People in MinHub Youth

Tracking valuable data in youth ministry starts with collecting the information that matters most for the people involved in your ministry.

Youth ministry is basically adults that love Jesus (and actually give a crap about teens) laying down their lives for the sake of the gospel. The three most critical people in youth ministry are the students, the staff leaders, and the parents.

MinHub Youth makes it easy to track all three types of people (students, staff and parents) as well as the connections between each. Looking at connections show which staff have connected with specific students and vice versa.

All students that are added are treated similarly. Adults, however, can be added as parent, staff or both.

In the People tab, tapping the + button at the top will give you the option to add students or adults. Each has slightly different options, but tapping on either will open up a long form with all fields.

You can also add students by tapping on the +New Student button while taking attendance at an event. This method is ideal for a student entering their own information at an event. It will allow the students to either link to a parent that has already been added or add their parent themselves.

The information that is required for adding a student are:

• First Name
• Last Name
• Text Message Preference
• Phone Number (if they opted in for text messages)
• Grade
• School

Optional fields are:

• Nickname
• Birthdate
• Gender
• Email
• Parent Name
• Parent Phone Number
• Address
• Photo

To update the information of a student, there are a couple ways to do it. The first is to tap on the Student’s name to see their detail screen from the People tab. From there, tapping Edit > in the upper right corner will reveal a screen where you can edit all the information about that student.

The other way to access this screen is to long press on a student’s photo during attendance. This will also bring up the Edit screen. This is great for updating schools when a student switches schools or if a student gets a new phone and they are talking about it at an event.

Tapping on a student profile will show a button called Connections. Tapping on Connections will display students and staff that are connected to this student and what type of connection. Tapping the + button allows you to create a new connection.

Student to student connections are useful for tracking siblings and friends. Tapping the plus button will easily allow you to add a student to student connection for siblings and friends. Once this choice is set, contact info is displayed for quickly contacting the friend or sibling of a student. Tapping Edit > will allow you to switch the connection between Friend and Sibling. Swiping any connection to the left will reveal a Remove button if the connection needs to be removed.

Student to staff connections are created in two ways. When a student is in a Shared Group with a Leader, an implicit connection is created. The other way is to visit a student’s detail screen, tap on Connections, and tap the + button. Connecting a staff member to a student grants access for contact information. Tapping on Details > will show assigned roles, group connections, and all recorded Ministry Moments between the staff and student.

Removing students is really a two step process. The first is to archive a student. Swiping to the left on a student in the list in the People tab will reveal a red Archive button. Tapping that button will remove students from that list and from the attendance list going forward.

In the ••• tab, there is a section called Manage Archived People. As long as the students remain in the archive, their attendance at previous events is preserved. However, if you delete the student completely, it removes all instances of the student from the app, including all previous record of attendance at events, any connections that existed or appearance in any groups.

Students that leave your ministry should stay in the Archive. At any point, you would be able to restore them to the app if they returned to your ministry. Deleting students completely is really just for when you’ve created some sort of test student or other student profile that you are sure you will never need again. There is no limit of students in the archive (or in the app at all), so feel free to just leave them there.

The direct way to add parents to the app is to tap the + button at the top of the People tab and selecting Adult. This method is great for when a staff member needs to add a parent to the app.

The other method happens during the addition of a student. There is a field for the Parent’s name. As the characters are typed, the app searches for a parent with that name. This helps connect parents that may have more than one student in the ministry without duplicating the parent.

The information that is required for adding a parent are:

• First Name
• Last Name

Optional fields are:

• Phone Number
• Address
• Photo

The reason that addresses are tied to parents rather than to students is because some students live at two different addresses when there are joint custody issues.

When creating a parent during the process of adding a student, a connection is automatically created. That connection is labeled as Guardian as the default because gender information for the parent is not collected.

Tapping on a student profile will show a button called Parents. Tapping this button will display any adults that are already connected along with contact information for the parent. Tapping the + button allows you to create a new connection. Tapping Edit > will allow you to correctly identify the relationship as Father, Mother, Step-Father, Step-Mother or the catch-all, Guardian. Swiping any parent’s name to the left will reveal a Remove button if the parent connection needs to be removed.

If a new parent needs to be added to the database, tapping the + button at the top of the People tab will allow you to add a parent.