in the
month. Don't worry, "Abort" is explained below. The
assignments are done in groups of a month but a week at a
time within that month. The program will always do
assignments for the next occurrence of the month you
select. So if it is August, 1988 and you type "10" for the
month, the program will do assignments for October, 1988.
But if you type "7" the assignments will be made for July,
1989. It obviously makes no sense to schedule assignments
for a month that has already passed or the current month for
that matter.
(** Hint **)
If it is the very beginning of the month, say March 1,
1989, and you want to do assignments for March 1989 and
not March 1990, exit the program and use the DOS "DATE"
command to tell the computer it is really February 28,
1989. Since the program always schedules for the next
occurence of the requested month, the schedule will be
done for March 1989 rather than March 1990.
Assignments are always made with a week starting on a
Saturday and ending on the following Friday. This assures
that a particular minister gets only one assignment on a
weekend. If the last day of the month is a Saturday, the
program will make assignments for the Sunday in the same
weekend, even though it is the first of the next month, to
- 29 -
Minister Assign Program V5.7 The Scheduler
complete a week's worth of assignments. In fact, the
program will assign up to the first Friday of the next month
if you are using this program for weekday mass assignments.
When it comes time to schedule the new month, the program
will start on the first Saturday of that month, thereby
avoiding any overlap with the previous month's assignments.
The program generates an output file for each weekend
of the month it assigns. The files are written to the drive
specified in "MpConfig" and are named after the month, year
and week for which the assignments are made. So assignments
for the second week in November, 1987 will be in a file on
the default drive with the name "Nov87-2.Skd". The "Skd"
file extension indicates it is a "Schedule" file.
As the assignments are made they are also displayed on
the screen since I know you don't want to wait to print the
output files before you know who got what assignment. The
assignments are done a week at a time and written to a
separate file for each week to expedite merging the weekly
assignment listing with the rest of the copy of the bulletin
that you are obviously typing and formatting on your Parish
computer.
After the assignments are computed, the program will
tell you that it was successful or not successful in filling
the week's assignments. If it was not successful it will
display a listing of those masses and assignments within
those masses that are not yet filled. How you fill these
slots is up to you. Get more ministers, stop giving people
days off, don't be so free with the "Bad Mass" and
"Preferred Mass" fields and/or allow fewer "Bad Days".
Both the weekly minister schedule and the list of
assignments yet to be filled are displayed on your monitor
one screen's worth at a time. This is to keep the listing
from scrolling off the top of the monitor if the listing is
longer than one page. To continue with the listing simply
press any key on the keyboard.
After each week's assignments are displayed and written
to its weekly "Skd" file, the program will ask you if you
want to "Abort", "Continue", "Reject", or "Suspend" the
scheduling process. You then type either "A", "C", "R" or
"S" as appropriate.
-Abort cancels further scheduling and returns you to the
minister menu. Although the file(s) created for weekly
schedules remain (the ".SKD" files) on the default
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Minister Assign Program V5.7 The Scheduler
disk, the records for the ministers scheduled that week
are not updated and remain as they were before the
processing began for the week you aborted. Use "Abort"
if you forgot to enter information, such as a
"Temporary" mass for a particular week or Minister's
"Away" or "Vacation" dates. Once you make the changes
you want you can re-start the "Scheduler" for the same
month and the same week. You can also use this command
if you want to start over in case you entered the wrong
month in the beginning.
-Continue simply restarts the scheduler for the next week in
the selected month, saving the schedule for that week
and updating the minister's records. If the last week
in the month was just assigned, "Continue" returns you
to the "Minister" menu.
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Minister Assign Program V5.7 The Scheduler
-Reject suspends the Schedule processor and returns you to
the "Minister" menu. From here you can enter "Change"
and/or "M"ass schedule changes and update any
information you wish. The difference between "Reject"
and "Abort" is that "Reject" will cause the scheduler
to continue the scheduling process at the week in the
month that was last scheduled, in effect picking up
with the week it just completed to try again with new
information, whereas "Abort" simply returns you to the
main menu and not keeping track of where the scheduler
left off. If, for example, the scheduler just
completed the second week of the month and you selected
"Reject", when you later select "S" to restart the
scheduler, it will start with the second week of the
month again, rewriting the appropriate "Skd" file. You
will be asked if you want to continue where you left
off. If you answer "Y" the scheduler will continue.
If you answer "N" you will be asked if you want to
re-exit to make some additional changes to the minister
data base or do the whole month over again. If you
choose to "start from the top" the previous ".SKD"
files will be overwritten with new assignments as the
scheduler is rerun.
