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Promotion

Age-Based Promotion

Everything you need to know about promoting Participants based on their age.

Does your nursery or preschool ministry do monthly promotions based on a child's age? Would you like to stop manually selecting who to move and where to move them every month?

With our automated daily Promotion routine, you can automatically promote from one Group to another based on age. For example, when a two-year-old currently in the two-year-old Group turns three, MinistryPlatform automatically moves him to the three-year-old Group.

Note: Participants must have a Date of Birth listed in their Contact record for the routine to promote them automatically.

We do not recommend that you use this process for Groups that promote on an annual basis, such as grade-based Groups. But don't worry, we have an automated solution for that, too.

Set Up Automatic Age-Based Promotion

To use the daily Promotion routine, open each applicable Group record and set the following values. Once this is complete and the routine runs on the server, Participants move daily and automatically. Here are the settings you need to know:
  • Group Type: Any.
  • Promote to Group: Select the Group you want the kids in this Group to move to when they age-out of the Group.
  • Age in Months to Promote: Enter the age in months a Group member must be when the routine should move the child to the group you selected in the Promote to Group field.
  • Promote Weekly: Set to Yes.
    Note: Although the field says "weekly", the routine runs daily.
  • Promotion Date: You must leave this blank.
Here's an example setup:
  • Current Group Name: Two-Year-Olds
  • Promote to Group: Three-Year-Olds
  • Age in Months to Promote: 36 months

In this example, Participants in the Two-Year-Olds Group will move to the Three-Year-Olds Group when they reach 36 months of age, or three years old.

Exceptions and Troubleshooting

You can make exceptions for specific Participants or by Group Role Type. You can also determine whether you want MinistryPlatform to update or create the Group Participant records. See Promotion Routine for details.

Because the automatic promotions are based on a Participant's age in months, it's' helpful to know their age in months. To see that, create a View of your children on the Contacts page. Then, include the following code in the "view" clause using the SQL view on the birth date from the Contacts page:

DateDiff(day,Date_of_Birth,getDate())/(365.25/12) AS Age_In_Months

Age to Grade Transition

At some point, you'll want to transition your age-based promotion Groups to grade-based promotions Groups. You can do this manually or automatically.
  • Manually: Use the Age Group Part. By Age view on the Group Participants page to select the kids who aged-out of one Group. Then, use the Assign tool to move them to the next Group (for example, Kindergarten).
  • Automatically: Set up the last age-based Group to promote to a grade-based Group on a specific date. See Grade-Based Promotion.
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Last updated: October 29, 2024