Create Jobs and Shifts for Recurring Events

Learning Objectives

After completing this unit, you’ll be able to:

• Create repeating volunteer jobs and shifts for the campaign.
• Assign a volunteer to a recurring job.
• Understand how recurrence schedules work.

Create Ongoing Jobs

Now that we’ve set up a campaign for our recurring volunteer events, let’s move to the volunteer jobs, the next level down in the structure. 

But first, let’s review the locations where our fictional nonprofit, No More Homelessness (NMH), needs volunteers to help with their food services, and the tasks they need help with:

• West Side House Meal Service
• Bullard House Meal Service
• Food Pantry Inventory and Restocking

NMH’s volunteer coordinator, Enoch, knows he has to set up a volunteer job for each. He starts with meal service at the West Side facility. Follow along.

1. From the Campaign record we created in the last unit, click New on the Volunteer Jobs Related List.
   
   
2. In the Volunteer Job Name text box, enter a job name. Enoch enters West Side House Meal Service.
3. Select Display on Website. We haven’t covered website integration yet, but if you select this option now, you don’t have to come back and select it later.
4. Select Ongoing, because this is a regular, constant need that never closes. You wouldn’t select this if it was a one-time event or one that ends after a few sessions.
5. Enter a Description. The job description appears on the website, so make it as appealing as you can. You can use formatting, pictures, and links to jazz it up.
6. Enter information into the field in the Location section. For the location, be sure to enter the exact street address, because it’s used to create a Google map to the volunteer event. We talk more about maps in the Website Integration for Volunteer Management with V4S module (linked in the Resources section).
7. Click Save.

Your new job appears in the Volunteer Jobs related list of your campaign.

Enoch repeats the process for each of the other jobs. He creates a volunteer job for Bullard House Meal Service and one for Food Pantry Inventory and Restocking, both of which are ongoing events.

Create Recurring Shifts

We’ve said this often, but we’re going to say it one more time: Structure is everything!

We created the top level of our structure, the campaign (Food Services). We also created the second level of our structure, the volunteer jobs (West Side House Meal Service, Bullard House Meal Service, and Food Pantry Inventory and Restocking). 

The last thing we need to do is create the third level: the volunteer shifts, which record the dates and times your volunteers are supposed to work. 

Here are the specific shifts NMH needs.

Remember that shifts are located under their associated jobs. To create a shift, start by opening the volunteer job record. 

Let’s start with the first meal service job at the West Side facility. To create volunteer shifts for this ongoing need, we’ll create a new job recurrence schedule.

Let’s follow along with Enoch.

1. From the Campaign record page, click the Related tab and scroll to the Volunteer Jobs related list. In the NMH example, the list is on the Food Services campaign record.
2. Click the volunteer job name. Enoch clicks West Side House Meal Service.
3. Click the Related tab.
4. Click New on the Job Recurrence Schedules related list.
   
   
5. Define how this job and its shifts repeat. You can use your own data or follow along with Enoch as he creates the recurring shifts.
   1. In Days of the Week, move all of the days to Chosen, because this is a daily need.
   2. In Weekly Occurrence, which tells the schedule how often the event occurs,  select Every. This is a shift we need every day and every week. For other jobs, you could choose to alternate weeks or choose a particular week each month (the first, second, third, and so on).
   3. In Scheduled Start Date and Time, select 9:30 a.m. next Monday.
   4. Leave Scheduled End Date blank. This is an event that doesn’t have a specific end date, but if you need volunteers for a limited-time recurring event (like a class or something else with a defined end date) you can enter a value here.
   5. In Duration, enter how long, in hours, the event lasts. Enoch enters 2.
   6. In Desired Number of Volunteers, enter the maximum number of volunteers who can sign up for each shift. Enoch enters 5.
6. Click Save.

To view the shifts you just created, click the JRS ID in the Job Recurrence Schedules related list on the volunteer job, or reload the volunteer job record and check the Related tab to see the updated Volunteer Shifts related list. 

We just created multiple shifts in a few short steps. Pretty cool, right?