-Suspend operates just like "Reject" above except that when
the scheduler restarts it will start with the next week
in the month, retaining the assignments it just made
for the current week. This is a good way to change
someone's "Bad Days" or "Vacation Until" data for the
last half of a month yet still permitting them
assignments for the first half.
The minister's records in memory are updated with the
assignments made by the scheduler for a particular week only
after you elect the "Suspend" or "Continue" choices after a
week's assignments are made. If You select "Abort" or
"Reject" the minister's records are not updated to reflect
the assignments from the week just scheduled.
How the Scheduler Works
To paraphrase a popular TV outer space program, the
"Prime Directive" of the scheduling process is to give
everyone an even chance at serving in their particular
ministry. To this end the scheduling process is a
chronological one with the people who have gone the longest
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Minister Assign Program V5.7 The Scheduler
without receiving any assignments becoming the prime
candidates for assignments in the current week of
scheduling. Hence, the first thing the scheduler routine
does is sort all the ministers by how long it has been since
they last served (the "Last Served" Field). This way the
people who have gone the longest without receiving an
assignment get first shot at an assignment for the current
week in the selected month. In addition the list is sorted
by family code so people in the same family will always wind
up next to each other on the sorted list. This increases
the probability that family members will serve together.
There is no guarantee that family members will always serve
together or even more or less frequently than single
ministers but they will never be assigned different masses
the same week. If the first minister on the list after the
chronological sort has a "preferred" mass, the mass list is
resorted with the preferred mass as the first on the list of
possible masses to be assigned this minister. As the
assignment process begins the minister's records are checked
to see if
1. He or she is not on vacation.
2. The mass is not on a "Bad Day". (If Bad Day checking
is enabled)
3. This is not one of three "Bad Mass"es.
4. This is not an "Away Week" for the minister.
5. Another person with the same family code doesn't have
a different mass the same week.
6. The minister is commissioned for an available ministry
at that mass.
7. If you are assigning Greeters by family, a check is
made to make sure no same family members are serving a
different ministry the same week.
If all these criteria are met the minister is assigned
the mass. If any one of the tests fails and the minister is
"Adamant" about this mass, no other assignments are
attempted for the minister and he is removed from the
available pool of ministers for the week. If he is not
"Adamant" about serving at his or her "preferred mass", the
next mass on the list is tested as above. The process
continues until the minister either gets an assignment or
until all the available masses have been checked. The only
difference in the process with and without a "preference" is
that if the minister does not indicate a mass preference,
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Minister Assign Program V5.7 The Scheduler
the mass list resort in preference order does not occur and
the masses are checked in whatever order they happen to be
at the time. If the program happens to have just processed
a mass by someone with a preference, the preferred mass is
now first on the list of masses, not the one that displays
first when you run the "L"ist all the masses routine from
the "Mass" menu. This assures some degree of randomness and
keeps the same people from getting the same mass by
accident. This is also a part of the "Prime Directive" in
that assignments are spread around among all the ministers
without any one minister "owning" a particular time slot.
Since the date in the minister's "Last Served" field is
the method used to determine the "pecking order" for
granting assignments, changing the information there can
affect the outcome of the scheduler. In case you want to
change a large group of "last served" dates, use the "L"
command in the main menu. You will be prompted for a date
to be the new "last served" date and then one by one stepped
through your minister list and given the opportunity to
change everyone to the new date, or change selected people
to the new date. This command is also useful if you have
been practicing with the program and have thus changed some
of the minister's last served dates. Using the "L" command
to change that field is much faster than the "change"
command.
Commentary : I have tried to keep the assignment
process as fair as possible without family groups
getting a larger share of assignments than the single
people, or vice-versa. (I was single when I originally
wrote version 1 back in 1985 but now, with version 5, I
am married and ministering with my wife and I do not
feel that the scheduling process favors one group over
the other.) There is one area that might cause
friction among your ministers. This is when a person
requests the "Main" mass on Sunday, you know, the one
where the full choir sings, and this minister's
preference is "Adamant" for this mass meaning "I will
serve at this mass and no other". This minister will
always get this mass when it is his turn to serve and
no other. Some of the less self-centered ministers
might not be "Adamant" about their preference or indeed
have no preference for a mass, feeling that it is their
duty to serve where needed. The result is that these
people wind up getting the less popular masses, such as
the 6 pm Sunday evening mass. Whether you permit this
or not is up to you in how you enter the data for your
people and even if you permit the "Adamant" choice to
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Minister Assign Program V5.7 The Scheduler
be made or not. People do not mind getting the less
popular masses if they know everyone is being rotated
through this honor. It should be pointed out that a
person who has made an "Adamant" choice for a
particular mass will probably wind up serving a little
less often than the other ministers, especially if
there is more than one person adamant about the same
position at the same mass. Unless they are "adamant"
about a less popular mass.
