Rosters are how you tell volunteers when and where they're needed. The Rosters page is your home base for everything roster-related — building drafts, publishing changes, adjusting volunteers, and looking at past shifts.

This guide is a tour of the Rosters page and the core workflow. For detail on specific features (calendar view, printing, bulk reminders, individual shift times, and so on), see the focused articles linked throughout.

Navigate to Rosters from the main menu. The page has three parts:

Three views — Single, Bulk, and Calendar

Use the View Selector dropdown in the toolbar to switch between three views. Your choice is remembered for next time.

Each view has its own strengths. See Roster Views for a full breakdown.

Every activity has a roster type set in its activity settings. The type determines who decides who's rostered.

Managed rosters

Volunteers indicate their availability for upcoming dates, and a manager (or activity leader) reviews availability, selects the team, and publishes the roster. Volunteers receive a notification when the roster is published, confirming their shifts.

Best for activities where you want to vet volunteers, balance experience levels, or make sure specific roles are covered.

Open rosters

Volunteers can add and remove themselves from the roster freely, without waiting for a manager to publish. Managers can still add, remove, or mark individual rosters as full.

Best for activities with experienced, self-directed volunteers and low coordination overhead.

You can switch an activity between Managed and Open at any time from the activity's settings. See Editing an Activity for how.

Open a roster in Single View by selecting it from the sidebar. You'll see each session in the roster with the activity team — the volunteers enrolled in the activity — listed by default. These are the people you roster on.

Adding a volunteer for a one-off

You don't normally need to add volunteers manually — the activity team is already there. Use Add Volunteer from the Options menu only when you need a temporary addition, like a volunteer from another program filling in for a shift, or someone who isn't on the regular team.

The Add Volunteer dialog lets you:

For ongoing changes to the team, edit the activity team itself. See Managing an Activity Team.

Volunteer states

Each volunteer on a roster can be in one of several states. Look at the status indicator next to their name to see where they sit:

Marking a volunteer as unavailable

Click the dropdown next to a volunteer's name and select Mark as unavailable for the current roster date.

Individual shift times

If your activity has Individual Shift Times enabled, you can set custom start and end times for each volunteer on each session — useful when volunteers cover slightly different parts of a shift. Click on a volunteer's time cell to open the time editor. See Individual Shift Times for the full walkthrough.

Sorting volunteers

Click the sort button above the volunteer list to choose how volunteers are ordered:

Your sort preference is saved across sessions.

When your roster is ready, use the action footer at the bottom of the screen:

Before publishing, the footer shows a preview of which volunteers will be notified, with their avatars.

If your organisation has SMS configured, volunteers also receive a text message before their shift (timing depends on your SMS settings). If SMS isn't configured and you're new to Volaby, we send a default SMS 24 hours before the shift.

Republishing changes

If you edit a roster after publishing, the footer switches to Publish Changes. When you click it, only volunteers whose assignments actually changed are re-notified — so small fixes (like a typo in a note) don't spam everyone.

Unpublishing

If you need to pull a published roster back to draft, open the Options menu in the roster header and select Unpublish. The roster reverts to draft state and volunteers are notified.

Each roster has a status badge that tells you at a glance where it sits:

Use the status filter to focus on rosters that need work.

Marking a roster as Full

Mark as Full is a manual lock on a specific roster date that stops volunteers from adding or removing themselves. It does not read the session minimum and maximum numbers — those are separate guidance values shown on the session header. Marking a roster as Full is a deliberate action you take when you want to freeze volunteer self-service.

This is particularly useful for activities run with external groups — corporates, school groups, community partners — where the team is set in advance and you don't want regular volunteers joining the date.

Open the Options menu and select Mark as Full to lock the roster. The roster shows a red "FULL" badge. The activity itself stays open, but this specific date is closed off to volunteer actions. Managers can still add and remove volunteers as needed.

To unlock, open the Options menu again and select Remove Full status. See Marking a Roster as Full for more.

You can attach notes to a roster or to individual sessions. Notes are included in the communications sent to rostered volunteers and shown on the roster in the Volaby app.

Open the Options menu and select Add notes & detail (or Edit notes & detail if they already exist) to open the notes editor. See Roster Notes & Session Notes for the full walkthrough, including note templates.

Use the toolbar to narrow down what you're looking at:

Looking at past rosters works the same way — just adjust the date filters to include the dates you want to see. Completed rosters show their final volunteer list, any attendance data, and the activity report if one was submitted.

For tasks that have their own dedicated articles, see:

Click the settings icon in the toolbar to open the Roster Settings dialog. You can:

Your preferences are saved per user.