Flexible activities are activities which are created by a Program Manager or an Admin, as a type of 'empty bucket' / 'template' for volunteers to apply/be allocated to, in which ongoing rosters can be added over time if/when a volunteering session is required. We have provided information in this article as well as some practical steps to follow at the end.
Important things to note:
Rosters are not automatically generated for flexible activities, you will need to create one - this is to give you ad hoc options
Creating the flexible activity will allow volunteers to apply for it, but will not show up in their 'My Activities' tab until a roster applied to it (See steps below).
When you create a flexible activity and it asks you to select a date and session time, this is an indication of when this activity will begin (i.e. rosters will start from this date).
Rosters can be added to flexible activities by either Activity Leaders, Program Managers, and/or Admins which will then show upon their 'My Activities' tab. This will then act like a regular activity in which volunteers can apply to, or managers can allocate and roster them.
We created this option to be able to help organisations who have quite a niche events to have the ability to create rosters on a varying case by case basis. We like to think of setting up a flexible activity as a way to create a template of an activity, which will sit empty in the background of Volaby until the organisation needs to create the rosters and can do this quickly.
An example of this might be a team of students who get together to work on a project overtime, but have no exact cadence on when they do their activity. Therefore, creating a flexible activity can build a team, then the activity leader can create rosters for that team as they progress / need them. This is similar to case-work volunteering, where a volunteer can be allocated to an activity (e.g. Mentoring John), when they are elevated to an 'activity leader' they can create rosters as they continue to engage with "John". Consequently they will then be able to complete reports for each of these rosters and record data such as hours volunteered, what they did, etc.
FOR ANYTHING OUTSIDE OF THIS - PLEASE USE REGULAR ACTIVITIES!
Instructions
Create New Activity
Fill out necessary information depending on your activity. Select Flexible for the Activity Type. The date is just a date of when the rosters could start, this is not setting a date for the rosters. You can also set the activity time as blank if the times might change per roster and this information can be added to a roster notes which will be provided to the volunteer - you can see more about Roster Notes below.
At this stage users will be able to apply to be part of the activity if it is in their program. However, they will not be able to see it in the Availability Centre yet or their My Rosters to enter their availability as there is no attached dates or rosters.
Add Roster
a. Visit your Rosters page
b. Click the "Add Roster" button
c. Use the Program and Activity drop down menus to select the activity you have created
d. Select the date and location
e. Click create when you are finished
Now that your roster has been created and attached to a date, your volunteers will be able to enter their availability.
Utilise Roster Notes
Create notes before you create a roster and these notes will be sent to your users in the email they receive when the roster is published. They will also be able to see this information when they click on the activity within Volaby. Please visit this guide article to see more on Roster Notes and other rostering features.