Since the assignments are always done in chronological
order with the person who has gone the longest without
serving getting first "dibs" on assignments, using the
"C"hange procedure to alter the date "Last Served" can
affect the sorting order and consequently the assignment
process for better or worse.
*** Well, stating that the assignments are made in
strict chronological order is not exactly true. Since
an attempt is being made to keep family members
together, the chronological order is really only done
by groups of families, that is, all the ministers are
clumped together by family then these family groups are
sorted chronologically by checking the "Last Served"
field. For version 5.5 and later a new family grouping
algorithm has been incorporated that is statistically
more accurate in keeping families together and also
assuring that everyone gets about the same number of
assignments. For this version 5.7 there is yet another
change to the scheduling algorithm that is less likely
to favor familys over individuals yet still attempt to
group family members together. I have to reiterate,
this program does not guarantee that family members
will serve together but it does guarantee that they
will not ever wind up at different masses on the same
weekend. This might be a good place to once again ask
for suggestions from you, the users of my program, to
let me know what features you want or what "If only
this program did..." type things you would like to
see.
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Minister Assign Program V5.7 Printing your data files
Chapter 8
Printing your data files
The accompanying program "MpPrint.exe" is supplied to
help you print the files the "Mp" program generates.
Besides the schedule files, "Nov89-3.skd", for example, the
MpPrint program will also print the other files,
"MpLists.out", "MpDump.out", "MpPrefs.out", and, of course,
"MpLabels.out". you start this program by typing
MpPrint
at the DOS '>' prompt, NOT from within the Mp program.
After the program loads you will see the menu
----------------- Minister Program Printer Utility --------------
File Date/Time last Generated
---- ------------------------
1 MPDUMP.OUT 8-27-89 10:59
2 MPLABELS.OUT 8-27-89 11:16
3 MPLISTS.OUT 8-27-89 11:17
4 MPPREFS.OUT File not found
5 Minister Schedule Printer
6 Printer Setup
File to print (1 - 6) or '0' to Exit -> _
The column "Date/Time last Generated" tells you the
date and time your most recent copy of the data file was
generated. These dates and times will be correct only if
your computer knows the correct date and time. Printing the
"Dump", "Lists" or "Prefs" file is straightforward. Just
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Minister Assign Program V5.7 Printing your data files
select menu items 1, 3, or 4 and the selected file will
print out. If the file is not available, that is, the
program can't find it, perhaps because it is in a different
directory than the one you are in now, or because you never
created it in the "Reports and "Lists" section of the Mp
program, "file not found" will be displayed rather than the
generation date and time.
Printing labels requires a bit more work on your part
since you have to take the paper out of your printer and
insert mailing label stock. The labels are printed in a
field 15/16" high by 3-1/2" wide. So appropriate label
stock should be used. Depending upon the printer you have,
with a 9 inch or 14" carriage, and the label stock you own,
the labels can be printed either 1, 2, or 3 across. After
you select menu item "2", the program will ask you which
style label you want to use.
The program will then print a label header, giving the
date the labels list was created and which ministries are
included. The real reason for the header is to help you to
get the label stock centered in the printer. One full label
row will be printed as a registration guide and wait as you
adjust the labels. Press any key on the computer to have
the printer repeat the registration guide. Once you are
satisfied that the registration is alright, press <cr> and
label printing will start. If for some reason you want to
stop the label printing, press the ESCAPE key on the
keyboard or you can always turn off your printer. It should
be noted that if you are using a print spooler or your
printer has a large buffer, printing will not cease with the
ESCAPE command until the buffer is empty.
