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Promotion

Grade-Based Promotion

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

We recommend our automated daily Promotion routine to promote Participants from one Group to another based on their grade. For example, when a 4th grader currently in the 4th grade girls Group completes the school year, she moves to the 5th grade girls Group.

Set Up Automatic Grade-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, individuals move daily and automatically. Here are the settings you need to know:

  • Group Type: Any.
  • Promote to Group: Select the Group you want kids to move to when they age-out of the Group.
  • Promotion Date: The date you want the routine to move the Group Participants to the Group you selected in the Promote to Group field. See Promotion Routine for more information.
    Note: Allow at least 24 hours for the nightly routine to run.
  • Promote Weekly: When you use the Promotion Date option, set this to No.

Here's an example:

  • Current Group Name: 4th Grade Girls
  • Promote to Group: 5th Grade Girls
  • Promotion Date: 8/15/2023
  • Promote Weekly: No

In this example, Participants in the 4th Grade Girls Group will move to the 5th Grade Girls Group on August 15, 2023.

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.

Manually Promote by Grade

Rename the existing Age or Grade Groups and create a new Group for kids entering the system to manually promote kids by grade.

You may not be ready for the Promotion routine just yet. That's okay! You can manually move people from grade Group to grade Group. The Promotion routine will be there when you're ready.

  1. Start with the 12th grade, and rename it "Class of [Current Year]".
    Class of 2024
  2. Rename the 11th grade to "12th Grade".
  3. Review the Parent Group, Ministry, and Promote To values for each Group to ensure they are correct for the newly renamed Group.
  4. Repeat this for all other grades down to Kindergarten.
  5. On the Groups page, create a new Kindergarten Group.
  6. Go to the Group Participants page, and clear any existing selections.
  7. Select the current Group Participants in the four-to-five-year-old Groups that need to move to Kindergarten.
    Tip: The "Age Group Part By Age" is a helpful view for this step.
  8. View "Currently Selected" records.
  9. From the Actions menu, select Assign.
  10. Set the Group you created. Leave all other fields unchanged.
  11. Click OK to change the Group for the selected Group Participants.
  12. Clear your selection.

This is a great time to review the promotion setting for age-based Groups (babies through four years old).

If you need to hold back any children, you can edit their individual Group Participant record.

Alternative Approach for Group Promotion

We recommend the Promotion routine as the best practice to manage promotion. However, if you have more complicated promotion rules and can't use the automated routine, this topic guides you through an alternative promotion approach.

Some churches have more complex promotion rules or have a "Sunday school" model with Groups based around a progression of classes not tied to age or grade. If you need to explicitly promote Participants from one Group to another, and you can't use the Promotion routine or rename Groups, you can use the alternative approach.

Which should I choose?

The way you promote depends on your children's ministry model and how you want to log and maintain your data over time. Both methods maintain attendance records for past and current Participants. The main difference is that one keeps the Participants intact, and the other moves them Group to Group.

In the automatic and manual approaches:
  • The Group names change to reflect the grade, so Participants don't move from Group to Group. The Group-Participant relationship stays the same each year.
  • You can easily look at the Participant's attendance across years.
  • You lose the ability to easily see a "snapshot" of a Group in the past.
  • You have fewer records. For example, the Group named "12th Grade" was called "11th Grade" a year ago, and "10th Grade" the year before that. So the Group really represents the "Class of" a certain year, and you can think of all the records tied to the Group in that way.
In the alternative approach:
  • You have two options - share the same Group or create new ones.
  • If you share Groups, you keep the Groups for each grade but move Participants between them. In this case, the 12th Grade Group is the same Group as last year but with different students in it. It would be easier to see what things the "Senior Class" has done over time than the "Class of 2023".
  • If you create new Groups, you add Participants to a new Group each year, and you end-date the old Participants. This means there is a snapshot of every grade, every year. The 12th Grade group from last year represents that particular class for that specific year. So, for example, you'll have a "12th Grade" for 2023 that is a snapshot and a "12th Grade" for 2022 that is a snapshot.
  • Both of these options take more work than the automatic and manual approaches, but the benefit is you can go back and see historical data, if that's important to you. But you'll gather a lot of records over time.

If you decide on the alternative approach, follow these steps the week of promotion, immediately before the first Sunday when you use Check-In. If you use the same Groups (that is, not end-dating Groups), and you want to work ahead, you can set up each class with new sets of future Group Participants with a future start date and update the current Group Participants with future end dates.

Tip: Use the same date and time as the End Date when you end date Group Participants as part of Promotion. That way, you can quickly find all the records and identify that the end dating related to promotion (not moving, leaving, or other circumstances).
  1. Clear all unsaved selections on the Group Participants and Participants pages.
  2. Open a current Group from the Groups page.
  3. Select the appropriate current Group Participants.
  4. Use the transfer tool. Select the "Participants" page (not Group Participants), and name the selection for the Group it promotes to.
    You opened the 4th Grade Group, so you'll want to name it "5th Grade Group".
  5. Repeat these steps for all Group Participants that you need to promote.
  6. End date the current Group Participants using one of the following approaches:
    • Use the same Groups: Go to the Group Participants page. Search for and select the records of all the children, students, or volunteers that you need to move to another Group. Use the mass assign button to give them an end date.
    • Use the same Groups: You can also end-date any Groups you work with. This adds an end date to all of the Group Participants. You can then edit the Group record, remove the end date, and move on.
    • Create new Groups: You may also want to end-date all of the Groups and create new ones.
  7. Go to the first Group you want to add the promoted people to. Click Add, find your appropriate selection, and assign them to the Group with an appropriate start date. Make sure this date is before your next Check-In Event.
  8. Clear your selection on the Participants page.
  9. Repeat these steps for each Group.
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Last updated: October 29, 2024