Some of you have written to tell us that you have been confused by the People Manager screens, especially the relationship between People and Households. The purpose of this article is to hopefully clarify all of this so that you can use the program more effectively to manage your people.
As in the case of all the manager windows, the toolbar across the top of People Manager acts upon the object of that manager, which in this case is People. In other words, no matter which of the tabbed pages (Person, Household, Small Groups, etc.) you have displayed within People Manager, the Add button always adds a new person, the Delete button deletes the current person, the Previous and Next buttons navigate to the previous and next person, and so forth.
The information you see, again no matter what tab page you have displayed in People Manager, is the information of the person whose name is listed at the top of the window. Displayed below the name is the address of the current person. This information can be changed by changing information for the Household to which that person belongs (more on that later).
Each of the tabbed pages display a different set of information about the current person (you can move from page to page by clicking on the tabs at the bottom of the window).
The Person tab is where you display and edit basic or general information about the person, such as their occupation, e-mail address, and birth date.
The Small Groups tab is where you can quickly see the small groups to which the person belongs. This is the same information that is entered in the Small Groups Manager, but from the perspective of the person, instead of the small group. If you want to add a person to a small group, you can do so quickly by clicking the Add New button near the bottom of this page. This doesn’t add a small group, rather, it adds the current person to an existing small group. Also, do not confuse this Add button with the Add button in the toolbar at the top of the window. Remember, that Add button adds a whole new person to People Manager.
The Activities page is where you can quickly see to what activities the person belongs. This is the same information that is entered in the Activities Manager, but from the perspective of the person, instead of the activity. If you want to add a person to an activity, you can do so quickly by clicking the Add New button near the bottom of this page.
The Equipping and Pastoral Care pages simply display the information pertaining to the current person that is entered in the Equipping Manager and Pastoral Care Manager, respectively. You can only display the information here. Any changes have to be made in the respective manager window.
The Photo page displays the photographs for both the person and the Household to which this person belongs. The photos are stored elsewhere on your hard drive as bitmap or JPEG files. To specify the location of the individual’s picture, click the Person Photo Location button. The location of the Household picture is specified on the Households page (more on this below).
That brings us to the page I skipped - the Households page. Households are simply a way to manage the situation where a group of people share a single address and phone number. If they move, or if their phone number changes, you want to be able to enter the new information one time. You don’t want to have to find each person that has that address and change them individually. Households also allow you to manage things like phone directories and mailings where you don’t need to send an item to each person at the same address. Households should only be used where they make sense. Certainly family members that live together should be assigned to the same Household, but three college students sharing an apartment would each be assigned to their own Household. In the latter case, you want to treat the people involved as individuals and not a family unit. It is also much more likely that one of their addresses will change than all three of their addresses will change simultaneously.
Each person must be assigned to a household. In the case of a family unit, the name of the household is initially taken from the name of the “head” of the household. In a case like the three college students above, the three household names will be the same as each person’s name. Even though the person and household names are the same, they still need to be considered two different things. For example, if two single people living separately get married, one of these two people will be assigned to the household of the other, and the first person’s household can then be deleted. There are still two separate people in the database, but they share one household.
The information specific to a single household is managed on the Households page of People Manager. The Household field is how you assign the current person to a Household. You can pick from a list of Households already created, or you can click the New button to create a brand new household that will take on the name and address of the current person. Below that is a place to indicate the relationship of the current person to the Household you just selected. Below that, in the outlined area, is where you change to address and phone number of the Household that is displayed in the Household field. The information you change here is then changed for each person who is a member of that Household (the list of all those in the Household is below the address information). Whatever address appears here also appears below the person’s name at the top of People Manager.
One other thing deserves mention, and that is the Directory Order field. This field dictates the order of names when a family is listed in the Household Phone List. If Frank Jones is given a 1 in this field, and his wife Sally is given a 2, then the name will be listed “Jones, Fred & Sally” in the phone list. Anyone given a 3 in this field will then be included in parenthesis behind this name, in the order of their age, which is intended for listing children.
I hope it brings clearer understanding of these topics. If you have any questions about any of this, please leave a comment to this post or create a ticket in our help desk.