Registration procedure using Google Script for the Katwijk Baptist Church

During the coronavirus pandemic, attendance at church services was restricted. Whereas people would normally come and go as they pleased, churches too had to control the number of visitors they admitted. We developed a registration form for the Katwijk Baptist Church, whereby the

Year
2021

The challenge

During the coronavirus pandemic, attendance at church services was restricted. Whereas people would normally come and go as they pleased, churches too had to control the number of visitors they admitted. We developed a registration form for the Katwijk Baptist Church, where the challenge was to allocate registrations for each service to the correct groups.

The website is built on WordPress. The activities are listed in The Event Calendar and for the forms GravityForms. The procedures have been implemented in Google Script.

Agenda including a registration form

The secretariat manages the schedule of worship services. As the items on the agenda need to be made available to members via the website and the app, it was decided to schedule all events in Google Calendar. The Event Calendar plugin features an automatic import function to process events as WordPress posts. The events are immediately assigned to the correct category. The Katwijk Baptist Church organises several events, and each of these is assigned to its own category to provide relevant overviews on the website. In WordPress, we automatically include a registration form under each service event. The form disappears automatically 12 hours before the service takes place.

The solution

Retrieve registrations by service

Gravity Forms stores the registrations for each service. In fact, they are all listed in one large list, but this can be filtered by service. Using Google Script, the data from The Event Calendar and Gravity Forms is retrieved via the WordPress REST API and processed in Google Sheets. A separate Google Spreadsheet is created for each service. The day before the service (often Sunday, but this may vary on special public holidays), the Google Spreadsheet is assigned to all groups. People linked to one of the groups receive an email containing a link to the Google Spreadsheet. So who are these groups?

  • The welcome team. They keep track of who attends the service.
  • Sunday School. On the registration form, members or regular visitors indicate how many children they are bringing to Sunday school.
  • Toddler care. It is also possible to specify the number of toddlers and babies.
  • Sextons. They can take into account the number of seats to be installed.
  • Council of Brothers. As those in charge, they oversee the day-to-day running of the local authority.

Google Script contains various functions. Each function performs its own task at the specified time. Taken together, all these functions ensure that the entire registration process is automated. Throughout the process, a great deal of information was gathered about the various working methods, and the system was set up accordingly.