NEW: Signup Scheduling Relative to Slot Dates
Signup scheduling got more flexible: your ivolunteer.com signup opportunities now have more granular options for signup start and end dates. These options are especially helpful for long-running signup opportunities such as monthly or quarterly schedules.
ivolunteer has always allowed you to select signup start and end dates for your signup opportunities. Now, we’ve added the ability to make signup start and end and self-cancellation end dates relative to individual slot dates. These options appear in a new expandable section under Dates on the Info tab of your ivolunteer Event.
Scheduling and Communication with Volunteers
What do relative start, end, and self-cancellation dates mean for your signup scheduling in practice? Here is one example.
Suppose you are the volunteer coordinator for a homeless shelter. You need to schedule volunteers for various tasks to provide meals and services on a daily basis. You have set up your quarterly signup scheduling opportunity, and you have a task area for each week’s schedule.
As a volunteer coordinator, you want volunteers to be able to sign up for shifts well ahead of time, but you may not want them to sign up too far ahead in case scheduling needs change. If it’s too early to sign up for a shift, your volunteers will see (early) in that slot on the signup sheet.
To avoid last-minute scheduling changes, you also want to close signups a day ahead of each shift and to end self-cancellation the day before a shift. You choose whether to enter specific end dates or to make them relative to each slot’s date and time. When signup for a particular slot is closed, volunteers will see (closed) text.
You can adjust your signup opportunity’s start and end dates at any time.
What Your Volunteers See on Signup Sheets
The screenshot below shows a schedule for parent-teacher conferences. Notes that some slots are marked as “closed” and some are marked as “early”. These labels let your participants know when and why sign up is not currently available.
NOTE: Along with relative signup dates, administrators also have new options under Event Details & Actions > Layout and Event Settings > Display. On the Layout tab you can select whether or not to hide Tasks before signup start or after signup end. On the Display tab you can choose whether or not to show a Task’s overall signup start and end dates under its title.