You will need the Full Write Service Plans permission or be a group admin for a team that can be scheduled on a service plan. Group admins can only perform the actions described in this article to their teams and not others where they are not an admin. Users with Full Write Service Plans permission can perform these actions on any team in the plan.
Volunteers are scheduled as part of a service plan. While service plans do allow you to define an order of service, that is optional and service plans can be used strictly for just scheduling volunteers.
This is done from the "Serving" tab of the service plan. To learn more about creating service plans, please see this article.
If you didn't create the service plan using a template, or the template didn't include serving team setups, you may see the message below when you go to the Serving tab:
Which teams can be scheduled on a service plan is controlled by the service type of the plan. However, that just indicates which teams can be scheduled, not necessarily which ones are. To choose which teams you want to schedule, check "Show hidden teams and positions" to see the list of available teams (as defined by the service type).
To indicate you need to schedule a team on the plan, hover over the red "0 needed" label on a position, and increase the count to be greater than 0. This indicates how many volunteers you need for any given position. Once done, uncheck "Show hidden teams and positions" to only see those that are needed.
If a team you need isn't shown, you can click on "Add New Group" to add them to the plan. However, note that adding a group in this manner will also add it to the service type itself, which means it will also be available for scheduling on all other plans for the same type.
Below is an example of how it will look after choosing the needed teams and positions:
From here, you can start scheduling volunteers to each needed position. To do this, click on the "add volunteer" button within the position you want to schedule. This will open up a pop up showing all available volunteers on the team's roster for that position.
The list of available volunteers is ordered so that volunteers who haven't served in the position in the longest are shown at the top. Volunteer preferences and any conflicts with other assignments are also considered.
The top section lets you indicate which time you are scheduling them for. Times are auto-selected based on the assigned teams set on the time itself. See this article for more information on what assigned teams are within the context of a plan time.
You can select up to the number of volunteers needed for the position being scheduled. Apart from those on the team roster, you can go to the "Guests" tab to assign anyone in the system to serve on that team. They do not have to be a current volunteer on that team. However, you can add them to the team roster here if desired so that they appear within the "Team Members" tab for next time.
Once finished, click on the "Assign" button in the lower right of the pop up to add the selected volunteers to the plan.
Tip: you can drag and drop scheduled volunteers from one position to another. If you do, the times they are assigned will be taken from the assigned team settings on the plan times. Note, that this can result in 0 times.
Team Actions
At the top of each team is a "cog" menu containing multiple actions that can be performed on the team.
They are:
Needed positions - this will make visible all positions that have 0 need to allow you to modify the number of volunteers needed. This can also be done by checking the "Show hidden teams and positions" but this is much faster if you just want to modify the need for a team that is already visible. Once you are done, click on the "Done" button to hide unneeded positions again.
Remove team - choosing this action will reset all positions back to 0 need which will also remove all scheduled volunteers from the team.
If the team is part of the service type, then the team will become hidden, but you can add it back by toggling hidden teams and setting a need as shown earlier.
If the team is not part of the service type, it will be completely removed from the plan. However, it can be added back by showing all hidden teams and clicking on "Add New Group" again.
Clear assignments - this will remove all scheduled volunteers from the team, but keep the team itself along with needed positions.
Reset statuses - this will reset all scheduled volunteers back to "Not Contacted" status, except for those that previously declined. They will remain declined.
Update dates/times - this action allows you to bulk change the dates and times for all scheduled volunteers in this team. Available times are limited to those defined on the plan.
Send email - this lets you email the entire team. This is simply for email communication and will not contain a link to where the volunteer can respond to any serving assignments. Their status will also remain unchanged. To instead send serving requests, please see the section named "Sending Serving Requests" further down within this article.
Serving Actions
The actions menu in the upper right of the "Serving" tab contains actions that can affect multiple teams on the plan.
The last four actions work the same as those at the team level except you will be able to indicate which teams they should be applied to. See the previous section for more details on how those work.
The first two actions function as follows:
View blocked-out dates - this opens a calendar view showing dates that volunteers have indicated they cannot serve. Hovering over a date range will provide the reason (if any).
Download assignments - this will allow you to download a spreadsheet of volunteer assignments for selected teams. You can also download as a PDF an attendance marking sheet as well if needed.
Sending Serving Requests
Please see this article for more details on sending serving requests and how volunteers can respond to them.
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