Menu option "5" is used to print your minister schedule
for publication. Once you select "5" the program will ask
you for a range of months to print. Some churches print
schedules a month at a time while others do three months at
a time. Recall that the schedules are in weekly files with
names showing month, year and week that the schedule was
made. The schedule for the third week in November 1989
would be in a file called "Nov89-3.skd". You will be asked
for a Starting Month to print. Reply by typing the month
and year to start. MMM YY is the reply format. So to start
with the November 1989 schedule you would type "nov 89" as
your starting month. You are then asked to enter the ending
month. If you just want to do November 1989 you would reply
with "nov 89". If you want to print the schedule for three
months starting in November 1989 and going to January 1990,
you would enter "nov 89" as your starting month and "jan 90"
as your ending month. If either the starting month or
ending month is entered incorrectly, the procedure cancels
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Minister Assign Program V5.7 Printing your data files
and returns you to the main menu.
Menu item "6" is included to give you some flexibility
in controlling you printer. Printing a file to a printer is
broken down to three main parts, finding the file and
initializing the printer, printing each line of the file,
and terminating printing and closing the file. As you may
or may not be aware, your computer is capable of switching
your printer to print in other formats such as boldface
type, italics, elite, etc.(assuming your printer has such
capability) To do this, your computer has to send "control
codes" to the printer to tell it what to do. Menu item "6"
provides a method of sending three sets of codes to your
printer before any of your five types of files, dump,
labels, lists, prefs or schedules are printed out. These
three sets are an initialization string, a string to be sent
before each line, and a closing string, sent after the final
character in the respective file is sent to the printer.
You may not need to use any of these special codes to
print your files so don't feel that you have to fill in
anything. As an example, my printer, an Epson, will switch
to boldface type, making the print appear darker by sending
the code "ESCAPE E", that is pressing the ESCAPE key
followed by an upper case letter "E". I turn off boldface
type by sending "ESCAPE F". The control codes for your
printer might be different from mine and can be found in the
owner's manual for your printer. Let's assume I want to
print the MpLists file in boldface so it will appear darker
for Xeroxing and sending to my ministers. I would select
from the main menu item "6", Printer setup. I would then
see a new menu listing each of my printable files and a menu
number 1 thru 15 for defining each of the three types of
command strings to send to the printer for each of the five
files to print. So, to make the printer go to boldface for
printing "MpLists" I select menu item 7, initial string for
MpLists. At the bottom of the box I am prompted for the
string to send. Since control codes are usually, but not
always, special keys, a special method is required to enter
them. Also, a special method is required to display them on
the screen since they are collectively known as the
non-printable characters. The ESCAPE character is entered
by pressing the escape key but is displayed as a
leftpointing arrow. If you enter any of the control
characters, Ctrl-A thru Ctrl-Z, they are displayed as the
letter itself preceeded by a carat(^). These characters are
entered by pressing and holding down the CTRL key, usually
on the left hand side of your keyboard, and then pressing
the alphabetic letter itself. Release the letter key then
the control key. If the string you need to send to your
printer is to include things like backspaces, carriage
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Minister Assign Program V5.7 Printing your data files
returns and linefeeds you will have to enter them as
ctrl-Characters rather than using the carriage return key or
the backspace key.
Some of the popular control characters are
- Ctrl-H - Backspaces the printer one column
- Ctrl-J - A linefeed, causes the printer to advance one
line
- Ctrl-L - a formfeed, causes the printer to start a new
page
- Ctrl-M - a carriage return, moves the printhead to
column one
Depending on your printer, sending a Ctrl-M, carriage
return, might or might not also do a linefeed. If you do
not get a line feed with a carriage return, the new line of
text will start on the left side of the printer page but on
the same line as the previous page, printing on top of the
previous line.
Note that data entry for each line of control codes is
terminated by a carriage return. If you want to enter a
carriage return as a code to be sent to your printer use
Ctrl-M. The same is true for the backspace. To send a
backspace to your printer use Ctrl-H. The regular backspace
key is used for backspacing over your text as you enter it.
The data you enter is saved to a file called
"MpPrint.dat" and read every time you run the printer
program. You can change control codes anytime.
Why do you need to know such technical things? Well
the good news is that perhaps you don't. But some people
might want to take advantage of some of the enhanced
printing capabilities of their printer and this is one way
to do that. I have to reiterate. The control codes for
your printer might be different from mine. Please refer to
your printer manual for a complete listing.
SUGGESTION: Some people have complained that the Labels
printer requires the label stock to be set on the left side
of the printer. By inserting paper that is only 3-1/2"
wide, some printers incorrectly report that the printer is
out of paper and refuse to print. By going to the "Line
Prefix" string for the printing of "MpLabels" you can add up
to 25 blanks that will be printed before the label text on
each line effectively shifting the label stock up to 25
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Minister Assign Program V5.7 Printing your data files
places to the right, enabling you to center the labels over
the paper sensor to avoid the "paper out" error.
