Navigating a People Record
The People view is Brick River’s main contact database. It is accessed by selecting Contacts from the top menu bar and clicking People from the drop-down menu that appears. Across the fields available in a People record, the standard options come preloaded in the system. Nearly any field and its options can be modified to fit your conference’s needs. For more information, contact your system administrator.
CONTACT FIELDS
The first four groups of fields allow you to capture basic contact information, including email addresses, phone numbers and addresses. If your conference uses Brick River for its website, information entered into these sections may appear on the front-end of your website — what visitors see when they enter your URL — in areas such as a clergy directory, leadership listing or staff directory, depending on how your web pages are set up.
For email addresses, cell phone numbers and mailing addresses, a privacy option exists:
- Email addresses can be marked “Do Not Email,” removing them from any email blasts sent through the Brick River emailer.
- Cell phone numbers can be marked “Do Not Publish” to prevent them from being displayed in front-end directories.
- Mailing addresses can be marked “Do Not Mail.”
A People record allows for both a mailing and home address for each individual. Each address entry section includes a checkbox to indicate if both the home and mailing address are the same. Clicking the box in one section auto-populates the fields in the other section. For example, if you enter a mailing address, scroll down to the home address section and select “Same as Mailing Address,” the mailing address data will automatically fill into the home address fields.
In the Email and Phones section, the Email Subscriptions field records an individual’s subscriptions to your email lists. The drop-down list is populated by both your public and private email lists. Find or edit this list by selecting Email from the top menu bar and then selecting Subscriptions > The Lists.
ABOUT
The few fields in this section — description, external link and website/links — allow you to enter personal details about the contact. Items entered into the description field might be visible on the front-end of your website, such as on a staff listing page. The website/links field allows for multiple entries to record the contact’s personal website, Facebook page, Twitter profile and more.
FILES
This field allows you to upload files related to the individual. Some conferences utilize a sub-field model with multiple file upload fields specific to different needs, including Safe Gathering certifications, boundaries training and more. The files field and section can be customized to fit your conference’s needs.
LOGIN CREDENTIALS
Fields in this section record the individual’s credentials for the People Portal, an additional Brick River module. Additionally, if your conference has a staff portal enabled, access and credentials are recorded here.
ONLINE PUBLISHING
In the field titled friendly, you can set a friendly link for this contact’s directory entry. Using the Do Not Publish Online switch, specify if an entry should be displayed on the front-end of the website, such as in a directory or listing.
REGISTRATIONS
This section displays a list of registrations connected to this specific People record.
When an individual completes a registration form through Brick River, the database connects the registrant entry to the People record using a matching algorithm. matching the email address. Therefore, if a registrant registers using contact information that’s different than what’s listed in their People record or misspells any aspect of their information, the entries won’t connect, and the registration won’t be displayed in this section. Additionally, because multiple records across the Brick River Data Core might utilize the same contact information, a registration can be tied to multiple records in a variety of views.
You can manually link registrations to a People record by using the “Relate RegInfo Items” button. This process can be cumbersome, and is best done right after a user registers, because RegInfo items are separated only by the date and time the registrant completed the form instead of other identifying information.
APPOINTMENTS, ASSIGNMENTS, CLERGY STATUS
This section tracks all details related to appointments, such as time and location; local church, district and conference leadership assignments; and clergy status, including conference relationships both past and present, options to indicate cross-conference appointments, GCFA account status, and death or inactivity.
Leadership Assignments
Assignments appear here from the Leadership Assignments view. Selecting the green “Add a New Assignment” button creates a new, related Leadership Assignment record. In this record, you can set start and end dates as well as specify the role, position, related church and other details specific to the assignment. By clicking on the linked, blue text displayed in an entry, you can edit an existing leadership assignment.
Appointments
This individual’s appointment(s) appear here from the Appointments view. Selecting the green “Add a New Appointment” button creates a new, related Appointment record. In this record, you can appoint an individual to a church, district or extension ministry (and relate the appropriate Church view, District view and Extension Ministry view records) and indicate details specific to the appointment, such as interim status and service time percentage. By clicking on the linked, blue text displayed in an entry, you can edit an existing appointment entry.
Clergy Status
Several fields allow you to capture details related to both current and past clergy statuses. The Current Clergy Status/Conference Relationship field indicates the contact’s current status. Past or future statuses can be entered in the Clergy Status Log by selecting “Add a New Clergy Status Record.” Additionally, in the Appointments view, the Appointment Tweak Notes field allows you to notate a change to status or service time that occurred during the appointment. By using this field, you can record changes without creating an entirely new appointment entry.
Due to the nature (and title) of the Current Clergy Status field, updates to the field can’t be future-dated. Record of future status — such as a new appointment as a full-time licensed local pastor beginning July 1 — can be indicated with a Clergy Status Log entry ahead of the future start date. After July 1, the Current Clergy Status field should be updated to reflect the new, now-current status. If your conference has draft functionality enabled, you could set the current status and start date to July 1 and save it as a future-dated draft set to go-live on July 1.
Additionally, the Home Conference and Serving This Conference fields can record cross-conference appointments.
Any of the drop-downs in the Assignments, Appointments, Clergy Status section can be adjusted to fit your conference’s needs. However, some existing entries that relate to the GCFA data sync cannot be deleted. Learn more about editing category lists in this article.
UMC INFO
Fields in this section capture lay/clergy status, conference staff department affiliations and position titles, compensation, and GCFA and Wespath ID numbers.
Data pertaining to conference staff departments might be used in a few ways. If your conference utilizes a staff portal, a conference staff department must be indicated to allow access to the portal (in addition to flipping the staff portal switch in the Login Credentials section). Additionally, department selections and job titles entered into this section may display on the front-end of your website in a staff directory page.
