Working your list on the dashboard

The dashboard is a Monday-morning read, not a control panel. You can ask Scout a question, work a short list of people to reach out to, and see what Scout already took care of. Each row has one thing to do.

What is on the page

Top to bottom: the date and a greeting, with a note on the right saying when Scout last looked at everything; the Ask Scout bar with four example questions under it; today's headcount when a service is on; then two columns. On the left, People to reach out to and below it What happened this week. On the right, three cards: Scout · First on your list (the one dark card), Coming up this week (the next services and events in the next seven days, each linking to its page), and Prayer requests from your people. If none of the three has anything to show, the page uses one column.

The rule that divides the page: if something needs a person, it is in People to reach out to and nowhere else. Everything else is reference.

What happened this week is the record of everything that needs no reply, in three kinds you can filter between:

• Good news is always a count, never a person with a button: "3 people added in the last 7 days", "2 people gave for the first time", "About 145 at Sunday's services". A person worth a thank-you is a row in the list above instead.
• Your team reached out is the contact your staff recorded since Sunday: "Hannah P. followed up with Ben Okafor", "You prayed for Priya Anand". Only the fact of contact appears here; whatever was written stays on the person's profile behind the notes permission.
• Scout took care of it is what Scout did on its own, each line with a link to check it: imported people, routed form responses, possible duplicates found, its read refreshed overnight. On a week with activity the first line is a rollup like "Scout brought up 7 things for your team this week. 5 are closed and 2 are still open." Click it to open This week, a panel listing each one, who it was addressed to, and whether it is open or closed.

Five lines show at first; Show more reveals the rest. Each kind only appears if you have the permission its source needs, so a role without giving access never sees a first-gift line, not even as a count.

People to reach out to

The header line under the title says how many people Scout found who could use a call or a conversation. The card has up to five groups, always in this order: Worth celebrating, Passed on by the prayer team, Worth a follow-up, Open spots before Sunday, and Who should hear about this. A group that has nothing in it does not render.

It is a budget rather than a backlog. Three celebration rows at most, seven suggestions in total, at least four slots reserved for follow-ups, two Sunday-prep rows, and one routing question. The footer says "That's everything for today." with a See everyone link to the wider list when there is more.

Prayer requests from your people

Prayer lives on the right, in its own card, and nowhere else. It shows one request at a time, with who asked and when, and moves to the next every few seconds; resting your pointer on it pauses the movement. Next moves on without recording anything. Prayed records that this request was prayed over and removes it, exactly as the old list row did. A new request from the same person shows up again.

What each row can be

Eight kinds, and no more (prayer requests have their own card on the right). Each is gated by its own permission when it is produced, so a row you are not allowed to see never reaches you, not even as a count.

• At risk: the nightly read found a whole-person decline. The only row type that carries a membership status pill.
• Care: a colleague added a note on someone's profile and ticked Ask someone to check on them.
• Serving strain: heavy recent load, souring feedback, and another slot booked inside two weeks. All three, together. The sentence reads like "Their recent serves have felt like a stretch, and they're scheduled again soon." The raw rating never leaves the system. A long streak on its own never raises it, and there is no exemption for staff: a staff member who hits all three is under strain like anyone else. On this row, Followed up asks one more question before it records anything: Pause their serving? Choose 2 weeks or Until I clear it to take them off the schedule for that team in the same act, or No to record the follow-up and leave the schedule alone. Nobody is messaged either way.
• Group-leader note: a note a group leader wrote about someone on their roster, quoted in the row. Followed up records the outreach and closes it for good; Not now snoozes it a week, and an untouched note ages out after 14 days.
• Follow-up: an open task assigned to you, usually off a form. Reads "{Form name} · Overdue 3d" or "Due tomorrow".
• Form: a submission nobody has looked at yet.
• Circle-back: Scout asking how a conversation landed, a week to a month after you recorded it. "You followed up with Jess on Jul 30. How did that land?"
• Workflow stall: someone has sat at the same step for ten days or more. Done, next step moves them along (on the last step it finishes the workflow) and tells whoever owns the next step; Board opens the workflow. There is no "Not now" on a stall: the only way to clear it is to move the person. The same Done, next step arrow is on every card on the workflow board, so you never have to drag on a phone. A workflow never moves someone to the next step on its own, and it never sends anything to the person on it: the only automatic part is the entry, when a form's routing rule places someone at step one as they submit, and the only message is the email to whoever owns the step they just reached.

A fresh form response is guaranteed a slot even behind a deep backlog, so the newest thing a person asked for never gets buried under the standing list.

How it is ordered

Severity first, then whose it is, then how recent it is.

The "whose it is" part is newer and worth knowing. Rows addressed to you float to the top of their severity band, and a row addressed to someone else carries a quiet line underneath like "People confirmed for care have this one first."

It changes the order and never the contents. Nothing is hidden from you because it is somebody else's. See Deciding who hears what.

What to do with a row

Every row carries one past-tense verb, because the verb claims something you actually did.

On a celebration row: Had a conversation, Sent a welcome, or Said thanks. Pressing it records the contact on that person's profile and quiets them for a couple of weeks. Every celebration row also has Not now, which claims nothing and stops that one lane for that one person without touching anything else. On a new person's row, clicking the name opens the same peek panel a follow-up row gets — their email and phone, and the box to say what happened — with Sent a welcome as its verb, so a person you have no thread with yet comes with a way to reach them.

On a follow-up row, clicking the person's name opens a peek panel with one suggestion under Where to start, real email and phone buttons under Reach {first name}, and a What happened? (optional) box that saves to their profile as a pastoral note.

Open spots before Sunday rows list services with unfilled slots in the next week and send you to the schedule with Find a sub. Their Not now only lasts for this browser session; the row comes back on reload, and clears itself when the slot fills or the date passes.

The routing question

At most one a day, in the Who should hear about this group, and only when a real notice would actually have gone to that person. It reads like "Should Sophia Reyes hear about Portrait Kids?" or "Should Dana Ruiz hear when someone may need care?"

Answer Yes or No. Storing a "no" is what makes Scout stop asking, so answering the question is better than ignoring it.

Routing gaps appear in the same group, each as one sentence and a Take a look link: "No one is marked as leading {Team}, so news about the team stays with staff." or "No team is set to welcome first-time visitors, so news about them stays with staff." There is no dismiss, because the row is derived fresh every load. Fix the gap and it disappears.

A new church

The dashboard needs a few weeks of activity before the list means much. Scout will not speak about what it has not witnessed, so early on you will see thin-data language rather than confident claims, and the queue will be short. That is the system being honest rather than being empty.

What is not here

• No notices inbox. There is no /notices page and no notification history. Rows are derived when the page loads.
• No refresh button. The nightly batch is the only thing that rewrites Scout's read.
• No severity settings. How urgent each kind of row is, is fixed in the product.
• No sending. Every verb here records something or hands you a draft. Nothing leaves Scout on its own.

Next

• What Scout's statuses mean
• Deciding who hears what