- 40 -
Minister Assign Program V5.7 Help !
Chapter 9
Help !
Help with the program can be found in two main ways.
First of all, READ THE MANUAL. I did not spend time writing
this thing to not have you read it. I've tried to make the
language informal enough that it is sort of fun to read.
Secondly, on-line help is available from the main,
"Minister", menu. If you choose the command "H" by itself
the main menu is simply reprinted. If, instead, you type
"H" followed immediately by the command you want help with
then a <cr>, a short explanation of how the command works is
displayed on the screen. If, for example, you want help
with "A"dding a minister, type "HA".
If you are really stuck, a little prayer could not hurt
but then call me (708-884-0514) or write me at:
Tom Hayes
940 Heather Lane
Hoffman Estates, IL 60195
(Assuming, of course, you have paid your registration fee)
(The phone number is my home number since this program is my
pet project and not part of my job as an audio and control
systems engineer. I do not think it is fair to my boss to
get calls of this nature during the day but I'll be more
than happy to talk to you at night. I'm in the central time
zone and am up by 6 am and go to bed after 10 pm.)
Operating Hints
If you make changes to the data base such as modifying
Away Days, vacation days, adding or deleting ministers,
etc. it is a good idea to use the "Update" command to
update your data files to keep your data base on disk up to
date before doing minister scheduling. This way the changes
made to the data base are made permanent without updating
the "Last Served" fields of the minister's records in case
you only want to practice using the scheduler.
Please make sure that the date and time are set
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Minister Assign Program V5.7 Help !
correctly on your computer before you run this program. If
your computer doesn't know the correct date, the date of the
assignments will be wrong. When the program starts the
computer checks the date and time and tells you on the
opening title block of the program what values it read. If
they are incorrect, DO NOT CONTINUE. Quit the program and
fix the date. You can change the date by entering the
Ms-Dos command "Date" at the dos prompt "A>". See your DOS
book for more details about the "DATE" and "TIME" commands.
If you are assigning Greeters by "Family", the program
will put the listing in the output file as "Tom Hayes
Family" rather than "Tom Hayes, LuAnn Hayes". Usually this
is fine but if the wife is a greeter too, and she happens to
come up chronologically before the husband, the program will
print out "LuAnn Hayes Family". Depending upon how liberated
the family is this can be a problem. A simple solution is
to make only the husband a greeter when assigning greeters
by family and list the wife in your data base but do not
make her a greeter. The reason for including the wife's
name is that if there is only one person in the family, the
program will only list "Tom Hayes" and not "Tom Hayes
Family". Any suggestions from you on how to list families?
Some Questions received about MP-The Minister Program
Q : Why did the program schedule the same person, a persom
commissioned as both a Lector and a Eucharistic
Minister, to both ministries at the same Mass?
A : You entered the name of that person twice, once as each
type of minister and the program assumed they were two
different people. Enter each minister once but you can
indicate any number of ministries in the "Ministries"
field.
---------
Q : Why don't you change the program logic so families
always serve together?
- 42 -
Minister Assign Program V5.7 Help !
A : This is one of the most common questions I get. It is
my feeling that everyone should get the same chance of
an assignment as everyone else. If you give priorities
to families, the single ministers will suffer. The
scheduling is in strict chronological order with all
families grouped together so the chances are pretty
good that families will serve together but this is not
guaranteed. Consider the scenario of Mom as a
Eucharistic minister and Dad as a Lector. Suppose the
only assignment remaining to be filled is one
Eucharistic Minister when the scheduler gets to mom and
dad. The Lector position at this mass is also filled.
If a position is already filled we have to assume they
were filled by people who have gone longer without
serving than anyone who has not yet been considered due
to the chronological "Prime Directive". The next person
up for consideration is Mom. Since there is a Euch-min
slot open she gets it and all positions for that mass
are filled. What do I do with Dad? Do I kick out the
other Lector to make room for someone who has not
waited as long for an assignment? Or do I remove Mom
from her assignment and give her slot to someone else
because Dad cannot be with her? If we choose the
former course, this violates the chronological
ordering. If we choose the latter there is a greater
chance of running out of ministers if we adopt an all
or nothing approach to family assignments.
-----------
Q:Every week the same people get the same assignments
without any rotation. Why?
A:You don't have enough ministers to use only a percentage
of them each week. If all of them get assigned each
week everyone's "last served" date is the same and no
chronological resort occurs. Find more ministers or
reduce the number of each type assigned to each mass.