The pastoral record field allows for capture of unstructured data. For a more structured format, utilize the clergy status log. Because of its unstructured nature, some conferences prefer utilizing this field for conference journal compilation.
By selecting the green “Add a New Church/Person Metric” button, you can create an entry that reflects current year-end statistical metrics related to the contact and their church. The available fields align with basic year-end statistical tables and allow for entry of basic apportionment payout data as well. While this is an available option, typically metrics are connected to a church, not an individual.
Recording Compensation
By selecting the green “Add a New Compensation Record” button, you can link compensation form data to the contact’s People view record. Unless your conference has enabled the clergy compensation module as part of the People Dashboard, these compensation records are internal only for Brick River users.
In the compensation record, you can select the salary source — be it one or more churches, the charge, a connectional structure appointment, or an extension ministry — and indicate the percentage each appointment shares of the salary if the clergyperson serves more than one entity.
Additionally, compensation records offer fields for UMPIP and insurance selections.
Tracking Immigration Documents
The I-9 on File switch allows you to easily indicate if the person has the immigration document on file. Fields following it — Resident Type, Country of Origin, Work Authorization Expiration — offer a place to track relevant details for those with a work authorization or visa.
HOME CHURCH AND DISTRICT INFO
These fields relate the contact to their home church’s Church view record and allow a district affiliation from a drop-down list.
Conferences across the connection utilize this in a variety of ways: Many use it to record the individual’s charge conference church or notate what church and district retirees, laity and district at-large members relate to. Other conferences utilize it only to record laity church affiliation and indicate charge conference churches as a Leadership Assignment.
TRAININGS, COURSES, CHECKS, CLASSES, ETC.
This section tracks education, CEUs, and any other trainings or classes your conference requires. Selecting any of the green buttons opens up a new entry of that type and offers more specific fields to capture the related data.
Tracking Trainings, Certifications and Classes
Use this section to track items such as background checks, Safe Gatherings training, sexual ethics training and Course of Study. The fields in this form allow for capture of completion data, expiration dates and files related to the training, such as a transcript or completion certificate. Specific to Course of Study, the course selection drop-down includes all the approved COS classes. Overall, the fields and options in this section can be customized to fit your conference’s needs.
Tracking Education History
Use this section to track education from high school graduation and beyond. This is useful for tracking clergy seminary degrees, including what type of degree they received and what institution it was from.
Tracking CEUs and Lifelong Learning
Use this section to record CEUs earned by the contact. If your conference uses the People Portal, pastors can submit their own CEUs via a corresponding data form (learn more about creating a data form in this article), and the administrator who tracks CEUs has the ability to approve or deny the entry. This form, and its related data form, can be customized to your conference’s needs.
Indicating Certifications in Specialized Ministry
Use this section to track those who have certifications that you might list in the annual Business of the Annual Conference. Records kept here help conference secretaries note who have been certified in these specialized areas as defined by GBHEM. While the preset, drop-down list includes only the certifications that get reported out by the conference, you can edit the list to include other options specific to your conference. Learn more about editing category lists in this article.
AC Voting Rights
Use this section to track voting rights for Annual Conference sessions. The drop-down lists six standardized options, but you can add more choices by managing the list in categories. Learn more about utilizing the AC Voting Rights field effectively and how the mass update feature makes it easy to update voting rights for large groups in this article.
MARRIAGE AND FAMILY INFO
This fieldset provides space to record information about the contact’s spouse and children. There are two ways to enter a spouse: By linking to another People record or entering the details into the provided fields. Both data entry methods have their pros and cons.
Entering Spouse Information
By linking to another People record, you have all the People record fields at your disposal to capture information about the contact. Depending on how your conference manages its database, this could be a con; sometimes spousal records are seldom updated and become a source of outdated information.
By entering the spousal data in the fields provided, you limit the amount of information you can record for the contact’s spouse. This might be a pro or a con, depending on how your conference manages its database. For some, this option is ideal because it cuts down on the number of People records that could potentially fall out of date.
No matter the entry method you choose, entering the data consistently is key. Without consistency, all the needed data might not pull easily on a report, leading to merging and clean-up once the report file exports.
Additionally, this section features a field to indicate the type of clergy spouse: Active or widowed. Many conferences utilize this to track surviving spouses.
PERSONAL INFO
Fields in this section capture demographic data about the contact, including gender, ethnicity and languages spoken. Some fields — such as previous name, previous denomination and previous conference — allow you to indicate the date the change took place. Date of birth is also recorded in this fieldset.
Any of the drop-downs in this section can be adjusted to fit your conference’s needs. For example, if you wanted to indicate more specific ethnicities, you could divide the ethnicity of Asian to reflect Korean, Chinese, Japanese, etc. When doing so, you’d want to name the same numeric abbreviation code as the broader ethnicity to keep consistent GCFA reporting. Learn more about editing category lists in this article.
ADDITIONAL INFORMATION
Entering a number in the directory sort field forces an order when this People record is pulled in a front-end website directory. For example, setting Sally’s directory sort order to “2” will indicate that she should show as second on a page displaying a list of People records.
NOTES/INTERACTIONS
This section works like a customer relationship management tool (CRM). By selecting the green “Add a New Note/Interaction” button, you can create a new interaction entry reflecting what was discussed, in what format and when.
Within each note, you can set the level of privacy specific to it. Notes are public in the Brick River console unless marked private. When marked private, you can select whether only you, other admins, or specific, previously defined users and/or groups can see the note. This feature is perfect for Cabinets, who may need to record and share access to confidential interactions without allowing all Brick River users to see the notes.