Enoch still needs to create the shifts for the other jobs. The settings for the job recurrence schedule for the Bullard House Meal Service volunteer job are exactly the same as for the West Side House Meal Service.

There are a few changes for the Food Pantry Inventory and Restocking job, though. Here’s what Enoch enters for the shifts:

• Days of the Week: Tuesday, Thursday
• Weekly Occurrence: Weekly
• Schedule Start Date & Time: Next Tuesday at 1 p.m.
• Duration: 3
• Desired Number of Volunteers: 7

Remember to click Save when you’re done.

Confirm Your Shifts on the Shift Calendar

Now let’s check out all the shifts on the shift calendar.

1. In the Volunteers app, click the Shift Calendar tab.
2. All of the shifts are listed on the calendar. Hover over a shift to see the number of confirmed volunteers and the number of volunteer positions still available. (Right now, the number of confirmed volunteers is zero.)
   
   
3. Use the arrow keys to go to other months on the calendar to see that the events continue into the future.

Congratulations! You created multiple events in multiple locations, using the campaign, volunteer jobs, and volunteer shifts structure. You’re a volunteer management rockstar!

Sign Up a Recurring Volunteer

Many nonprofits have dedicated volunteers who sign up for multiple shifts on a regular basis. For example, at NMH, Enoch knows he has volunteers who usually work a few meal service shifts every week on the same days. 

Using volunteer recurrence schedules in V4S, we can specify a recurring schedule for a particular volunteer. We can add when the schedule starts and ends, and which days of the week and month the volunteer works.

NMH is lucky to have an enthusiastic volunteer named Peter Delauranti (remember him from the Welcome Home event?). Peter lives near NMH’s West Side short-term housing facility and is passionate about NMH’s mission. He wants to volunteer for the meal service shift every other Saturday morning. 

Let’s create a volunteer recurrence schedule to set that up.

1. Click the Volunteer Jobs tab in the Volunteers app.
2. Select a job that has multiple shifts from the Recent Volunteer Jobs list. Enoch clicks West Side House Meal Service.
3. Click the Related tab.
4. Click New on the Volunteer Recurrence Schedules related list.
   
   
5. To automatically populate the job details, scroll to the Copy Schedule From section and select the appropriate Job Recurrence Schedule.
6. Enter the contact’s name. Enoch enters Peter Delauranti. (If you didn’t create sample contacts in previous units, Peter might not exist yet in your Salesforce org. For this exercise, you can enter any existing contact.)
7. Update the start date, end date, and duration as necessary. Enoch leaves everything as is.
8. Enter the number of volunteers for this schedule. Because this schedule is just for Peter, Enoch enters 1.
9. For the Volunteer Hours Status, select Confirmed. NMH uses the Confirmed status for anyone who signs up to volunteer.
10. Update the days of the week and weekly occurrence as needed. Because Peter is volunteering every other Saturday, Enoch clicks Saturday in Days of the Week and Alternate in Weekly Occurrence.
11. Click Save.

Peter’s recurrence schedule and shifts are now listed on the West Side House Meal Service volunteer job.

After the event, we can use what we learned in previous units to reconcile hours for Peter or any other recurring volunteer.

By this point, you’ve accomplished a great deal with V4S. You created a single fundraising event and assigned volunteers to it. You also created a complex volunteer event that can track multiple volunteers at multiple locations for recurring volunteer events. 

There’s just one problem: Your volunteers can’t sign up for these events themselves on your website—yet. We’ll show you how to set that up in the Website Integration for Volunteer Management with V4S module, next in the trail.

Resources

• Salesforce Help: Create an Ongoing Job
• Salesforce Help: Schedule Recurring Shifts using Job Recurrence Schedules
• Salesforce Help: Sign Up a Recurring Volunteer using Volunteer Recurrence Schedules
• Salesforce Help: Configure Scheduling of Recurring Jobs and Volunteers
• Salesforce Help: Volunteers for Salesforce (V4S) Documentation
• Trailhead: Website Integration for Volunteer Management with V4S
• Trailblazer Community Group: Volunteers for Salesforce (V4S) App