Volunteer Self Select

Volunteer Self Select and how it works

The volunteer self select module is intended to be used to allow volunteers to select their own shifts. This will in turn schedule them for you and allow you to monitor how your shifts are filling up as you lead up to the event. The massive advantage to the module is giving the volunteers the power to select exactly what they want to work, and hopefully mean that more volunteers will turn up for their shifts.

The first thing we need to do when using the volunteer self select module is make sure shifts have been created in our system, you can see more on how to do this this in this article.

Once your shifts are created we need a way for our volunteers to interact with our database and tell us which shifts they like, we do this by using a form. You could get them to select shifts at the application process or you could get them to apply and then send them a secondary autologin form, where they can then select their desired shifts.

Regardless of whichever way you choose to do it, on the form you must select a counter field type and give it a name like "Please pick your shifts below" you can follow the below image to setup your field.

At this point ideally all your shifts are created, and you have created the counter field on your form.

Once this is done you can go to the Volunteers tab then Volunteer Shifts. At the bottom of your list of shifts you will see an option called Copy to Form/Timeslot. 

Once you select Copy to Form/Timeslot you will see a popup where you can select the counter field you previously created. (Please pick your shifts below), once complete, the shifts will be populated in the form as seen in the image below.

The screen below is how your shifts will be viewed by volunteers. The price and Fee field can be ignored.

To make any changes to your shifts you should use the view/edit shifts screen, or the calendar. Then use the copy to form/timeslot. 

Download will allow you to export a list of all volunteers that have currently selected a shift, the files can be exported in our standard file types.

The name, start and end fields should all be edited inside the volunteers tab in the same way you created them, you can then run a resync which will in turn update the names inside this form, do not edit them on the form.

The select multiple slots option will allow volunteers to choose more than one shift. We cannot limit the number of shifts a volunteer can select so please make it clear to the volunteer how many shifts you would like them to select inside the form. 

The recommended workflow is to send your self select form to confirmed volunteers as an autologin form. It is possible to not look into your applicants and allow anyone on a public form to select shifts if you follow this process on a public/open form. 

As volunteers select the shifts on the form they will be automatically scheduled within the system. This means any schedule emails will also reflect the shifts they have selected.

In the settings of the form make sure you set the registration open dates to the dates you would like volunteers be able to change their shifts. 

You can use the confirmation email from the form to send them an mail merge to edit their existing shift selection as seen in the image below.

If you have followed all of these steps and read the notes above you should be ready to use the volunteer self select module.