About Availability Forms

An Availability Form is a form that can be exported from PlanMaker and sent to Preachers via e-mail. The Preachers fill out the form by checking boxes corresponding to the dates and times when they are available to take Services. The completed form is then e-mailed back to the Superintendent or Circuit Secretary who can import it into PlanMaker and enter Preachers' availability automatically.

In order to use these forms, certain requirements must be met and the correct procedure must be followed.

The Superintendent or Circuit Secretary

You should ensure that all the dates for the Plan on which you are working have been entered into your Plan before exporting the form. The form will be saved in a file named "Availability.pma", which will be in the Planmaker sub-folder of your Documents Folder. This file should be e-mailed, as an attachment, to all the Preachers who are participating. On receiving a form back, you should save it to your Planmaker folder, giving it a meaningful name such as the name of the Preacher who returned the form, but you should retain the ".pma" extension. Finally, you should import the form into PlanMaker. When you have imported the form, the file will be deleted, but the exported file will be retained. Full help on exporting and importing forms is included in PlanMaker Help. You do not need Availability.exe to export and import forms; it is only needed to fill out the forms.

The Preachers

You will need a small application "Availability.exe", the installer for which can be downloaded by clicking the Download link at the bottom of the page. When you have downloaded the installer, run it and Availability.exe will be installed in a sub-folder named "PlanMaker" in your Program Files folder, and a shortcut to the application will be added to your Start Menu; you can optionally add a Desktop shortcut or a Quickstart shortcut. You should save the e-mail attachment "Availability.pma", received from your Superintendent or Circuit Secretary, to a suitable location, preferably your Documents folder. Then start the Availability.exe application, browse for the file and the blank form will immediately be visible - a sample form can be seen by clicking the "Screenshot" link below. Check the boxes for the dates and times when you are available and e-mail the form back to whoever sent it. For help with the form, press F1 while the form is on-screen.