Keep track of the calls and visits your team promises, walk new guests through a few steps, and look after prayer requests and private notes.
Care is where your team keeps its promises. Follow-ups make sure the phone call happens, workflows walk new guests through a few steps, and prayer requests and public forms gather what people share with you.
You'll find all of it under Care in the sidebar, with four tabs: Follow-ups, Workflows, Prayer and Forms. Admins, staff and volunteers can all use Care. Only admins and staff can build workflows and forms.
Follow-ups
A follow-up is one thing someone on your team needs to do, usually about one person: "Call the Garcias about small groups" or "Visit Ruth after her surgery."
To add one:
- Go to Care › Follow-ups and click Add a follow-up.
- Under What needs to happen?, write the task in plain words.
- Pick Who is it about? if it concerns a particular person (this is optional).
- Choose who it's Assigned to. It starts out assigned to you. Pick another team member, or leave it with no one so anyone can pick it up.
- Set a Due date if it has one. The Today, Tomorrow and Next week buttons fill it in for you.
- Choose a Priority (Low, Normal or High) and add any Details that will help.
- Click Add follow-up.
You can also add a follow-up from a person's profile: open their Care tab and click Add follow-up. It's linked to them automatically.
Working through your list
Care › Follow-ups opens on your own open follow-ups, grouped by when they're due. The tiles at the top count what's Overdue, Due today and Open; click one to see just those. Use Mine, Everyone and Unassigned to switch whose list you see, and Open or Completed to see what's done. When you've done one, click the circle beside it (Mark done). If you need it back, open Completed and click it again to reopen it.
When you assign a follow-up to someone else, Phyle emails them its title, who it's about and when it's due, with a link to their list. The description stays in Phyle. Nobody is emailed about follow-ups they assign to themselves. This needs email connected; see Email and texting.
Workflows
A workflow is a short list of steps people move through, shown as a board with one column per step. Two are ready when you start: New guest follow-up (Welcome call, Invite to coffee, Connected to a group) and Becoming a member. You can rename, change or delete them.
Building a workflow
- Go to Care › Workflows and click New workflow.
- Give it a Name and, if you like, a line about What is it for?
- Under How people enter it, choose what puts people on the board (see the next section).
- Leave Active on. When it's off, nobody is added automatically, but the board still works.
- Add your Steps, up to 20. For each one you can choose Who takes it, and a number of days it should be Done within.
- Click Create workflow. You'll land on the new board.
Drag a step, or use its arrows, to change the order. If you remove a step that has people on it, they move back to the step before it when you save.
Using the board
Each person is a card showing who it's assigned to and how many days they've waited on this step. If someone has waited longer than the step's "done within" time, their card turns red.
- Add someone puts a person on the board. You can choose which step they start on.
- Drag a card to another column to move it, or drop it on Finished when they're done. On a phone, tap the ⋯ on a card to move it, change who it's Assigned to, Mark complete or Remove it.
- Only mine shows just the cards assigned to you.
- The Completed and Removed tabs keep everyone who has left the board. Click Put back to return someone.
When a card moves to a step that has someone in Who takes it, the card is handed to that person. Steps without one keep whoever had it before. Whenever a card is handed to someone, by you, by a step or when a workflow starts on its own, they get an email with the person's name, the step and a link to the card.
Click a person's name to open their card. From there you can press Next step (or Finish on the last step), add follow-ups tied to this card, and write notes. Notes you write there also appear on their profile, and you can mark them Confidential.
Starting workflows automatically
Every workflow has one way people enter it. Pick the one that fits:
- People are added by hand. You choose who goes on the board, from the board itself.
- Someone checks in for the first time. Anyone checked in for their very first visit lands on the first step.
- A new person is added. Everyone added to People lands on the first step. This includes people added one at a time or with a household, people who fill in a public form and are new to you, people who sign up for the member portal, and new givers who give online. People brought in with a CSV import are not added.
- A form is submitted. Anyone who fills in any of your public forms lands on the first step.
Automatic entry only happens while the workflow is Active. A person is never put on the same workflow twice while they're still in progress on it.
If you want just one form to start a workflow, leave the workflow set to "People are added by hand" and choose it under Start a workflow on that form instead (see below).
Prayer requests
Care › Prayer is your church's prayer list. Click Add a request, choose Who is it for? from People or type a name under Or type a name (leave both empty for an anonymous request), and write What should we pray for?
The list has three views: Praying, Answered and Archived. When a prayer is answered, click Mark answered and add a word of praise if you like. Archive a request when it no longer needs to be on the list. Keep praying puts it back.
Print the list gives you a clean page for your prayer team.
Keeping a request private
Turn on Keep this confidential when a request shouldn't be shared widely. A confidential request:
- is seen only by admins, staff and the person who added it. Volunteers don't see it at all.
- is never printed on the prayer list.
On public forms, people can tick Keep this between me and the pastors under a prayer question. Those requests arrive marked confidential, so only admins and staff see them.
Confidential notes
Notes live on each person's Notes tab. When you add one, you can tick Confidential. A confidential note can be read only by admins, staff and the person who wrote it. Other volunteers never see it, and it doesn't appear in the person's History for them either.
The roles and permissions guide explains what each role can see.
Public care forms
Care › Forms lets you build forms anyone can fill in from their phone, like a connection card or a prayer request form. A Connection card is ready when you start.
To build one:
- Click New form and give it a Name and an Introduction.
- Add your Questions. Every form already asks for first name, last name, email and phone. You can add a Short answer, Paragraph, Dropdown, Checkbox, Date or Prayer request question.
- Under Sharing, keep Accepting responses on and check the Web address. Changing the address later breaks links and QR codes you've already shared.
- Under When someone submits, choose what happens:
- Add new people to People adds anyone whose email you don't already have as a visitor. People you know are matched by email.
- Apply a tag adds a tag to them.
- Start a workflow puts them on the first step of a workflow.
- Email a team member sends each response to someone on your team. This needs email connected. See Email and texting.
- Write a Thank-you message, then click Create form.
Copy the form's link from the Forms list to share it or put it on your website. To print it on a bulletin, a slide or a card, open the form and click QR code: it downloads a QR code that opens the form, and stays sharp at any size.
Each answer to a Prayer request question goes straight onto Care › Prayer. Open a form to see its responses. New ones are marked until someone reviews them. Use Mark all reviewed or Export to download them.
Next guide Email and texting