OCIA, in depth

The intake wizard asks about baptism first. The answer sets one of three paths:

• Catechumen. The person is not baptized.
• Candidate. The person is baptized in another Christian community.
• Catholic. The person is baptized Catholic but has not completed initiation.

An adult starts the wizard for the self. A parent starts it for a child, in the Adapted for Children track. A child record is marked Minor on the roster. A child also has a program fee that belongs to the cohort. The wizard asks the parent for a long-form birth certificate. A person can begin without signing in, and verifies an email address partway through so the work is saved.

Each participant holds one of five statuses:

1. Draft. The wizard is saved but not sent.
2. Submitted. The registration is in.
3. Accepted. The team accepted it.
4. Received. The person has been received into the Church.
5. Withdrawn. The person left the process. A withdrawn family can register again.

Staff move people forward with the Advance Status action. It moves each person to the next status. It skips a person who is already Received or Withdrawn. Each change writes an audit note with the staff member's name.

A cohort is one program year, with its dates, child fee and optional payment plan. Every admin screen works on one cohort at a time.

The cohort holds a calendar of sessions: weekly gatherings, Sunday Mass, retreats and service projects. It also holds the rites that the module tracks:

• the Rite of Acceptance and the Rite of Welcome
• the Rite of Election
• three Scrutinies
• the Easter Vigil, Divine Mercy and Pentecost

Staff mark rite attendance for a selection of people against one session. Staff record the sacraments of baptism, confirmation and first Eucharist for each person, with a date. A separate box confirms that the paper sacramental register was updated.

A daily timer checks the active cohort and sends reminders:

• A session reminder, for sessions in the next 2 days, to people on the matching path.
• A rite reminder, for rites in the next 10 days.
• A document reminder, when the baptismal document is still pending and the cohort deadline is within 14 days.

A person gets a reminder by email or by text, as the person chose. The server records each reminder, so a rerun never sends it twice.

Staff review each uploaded document. They verify it or reject it, and a rejection needs a reason. The sponsor registry lists every sponsor across all cohorts. Each sponsor has a vetting status of pending, verified or rejected, with notes.

On the roster, staff select up to 250 people and run one action: email, text, welcome message, mark rite attendance, promote to parishioner, or advance status. The server reports how many succeeded, failed or were skipped.

• Candidates and parents see their own path, four status tiles (intake, documents, sponsor, payment), their documents, and what comes next. They also set contact preferences.
• The OCIA team sees the roster, sessions, documents, sponsors and outcomes for the chosen cohort.
• Payments stay in the shared payments screen, filtered to OCIA, along with refunds.