This guide is designed to give you a quick crash-course in the capabilities of your Choir Genius site, and a general blue-print for getting your children's choir setup. For full information on setting up individual features, please refer to the relevant help article.

Setting up your Site

• Keep your site in setup mode until you are ready to invite users to login, this ensures no notifications are sent to anyone other than those with the “Admin” role
• Check your basic site configuration settings - location, date and time format
• Does your choir have various ensembles? You will want to add these as “Subgroups”
• Review the account profiles - is there other information you need to collect? Consider adding a custom profile field. These are a great way to handle extra information specific to your group.
• Select your default profile privacy settings. Should members be able to see the contact info of other members? Admins can always see profile and contact information.

TIP: These settings can all be found on the "Admin Settings & Tools" page

Adding fellow leadership

• Review the four “admin level” roles: Admin, Manager, Coordinator, Assistant
• Add your fellow leaders to the site and assign them their relevant roles.
  
  

Adding Members & Parents

When uploading Parents via spreadsheet, they:

• Should be given the “parent” role for the correct level of access, so in the "Roles" column, write "Parent"
• Should be given the “adult” account type, so in the "Account type" column, write "Adult"
• Status should be active, so in the "Can login" column, write Yes.
  
  

When uploading Children via spreadsheet, they:

• Should have the “member” role for the correct level of access, so in the "Roles" column, write "Member".
• Should have the “minor” account type, so in the "Account type" column, write "Minor"
• Status should be active, so in the "Can login" column, write Yes.
• Use the parent’s email address in the “Parent” column in order to connect the child to the parent’s account. If there are two or more parents/guardians, then the email addresses should be formatted as: email1@foo.com,email2@foo.com
• Children do not have to have an email address as long as parents do (notifications can be set to go to the parents)
  • Set their Email preference (in the email preference column) to “send to primary email address and all parents”
• If you are a multi-choir organization, we recommend adding members to subgroups with the name of each choir to help keep them organized. This would go in the "Subgroups" column of the spreadsheet.

After upload

• Consider customizing your login invitation to provide more context/instructions. Settings > Account emails.
  
• Remember, invitation emails will not send while in setup mode
  

Create mailing lists
Perhaps you want to send an introductory email before you invite everyone to login? You can use the default "members" mailing list that will send to all accounts with the member role, or you can create your own specific mailing list.

Mailing list emails can be sent while in setup mode, so if you create a list and want to test it, please note that it will send to all recipients no matter their role.

Communication
Speaking of communication, there are several tools within the site that let you share information with account holders. 

• Dashboard blocks - they will see this when they first login. A great way to highlight important information. All members see the Member dashboard. Some built-in blocks are user-specific and show content specifically for that user.
  
• Bulletins - a great place for reference information. Functions like a newsletter, or posting a notice to a bulletin board. It’s assignable, so you can have different sets of people see different bulletins. There is an email notification when a bulletin is posted.
  
• Mailing lists - Configurable, and based on the settings on the child’s profile, parents are automatically included. You can allow recipients to reply to the list, or make it so that only certain people can send to a list.
  
• Forms - Assign a form for a user to fill out. Parents can fill out forms for their children. The completed form appears on the assignee’s profile for reference. Leaders can review submissions, and those invited who have not yet filled out the form.
• Notifications - The site will remind people to login, set up their profile, rsvp to events, fill out assigned forms, etc

Setting up Registration

ChoirGenius is an account management system. This means that every person who interacts with your site needs an account, including children AND parents. 

• Parents will typically be the people logging in and paying, but their child will need a separate account for your records.
• The child’s account is typically what you will interact with for referencing membership records, music they have access to, and mailing lists.
• The child’s account is linked to the parent’s account through FAMILY RELATIONSHIPS.
• Relationships allow you to tie multiple parents to a child - this allows for a variety of household dynamics that gives each parent equal access to the child’s account - without forcing the parents to share information. 
  
  

Your site is capable of allowing the public to access the store to purchase a Membership product. This is an important part of the registration process and is is recommended to configure your membership policy (Admin tools & settings > store & commerce settings) to require approval for non-member membership purchases - especially if your store is open to the public.

Memberships have their own workflow:

• When a person purchases a membership requiring approval, they will be assigned the “Applicant” role. You can use this role to invite them to an audition event, or to send them email via a mailing list before they become members. 
• Memberships that require approval will not be charged until the membership is approved.
• Upon approval, the role of Member is assigned to the account that the memberships application is for. If the purchase was made by a parent of a singer, then the parent’s account receives the Parent role.
• The Member and Parent roles grant access to your site, allowing the accounts to see the names of fellow members and any shared contact details - this is why memberships requiring approval are recommended to be approved if your store is open to the public.

In order for registration to work, you'll need to set up your store settings, and add your relevant products. Below you will find a general list of things to consider when setting up your store to get the best use out of it.

Things to decide when configuring the store:

TIP: These settings are all in the "Admin Settings & Tools" page.

• Choose if the public can access your store. This affects whether or not people need to already be in your system before you launch your site, or if you new people can create an account and purchase a membership
• Choose if Parents can create accounts for their children when registering. This is important if you are a children’s choir as a parent may need to add a new child
• What payment methods will you allow? Will you allow cash and cheque payments? Do you need to set a tax rate?
• Will you need to approve new membership purchases? We recommend manually approving memberships if your choir is auditioned, or if your store is open to the public to register.

Things to decide when adding products:

• Do you have any mandatory fees that should be applied to purchases? You will want to add those products first, so that you can make them required when purchasing other items. They will likely be a "General" product type.
• Will you be tracking stock of items? This is important if you have limited registrations for your choirs.
  • You can choose to track the stock overall, versus per version of a product. This can be important when adding your products.
• Will you be offering various payment options, such as Annual, automatic monthly, quarterly, etc? If so, create these as versions of one product, and list each choir as it’s own membership.
• Do you need a membership product? Will you be collecting online membership fees from your singers? If so, do you want to approve all of them, or just new singers that sign up? 
• Verify that you applied tax to any applicable products
• You can mark items as featured, which will place them at the top of the store with a blue flag.
• You may want to add a donation product and feature it at checkout.
  • Featuring a product at checkout asks the user if they would like to add the item to their cart as part of the checkout process.