Programs
The full detail on building a program of dated milestones.
Program vs. Service Template: Prep and Ceremony in MitzvahManager
MitzvahManager has two reusable setup pieces, and telling them apart is the key to setting up your program well. A program is the preparation plan — an ordered list of dated milestones a student works through on the way to their B'nai Mitzvah. A service template is the ceremony structure — the honors, roles, and prayers of the service itself. One describes the months of learning; the other describes the event they lead to, and a program can name the service template it pairs with.
It is easy to hear "template" and assume there is one thing to build, but MitzvahManager deliberately separates preparation from the ceremony. A Program is the preparation plan: what a student should accomplish, in what order, by when. A Service Template is the ceremony structure used on the day. You build both once as an administrator, in Organization settings, and then use them for students so nobody starts from a blank page.
A program is an ordered list of milestones — checkpoints such as blessings signed off, Torah passage signed off, or d'var Torah finalized — each with an optional category, an optional due date measured in days before the service, and an optional link to the practice that satisfies it. It is the plan a tutor works a student through over months, and once applied it becomes the backbone of that student's progress tracking: their status badge and Priority Actions are measured against these milestones. Reach for a program when you are answering "what does preparation look like, week by week?"
A service template captures the shape of the ceremony itself: the honors and aliyot, the service roles, the prayers, and any custom assignment detail fields your congregation uses. When you create a student's B'nai Mitzvah service you can build it from a template so the structure is ready, and edits to a template can flow out to the recurring services built from it while preserving anyone already assigned. Reach for a service template when you are answering "how is the service run on the day?"
The setup pieces are related, not redundant. A Program tracks the student's preparation, while a Service holds the ceremony date, readings, honors, and structure. Once the Service exists, Program milestones — like a Torah passage signed off — can point at the student's actual ceremony work without forcing every Program into one ceremony template.
If you are setting up MitzvahManager, it usually helps to sketch the service template first, since it names the readings, honors, and roles your students will prepare, and then build the program whose milestones drive students toward exactly those items. For a preparation track that is not tied to a ceremony date, you can create an Other program with milestones that carry no service-date offsets and skip the service template entirely. In day-to-day use, tutors mostly live in the program and its milestones, while the service template comes to the foreground as the ceremony date nears.
A program is the preparation plan — an ordered list of dated milestones a student works through. A service template is the ceremony structure — the honors, roles, and prayers of the B'nai Mitzvah service itself.
Usually the service template, because it names the readings, honors, and roles your students prepare; then build the program whose milestones drive students toward those items.
For a B'nai Mitzvah tied to a service date, both work together. For preparation that is not tied to a ceremony, you can use an Other program with no service-date offsets and skip the service template.
Use the Program for learning milestones and the Service for ceremony structure. They stay connected through the student without one silently configuring the other.
The full detail on building a program of dated milestones.
The full detail on building the reusable ceremony structure.
Program milestones are what a student's progress is measured against.
See how both setup pieces fit into the whole preparation lifecycle.
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