Another reason this might occur is that you were
"playing" with the program and assigning masses far
into the future, maybe months ahead. The people who
received these future assignments now have "Last
Served" dates months ahead and when the chronological
schedule sort occurs, these people will wind up on the
bottom of the schedule pecking order until that future
month passes. This is why I have included the "Quit"
command in the menu. It enables you to play around yet
not mess up your data base with practice schedule
data. I would suggest that you run the "Print Whole
- 43 -
Minister Assign Program V5.7 Help !
List" in the "Reports and Lists" menu that prints out
the data base and check your minister's records to see
if anyone has a "Last Served" date in the future. If
this is the case use the "Last Served date change
utility" in the main menu to alter the minister's "Last
Served" date to something more reasonable.
----------
Q:Why do you not include cantors in your list of ministries
to be assigned?
A:It has been my experience that the music people usually
wind up scheduling their own. They typically meet one
night during the week for rehearsal and at that time
dole out the assignments for the coming week. This
scheduling program is more suitable when you have an
overabundance of ministers and you are trying to
apportion the assignments equitably. How many churches
do you know where there is an over supply of cantors?
---------
Q:How do I finally get all the assignments to print on my
printer?
A:Use the DOS command PRINT. The PRINT command works just
like the TYPE command except that TYPE lists a file to
the screen and PRINT prints it to the printer. You can
find information on the print command in your DOS
manual. But as long as you are here... With your DOS
diskette in the computer (For you floppy disk users)
before you start the MP program type the command PRINT.
DOS will reply
NAME OF LIST DEVICE [PRN:]
This is computerese for "Do you want me to use the
normal printer that is attached to the computer?"
Obviously you do, so just type a <cr>. DOS will then
say
PRINT QUEUE IS EMPTY
What you are doing is setting up something to allow you to
do background printing. This means that you can print
a file while you are doing something else on your
computer rather than waiting for the printing to be
done. The printing you will be doing with this program
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Minister Assign Program V5.7 Help !
is the manual (MPManual.txt), the schedule files,
(AUG88-4.SKD) for example, the listing files
(MpDump.out, MpPrefs.out, MpList.out) etc. So a
typical command to print out the schedule for the third
week in November 1988 would be:
PRINT NOV88-3.SKD
Printing will occur unless there is something wrong
such as your printer being off or out of paper. The
print command will allow you to specify up to ten files
that can "queue up" for printing. If you type PRINT by
itself DOS will tell you how many files are waiting to
be printed. If you get the message "BAD COMMAND OR
FILE NAME" when you try to use the print command, it
probably means your computer cannot find the file
"PRINT.COM". If you are working without a hard disk,
you must have a copy of "PRINT.COM" on your "MP" disk.
To do this, put your DOS disk in drive "A" and your
copy of my program disk in drive "B" and type
"COPY A:PRINT.COM B:". This will put a copy of "Print"
where your computer can find it. If you have a hard
drive and the above problem, read up on the PATH
command in your DOS manual. If you are still stuck,
give me a call. Incidently, you must have a DOS
version greater than 2.0 for the print command to
work. To see what version of DOS you have type VER as
a DOS command. Starting with this version of the
program I have included a new program called "MpPrint"
that will lead you through the printing process. It is
described in detail in the last chapter.
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Minister Assign Program V5.7 Help !
LICENSE UNDERSTANDING
All versions of MP-The Minister Program are not public
domain nor are they free software. Non-registered users are
granted a limited license to use this program for the
express purpose of evaluating its suitability for their
purposes. Use of MP for other purposes requires
registration.
This program is distributed under the "Shareware"
concept which grants the user the limited license to copy MP
only for the trial use of others subject to the above
limitation and the following:
- MP must be copied in unmodified form with all files,
"MP.EXE", "MPCONFIG.EXE", "MP,HLP", "MPMANUAL.TXT",
"MPPRINT.EXE" and "MPCNV4-5.EXE", including this manual
with its registration notice and license information
intact. No fee or any other compensation may be
accepted or requested in conjunction with this
distribution.
- Operators of electronic bulletin boards may post MP for
downloading subject to the above conditions.
