Roster cycles
A roster cycle is the planning window your ecclesia publishes rosters in. Most tenants use a quarter — you pick a start month, a length, and the scheduler expands your activity templates into occurrences over that window. Cycles give members a predictable rhythm (“the next roster comes out the second week of March”) and let coordinators publish consistent chunks rather than a rolling week-to-week list.
This guide walks a tenant administrator through defining a cycle and understanding how it interacts with the solver and reminders. Reading time: five minutes.
Understand what a cycle actually controls
A cycle controls three things:
- How long a roster covers — the length in months. Three (quarterly) is the most common; some tenants prefer monthly, others biannual.
- When cycles begin — an anchor month + day. Your ecclesia’s year probably has a natural start (start of the calendar year, or the start of the church year); this is where you tell the scheduler.
- Which windows a coordinator can run — when a coordinator opens New run, its Roster cycle picker lists these cycle instances. Picking one sets the run’s period exactly, so they can’t accidentally roster a gap or an overlap.
Cycles don’t change what the solver picks — the roster for a given date range is identical regardless of whether it’s been sliced into cycles. They’re a planning + communication convenience.
Open the Roster cycles admin page
Open Manage in the top navigation, then Roster cycles under Configuration in the sidebar (administrators only). The list shows every cycle definition your ecclesia has; most tenants only need one, but you can have several (e.g. a quarterly cycle for the main roster and a monthly cycle for a small youth group).
Add a cycle definition
Click New definition and fill in:
- Name — short and internal-facing; “Quarterly” is a fine default.
- Length (months) — 3 for quarterly, 1 for monthly. Values above 12 are allowed but unusual.
- Anchor month + day — when the FIRST cycle of the year starts. Every subsequent cycle counts from this anchor; for a quarterly cycle anchored 1 January, the windows are Jan-Mar, Apr-Jun, Jul-Sep, Oct-Dec.
- Effective from — the date this definition starts applying. To change an existing cadence you post a new definition with a later effective date rather than editing history; set it in the past and the dialog shows an advisory.
Save when the anchor lines up with what your ecclesia expects.
Check your occurrence horizon
There’s no single “default cycle” to nominate — the New run picker lists every cycle you’ve defined and the coordinator chooses per run. (The Roster cycle defaults card in Manage → Settings only seeds the name/length/anchor for the next definition you create; it doesn’t steer runs.)
What’s worth checking under Manage → Settings is the Occurrence horizon — how many months of occurrences the tenant materialises ahead. Set it to at least the cycle length plus a buffer (18 months for a quarterly cycle is generous but keeps availability planning smooth).
Run the first roster from the new cycle
Ask a coordinator to open Manage → Runs and click New run. With Period set to Roster cycle, they pick the cycle you created and the server derives the dates — they only choose which scheduling groups to include and hit Start run.
From there, they’re in the standard coordinator review flow — Coordinator: building a roster picks up.
What next?
- Change your ecclesia’s cadence later? Edit the cycle definition and it takes effect for the NEXT run. Already- published rosters keep the dates they were published with.
- Multiple cycles is fine — the New run dialog lists them all in its picker, and a coordinator can switch to Custom dates for a one-off longer or shorter window.