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Create a Contact Form

The first step in the contact forms process is to model the contact form. The contact form might be a "Connection Card" or "Guest Registry".

Note: You must have Administrator security rights to perform the following procedure.

Example worship service connection card

Step 1: Create the Form Name

The first step in creating a contact form is to create the name of the form.

To create a form name

1. Click Admin > Contact Setup > Form Names. The Add/Edit Form Names form appears. Any existing form names appear in the grid at the bottom of the form.
2. Type the name in the Form name field.
3. Click Add new form. Your form name appears in the grid at the bottom of the form.

Step 2: Create the Contact Items

Contact ItemsData points that represent a discreet piece of information to request from or give further information to the church. Items are typically found on paper forms such as a guest registry or communication card. are the individual action items on the contact form. Each item probably has a different action and some items may have more than one. For example, a "First Time Visitor" or "Guest" option on a card may trigger a welcome letter and a personal phone call. You have the freedom to enter as many items into Fellowship One as necessary to complete a request. Just because there is only one item represented on the card, does not mean there has to be only one item in Fellowship One. A "First Visit" item on your card may translate into a "First Visit Letter" and "First Visit Call" contact items in Fellowship One.

Additionally, you may want to have the option to track some non-actionable information - such as the service time the person attended. There is no need to create service times as contact items, you will have the opportunity to associate service times with your contact forms in the final step of this procedure.

To create contact items

1. Click Admin > Contact Setup > Manage Items. The Add/Edit Contact Items form appears.
2. Type the name of the contact item in the Name field. For example, First Visit Letter.
3. Select the Type of contact from the drop-down list. The available types are:
   • Interest—a person is expressing interest in a service offered by the church. Interest items may be handled by mailing the person some information about the service. 
   • Request—a person is requesting information on a service and expects to be contacted personally by the church.
   • Other—any other type of information offered by the person that does not fall into the Interest or Request categories.

   Note: These types are used internally in Fellowship One for sorting and reporting purposes only.

4. Select the Ministry responsible for this contact item from the drop-down list.
5. Select the person responsible for the item in the Route to drop-down list.

   Note: If you do not see the person responsible in the list, check to make sure the person has at least Read security access to the ministry you selected in the Ministry drop-down list.

6. Optionally, select the Multiple close check box. This check box indicates that the person responsible can work and close several contacts at one time. For example, if the contact item action is to mail merge or mass email the new believer packet, this contact item from multiple congregants may be performed and closed as a group.
7. Optionally, select the Disposition required on close check box. This option means the person responsible for working this contact item must choose a DispositionAllow tracking of the outcome of a contact for reporting purposes. (or outcome) before closing the task item.
8. Click Add contact item. Your contact item appears in the grid at the bottom of the form.

What if more than one person is responsible for a single item?

In some cases you may have items that are worked by more than one person. For example, a pastoral care type contact item may need to be routed to the appropriate pastor depending upon several factors (age, gender, marital status, nature of request). It's best to assign the contact item to a single point person. This person can read the contact request notes and determine where it needs to go. A transfer option is available when working contact items.

One really great feature in the contact form setup process is that a single contact item may be reused again and again on several forms. For example, a "guest" or "first time visitor" contact item may always go to the same person no matter which event/activity generated the contact. However, what about a contact item like "Today I prayed to receive Christ"? This item may need to go to different ministers depending upon the context. For example, if a student selects this item, it may need to be routed to the youth pastor; while an adult selecting this option may need to be routed to the men's or women's pastor. If this is the case for your church, you may want to create different contact items: Prayed to accept Christ - Youth and Prayed to accept Christ - adult.

Step 3: Create the Contact Form

In the final step, you will combine the two previous steps to create your contact forms.

To create the form

1. Click Admin > Contact Setup > Build Forms. The Contact Form Builder appears. The Service option is selected.
2. Select the correct Form name from the drop-down list.
3. Optionally, associate service times with your form by selecting the correct Ministry and Activity from the drop-down lists. All scheduled dates for the selected activity appear in the box on the left side of your screen.
4. Select the first option and hold your mouse button down and drag it through the entire list. This will select all available dates. Click Add to move all selected dates to the box on the right side of the screen.

   Note: Fellowship One builds schedules out 4 months into the future at any given time. Make sure you set yourself a calendar appointment as a reminder to come back into this form and add future dates. Additionally, you can clean up old dates from the box on the right side of the screen by selecting past dates and then clicking <<Remove.

5. Optionally, select the Registration option at the top of the form. This selection allows you to associate different activities with your form for quick registration. For example, if you have an option such as "Register me for the next Membership class" on your communication card, instead of creating a contact item, you can associate the membership class activity to your form. See contact form registration for more information on this option.
6. Select the Items option at the top of the form. All available contact items appear in the box on the left side of the screen.
7. Select the an item you want to associate with the selected form name and click Add. The item will move to the box on the right side of the page.
8. Use the Move up and Move down buttons to re-arrange your items to make data entry easier.
9. Optionally, select the Individual attributes option at the top of the form. The Attributes form appears. This selection allows you to associate any of your individual attributes with the contact form. Select the correct Attribute group from the drop-down list and then click on each attribute you want to apply to your form (hold down the Ctrl key to make multiple selections). Click Add to move the attribute to the box on the right side of the page.

   Tip! Some churches like to capture data on how a person heard about the church for marketing purposes. You can create an individual attribute group called "How you heard" and individual attributes such as TV ad, Radio ad, Billboard, Friend, Newspaper, Phone book, etc. These can be associated with your contact form so you can quickly capture this information as you are entering contacts.

Your contact form is now complete and ready to use! Follow these steps for each paper contact form used at your church.

Next, let's look at contact data entry.