For those not familiar with the "Shareware" concept of
program distribution perhaps a bit of explanation is in
order. The basic idea is that without laying out a large
sum of money you get to try out your prospective purchase,
much like taking that new car for a test drive before buying
it rather than making a new car decision based on sales
literature. The program you have is the complete, working
program not some crippled "demo" program designed to
frustrate you into purchasing the real thing. If you like
the program and use it, you register your copy which is the
same as paying for that new car rather than just driving off
into the sunset with it. To this end you are encouraged to
make copies of the program for other prospective users
(adhering to the above conditions). If these others like
the program they should register and make copies for
others. The whole idea is that distribution is on a word of
mouth basis and since the author, me, is not saddled with
the expense of duplicating and shipping diskettes and
printing the manuals, the cost of the program can be kept
low. It is up to honest users who register their programs
to keep the "shareware" concept alive. Thanks. TH
Incidently, there are literally thousands of public
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Minister Assign Program V5.7 Help !
domain and/or "shareware" programs available that range from
games, to word processors, spreadsheet templates and even
liturgical minister assignment programs! Some can be had
for the cost of the diskette, $6, others, like mine request
a registration fee, usually in the area of $20 to $50
dollars. If you are at all interested in what else is out
there contact:
PC-SIG
1030 East Duane Avenue, Suite D
Sunnyvale, CA 94086
1-800-245-6717
They issue a yearly bound directory of programs available
from authors around the country, with a monthly
newsletter/magazine listing updates and new program
submissions. They currently have over 1800 different
diskettes available.
To further explain the fee structure, the $30
registration fee that I am requesting is the license fee
permitting you to use one copy of this program. You are not
to use the program except for evaluation purposes without
paying the $30 registration fee. This is also supposing
that you have received a copy of the program from someone
else, another church perhaps. If you would like me to send
you a copy of the program I can do that for an additional $5
for a regular floppy disk or $6 for a 3.5" disk copy.
(Diskette mailers are expensive!) Also, Some people do not
like the idea of having to print out the manual on the
disk. If you would like, I can print out a copy and bind it
for you for an additional $20. Please make your intentions
clear when writing to me.
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Minister Assign Program V5.7 Help !
Big NEWS!
After a year and a half of work interrupted for the
most part by the birth of our first child, I have completed
work on version 6.0. This new version incorporates many of
the changes suggested by users of previous versions. Some
of the big changes are
- A much better minister data entry system so you are not
stuck in the "ADD" routine until you have everything
filled in. In the "Change" routine you are able to use
"PgUp" and "PgDn" to move back and forth from minister
to minister without having to exit and re-enter
"Change".
- A better ministry entry system so different ministries
can begin with the same letter.
- The capability of adding up to eight different
ministries in addition to my predefined seven giving
you a total of 15 different ministries. Any of these
ministries can be renamed. (This should put an end to
the "Acolyte" vs. "Server" and the "Lector" vs.
"Reader" vs. "Proclaimer" controversy.)
- For each minister you can define
* up to four "Away Periods" giving both the starting
and stopping dates when a minister might be away.
* "Bad weeks" in the month when the minister cannot
serve. You can use this to make sure particular
people do not serve every week.
* "Types of masses" the minister is permitted to
serve, "Permanent", "Special" and/or "Daily".
* A "Notes" line as a scratch pad for each
minister.
* Up to three "Direct Assignments" where you can
specify a particular mass, date, time and ministry
that a minister will be assigned.
* An associated minister that will "ServeWith" the
first minister. This can be used to guarantee
particular people will always serve together.
* A "Family Mode" of "Together", "Separate" or
"Don't Care" to further define ministry
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Minister Assign Program V5.7 Help !
associations within a family. "Separate" might be
used if you have an infant at home and only one of
mom or dad can go to mass at a time.
- Each mass can have a "Class" assigned to it as can each
minister. The program will only assign people with the
same class number to a matching mass class number.
- Perhaps the biggest change is in the output
formatting. You can define in version 6 how the
program is to print out your data, either in a vertical
list as it does now or in a spreadsheet format. You
can choose which ministers to include in each type of
listing, the size of the printed page and the range of
dates for the output.
- Along with the above, you can also define your own type
of data listing, and how the listing is to be sorted.
You might want your phone contact lists separated by
ministry and sorted by town, or whatever. You can
define dozens of printing styles and save them to disk
for subsequent re-use.
- The "Labels" procedure will print labels 1 to 5 across
and either directly to your printer or to a file for
later printing.
- You can also print mailing labels with your minister's
assignments printed on them instead of addresses. This
is to keep your people from having to search through a
big printout looking for their names and then
highlighting it. The assignment labels summarize each
minister's assignments and can be attached to the top
of the bulk Xeroxed assignment list.
