One Day Classes User Guide

What are One Day Classes?

A One Day Class (sometimes called a Festival, depending on your jurisdiction) is an event where a group of candidates receives multiple degrees in a single day, rather than at separate meetings over weeks or months. The One Day Classes feature helps your group (the parent organization that oversees all locals – for example, a state-level body or national association) plan and run these classes from start to finish.

With this feature you can:

• Create a class with a date, place, and class number
• Build a roster of candidates and mentors, pulled from your locals (the individual units within your organization, such as lodges, chapters, or local committees)
• Print a candidate roster for day-of check-in
• Record which degrees each candidate received during the class
• Automatically create the member life-cycle events for the degrees candidates received, so their records stay accurate without manual data entry

This feature is available on request. If your organization performs one day classes and you do not see it in your menu, ask your Groupable administrator to have it turned on for your group.

Getting Started / How to Access

From the main menu, click Group, then click One Day Classes. If this is your first time using the feature, you may notice a “New” badge next to the menu item.

You need parent group read access to view One Day Classes, and parent group read/write access to create classes, manage the candidate roster, or record degrees received.

The One Day Classes page lists every class your group has created, with columns for Date, Number, Place, and counts of Candidates, Mentors, Attended, and Letter Sent. Click any column heading to sort the list.

Setting Up Which Degrees Qualify

Before you can use One Day Classes, someone with administrator access needs to identify which degrees in your group’s event model are eligible to be awarded during a one day class. This is a one-time setup step per jurisdiction.

1. From the main menu, click Admin.
2. Click Event Model.
3. Click the degree event you want to include (for example, your group’s Entered Apprentice, Fellow Craft, or Master Mason equivalent), or click Create to add a new one.
4. On the edit screen, check the box labeled One Day Class Degree.
5. Click Save.

Repeat this for every degree your one day classes award. The order in which candidates progress through these degrees is determined by your group’s existing event setup (the same milepost chain used elsewhere for tracking a member’s progress), so there is no separate step to set the order – it follows how your degrees are already configured.

If no degrees are marked this way, One Day Classes will not know which events to create when you reconcile a class, and you will see a message explaining that the feature is not fully configured for your jurisdiction.

Creating a One Day Class

1. From the main menu, click Group, then click One Day Classes.
2. Click the Add button.
3. Fill in the fields:

4. Click Save.

Your new class now appears in the One Day Classes list. Click its date, number, or place to open it.

Building the Candidate and Mentor Roster

Once a class exists, you add candidates (and, if your jurisdiction uses them, mentors) from your locals.

1. From the One Day Classes list, click the class you want to work with.
2. Click the menu icon (three lines) in the top-right corner of the class page.
3. Click Manage Attendees.
4. Use the Select Local search box to find the local whose members you want to add. Search by local name or number.
5. Once you select a local, two lists appear side by side: Candidates on the left and Mentors on the right. Each list shows the eligible members of that local.
6. Check the box next to each member’s name to add them to the class. Uncheck the box to remove them.

Your changes save automatically as you check and uncheck boxes – there is no separate save button on this screen.

Only members with an eligible membership type in the selected local appear in the Candidates list. All active full members of the local appear as potential Mentors.

To work with a different local, search for it again in the Select Local box. To see everyone already added to the class across all locals, click the View All icon next to the roster tables.

Printing the Candidate Roster

Before the day of the class, you can print a roster for check-in and record-keeping.

1. Open the class from the One Day Classes list.
2. Click the document icon in the top-right corner of the class page (next to the menu icon).

A PDF opens in a new browser tab, listing each candidate’s name, local, member type, address, and columns to mark attendance and degrees received by hand. Print this PDF and bring it to the class.

Recording Attendance and Degrees Received

After building your roster, use the class page itself to track who showed up and what they received. This is also where you record results after the class is over, using the roster you marked by hand.

1. Open the class from the One Day Classes list.
2. On the class page, you will see a table of every candidate and mentor added to the class, with these columns:

Each of these fields saves automatically as soon as you make a change – there is no separate save button.

Mentors show “Mentor” instead of a degree dropdown, since they are not receiving degrees.

Creating Candidate Events After the Class

Once you have recorded which degree each candidate received, the final step is to create the official member records for those degrees. This step reads each candidate’s Degree Received value and creates the life-cycle events needed to bring their membership record up to date – including any degrees between where they left off and where they ended up, not just the one you selected.

1. Open the class from the One Day Classes list.
2. Click the menu icon in the top-right corner of the class page.
3. Click Create Candidate Events.
4. A confirmation message appears explaining that this will create degree events for every candidate with a degree received recorded, and update their membership type. Click OK to continue.

The system processes each candidate one at a time. For any candidate, either all of the missing degree events are created, or none are – so a problem with one candidate’s record never leaves them with only some of their degrees recorded. If a candidate cannot be processed (for example, no degree was recorded for them, or their membership type does not match what is required), they are skipped, and a message tells you how many attendants were skipped.

You can safely run Create Candidate Events more than once. Candidates who were already fully processed are simply skipped again on a second run, and only candidates still missing events are updated.

Tips / Good to Know

• Number suggestions are just a starting point. The system suggests the next available class number automatically, but you can type in a different number if your jurisdiction uses its own numbering convention.
• A member can only appear once per class. If you try to add the same member to a class twice, the system keeps a single row for that member rather than creating a duplicate.
• Historical data still works. If your group has older one day class records where the degree received was entered as plain text rather than selected from the dropdown, the system automatically matches that historical text to the correct degree the first time it is needed, so nothing needs to be re-entered by hand.
• Search results are scoped to your group. When you search for members or locals while building a roster, only members and locals in your own group appear – not those from other groups on the system.
• Some jurisdictions use different terminology. For example, some jurisdictions refer to this event as a “Festival” rather than a “One Day Class.” The menu label will reflect whichever term your jurisdiction uses.

Troubleshooting

I don’t see One Day Classes in my menu. This feature must be turned on for your group. Contact your Groupable administrator and ask them to enable One Day Classes support for your group.

I clicked Create Candidate Events and got an error saying the feature isn’t fully configured. This means no degrees in your group’s event model have been marked as One Day Class Degree. See “Setting Up Which Degrees Qualify” above, or ask your administrator to complete that setup.

A candidate’s degree dropdown shows some options grayed out. Grayed-out degrees are ones the candidate already has on record from a previous event. You cannot select a degree the candidate has already received.

Some attendants were skipped when I created candidate events. This happens when a candidate has no degree recorded, or when their current membership type does not match what is required for the degree event. Check the candidate’s record and their Degree Received selection, then try again.

I don’t see a member or local I expected in the roster search. Roster searches only include members and locals that belong to your own group. If the member you are looking for belongs to a different group, they cannot be added to your class.

Glossary

Group – The parent organization that oversees all locals, districts, and regions. Examples include a state-level governing body, a national association, or a political party.

Local – An individual unit within your organization where members hold their primary membership. Depending on your organization, this might correspond to a lodge, chapter, local committee, or similar body.

Member – A person who holds membership in your group.

Affiliation – A member’s specific membership in a local, including their membership type and status there.