A camp is played in teams. The Teams tab of a stay is where you build them, see who is in them, and print the lists you pin up in the dining hall.
The software does not split for you
There is no "split automatically" button, and that is a decision, not an oversight.
A church sorts on criteria no program knows: level, maturity, who needs to be kept apart from whom, the newcomer you place with an old hand, the language spoken, family history. A machine-made split would be wrong every time, and worse: what it proposes ends up accepted out of tiredness.
So the screen does the opposite. It shows what you need in order to decide, and it makes the gesture cheap.
Each row shows age, sex when known, the Minor tag, and Returning for those who took part in an earlier stay run by your church. You tick, you pick a team, done.
Two scopes: the whole stay, or one day
At the top, a selector offers Whole stay and then each day.
- Whole stay: teams that hold from the first day to the last. This is the common case.
- A given day: teams that exist for that day only, for a big game or a sports day.
Both coexist. A young person belongs to one team per scope, and an activity on a given day counts for that day's team if there is one, otherwise for the stay-long team. Without this rule a point would be counted twice.
In practice: if you place someone in a team when they already had one in the same scope, they are simply moved. You never have to remove them first.
Splitting
- Tick one or more young people, in the Without a team list or inside a team.
- A bar appears at the bottom with the number of people ticked.
- Choose the destination team, then Place here.
Remove from their team sends the ticked people back to the waiting list. Tick all selects the displayed page of the waiting list.
Two roles, not to be confused
The supervisor
A church member, an adult, responsible for the team. They are picked from the member directory.
Only one rule refuses in this screen, and it is a legal one: if the team includes at least one minor, the supervisor must hold a valid clearance for working with minors. Without it the save is refused, and the message says what to do: record the check on that person's volunteer file, then try again.
An icon shows the state of the clearance next to the name: valid, expired, or never recorded. The distinction matters: "expired" is fixed by redoing the procedure, "never recorded" means nobody ever checked.
The captain
One of the young people in the team. They are picked among their team mates, using the small crown on their row, never from the church directory: a captain who was not in their own team would make no sense.
One badge per team. Clicking another young person's crown gives it to them; clicking the current captain's crown removes it.
Indicators, never constraints
Each team shows its size, its number of minors, its age range and its gender mix. Nothing refuses because of an imbalance: these figures are there so you can see what you are building.
One counter deserves a word: unknown ages. With no date of birth we cannot tell whether the person is a minor, and the clearance rule does not see them. The figure is shown so the gap is visible rather than silent.
Reuse a split
When a day has no teams yet and another scope has some, the screen offers to reuse them. It copies teams you have already built, with their members and their captain.
It is the only shortcut on this screen, and it respects the rule above: it reuses your split, it does not invent one.
A supervisor who has since lost their clearance is not carried over, and the screen tells you so.
Archive, never erase
The Archive button takes a team off the working screen. Nothing is erased: its line-up stays in the database, and who was in which team can always be told. The young people themselves stay registered for the stay.
A team archived by mistake is put back with the return arrow, as long as its date has not passed.
A past date no longer changes
Until the day arrives, change as much as you like: a split is searched for, corrected, redone three times.
Once the scope has passed, the team freezes. No deletion, no removal, no addition, no renaming, no change of supervisor. It stays readable and printable.
That is what makes it possible to answer a precise question years later: this young person took part in that year's camp, was in that team, under that person's responsibility. A line-up that can be rewritten afterwards answers nothing, and it is precisely when there is a dispute that an answer is needed.
Printing the lists
Print the lists opens a ready-to-print document: one section per team with its colour, supervisor and captain at the top, then the members. Those without a team are printed too, at the end: a list showing only the people who were sorted suggests everyone was.
Ages are printed only if you ask
The Print ages box, next to the button, is unticked by default.
A list pinned up in the dining hall is read by everyone, well beyond the people organising. In several cultures, in Africa in particular, age is not spoken: asking for it is already delicate, displaying it on a wall more so.
Age stays visible in the console, where it serves to split and where only the supervising team sees it. The setting applies to your whole church, not just to this stay.