- All printing is now done from within the program. Gone
is the use of the DOS "Print" command.
- There is better handling of Daily masses. You can
state which days of the week a mass is celebrated and
how many times each server should be assigned. (One
set of servers all week or a different set Monday to
Wednesday and Thursday through Saturday, for example).
- Assigning a server to a Daily mass will not keep other
family members from serving in their ministry on
weekends.
- You can also set the date from the program and also
"Shell to DOS" if you need to format a disk to save
some files.
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Minister Assign Program V5.7 Help !
This new version of my Minister Scheduling Program will be
selling for $95 including a bound manual. People who have
registered for earlier versions will receive a discount to
upgrade. Since you are reading this manual, I asume you
have a copy of version 5.7. If you have not registered for
it by sending me $30, you can do so and know that you will
be able to apply the $30 to version 6.0 if you wish to
upgrade. If version 5.7 fills your needs, by all means stay
with it and save your church a few dollars.
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Minister Assign Program V5.7 Help !
R E G I S T R A T I O N F O R M Mp v5.7 {Jun 90}
_____Enclosed is $30 for registration of my present copy
of your program.
_____Enclosed is $95 please send me version 6.0 of your program
which includes a bound manual.
Send it on a ______(3.5" disk) or ______(5.25" disk)
{If you already have registered for an earlier version by sending
me the $30 fee, contact me for a discount on version 6.0}
Send to:
Tom Hayes
940 Heather Lane
Hoffman Estates, IL 60195
Registering for the program allows you telephone support in
addition to granting you peace of mind for using something
that you have not ripped off! Call me if you have a
question.
Church Name _________________________________________
Church Address ______________________________________
City, State, Zip_____________________________________
Church office Phone # _______________________________
Your Name ___________________________________________
And Address _________________________________________
(if different from church)
_________________________________________
Are you the person who will be running the program?_____________
If not, Who?_________________________________________
If in Illinois, tax exempt # ________________________
What kind of computer do you have?___________________
Please let me know how you like the program, what you
do not like about it and what features you would like to see
in future releases.
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Minister Assign Program V5.7 Help !
Index
Adamant Field 21
Away Week Field 22
Bad Day Field 22
Bad Mass Field 19
Carriage Return 11
Changing Mass Information 17
Changing Minister Information 24
Date Format 14
Default Drive 8
Deleting a Mass 17
Deleting a Minister 25
Family Code Field 18
File -"MpConfig.dat" 9
file,
MpPrint.dat 39
File, MpDump.out 28
File, MpLabels.out 27
File, MpLists.out 28
File, MpPrefs.out 27
file, MpPrint 36
Files 4
Initial Start-up 7
Installation, Hard Disk 6
Installation, One disk drive 4
Installation, Two disk drives 6
Labels 27
Last Served Field 20, 25
Mailing Labels 37
Main Menu 11
Mass Menu 13
Mass Preference Field 21
Mass, Adding 14
Mass, Permanent 13
Mass, Temporary 13
Menus 11
Minister Menu 11, 11
Ministries Field 20
MS-DOS Date & Time 20
Preferred Mass 15
Scheduler, Aborting 30
Scheduler, Continuing 31
Scheduler, Rejecting 32
Scheduler, Suspending 32
SKD file 30
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Minister Assign Program V5.7 Help !
Time Format 14
Time,entering 21
Update Command 17
Vacation Until Field 22
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Minister Assign Program V5.7 Help !
Table of Contents
Chapter 1 Introduction 1
Chapter 2 Getting Started 4
Chapter 3 Entering Mass Information 13
Chapter 4 Adding Ministers 18
Chapter 5 Changing & Deleting Ministers 24
Chapter 6 Reports and Lists 26
Chapter 7 The Scheduler 29
Chapter 8 Printing your data files 36
Chapter 9 Help ! 41
- 54 -
Directory of PC-SIG Library Disk #0954
Volume in drive A has no label
Directory of A:\
MP EXE 82256 6-19-90 5:44p
MPCONFIG EXE 21264 5-13-89 3:06p
MPPRINT EXE 32944 12-14-89 7:55p
MPPRINT DAT 390 6-10-90 6:03p
MP HLP 12429 5-14-89 4:02p
MPMANUAL TXT 133646 7-12-90 8:53p
FILE0954 TXT 2079 8-13-90 9:21p
GO BAT 38 10-19-87 3:56p
GO TXT 956 1-01-80 7:10a
9 file(s) 286002 bytes
30720 bytes free