Set Up a Campaign with Recurring Events
After completing this unit, you’ll be able to:
- Understand how EarthCorps uses V4S to manage events occurring at multiple locations.
- Understand how timezones work in V4S.
- Create a volunteer campaign for events occurring at multiple locations.
Registering volunteers for a fundraising dinner is somewhat straightforward: It’s one dinner that takes place on one night, at a single location. You’ve got some jobs. You’ve got some shifts.
But at EarthCorps—and likely at your organization—tracking volunteers can get a lot more complicated than that. EarthCorps’ primary use of Volunteers for Salesforce is managing 605 events throughout the year. This heroic task involves recruiting, tracking, and managing over 10,000 volunteers who help restore federal, state, county, and city parks. Wow, 10,000 volunteers and 605 events. Now that’s a call for V4S if we ever heard one!
Let’s take a look at how EarthCorps does it. Again, we’ll follow along with Dianna as she sets up V4S to manage the gigantic task of tracking multiple volunteers who work multiple shifts at, yes, multiple locations.
Whether managing one volunteer event or hundreds, taking a moment to consider how to structure the campaign in Salesforce saves you and your volunteers time and frustration.
In the previous unit, you created multiple jobs and shifts for a single fundraising event. Determining the structure was relatively easy. When you have multiple volunteer events to schedule, with different locations, the structure can seem daunting. But, don’t worry. V4S makes the process painless, especially with recurring events. You’ll see.
Let’s look at the volunteer events that EarthCorps wants to advertise and track in V4S.
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Agency | Park Name | Event Schedule (events run from 10 AM–2 PM) | Total Number of Events |
|---|---|---|---|---|
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City of Seattle | Magnuson Park | October 1 | 1 |
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City of Seattle | Cheasty Greenspace | Saturday, October 8, and every Saturday after that for the next 3 months, ending December 31 | 14 |
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City of Seattle | Seward Park | Sunday, October 9 and the 2nd Sunday of every month after that for the next 6 months, ending April 9 | 7 |
This schedule might look a bit scary and time-consuming at first, but with careful thought to your structure and the use of the V4S recurring events feature, we can get this done quickly.
Okay, let’s get planning.
Note
If you're using Salesforce Lightning Experience, your screen might look different than the screens in the video above.
So let’s try and visualize what the new structure looks like. EarthCorps needs to manage recurring events at multiple locations. For these volunteer events, EarthCorps needs to take into account:
- Agencies that fund the events
- Parks where the events occur
- Dates and times of the events
Sound familiar? While your organization might not be scheduling volunteer events at multiple parks, we know that you likely have to deal with multiple locations, times, and of course, many volunteers. How can we fit all this layered information into the V4S structure of campaigns, jobs, and shifts?
First, let’s figure out the highest level, the campaign. In the previous unit, we designated a single event as the campaign. That works well for events that occur on a single date, but for events on multiple dates and in multiple locations, we need a different structure to harness the power of V4S.
The roll-up summary fields on campaigns in V4S provide important data for reports, such as the number of events, how many volunteers turned up, and how many hours the volunteers worked in total. These reports are particularly important for the city, state, county, or federal government agencies who fund the volunteer events. So let’s use the campaign to represent the agency funding the events. In EarthCorps’ case, it’s almost always the City of Seattle.
For the next level in the structure, let’s consider the parks. Each government agency has multiple parks located within its boundaries. These parks are where the volunteer events occur. The job level in V4S has a Google map component that you can use to publicize the event location. Let’s use the job level to represent each park where a volunteer event is held.
Lastly, the shifts represent the dates and times of each volunteer event.
When Dianna thinks about all these volunteer events in the context of this structure, the organization of her Salesforce data becomes clear.
On the website, the translation of the structure ends up looking something like this:
Now that EarthCorps has determined the structure in V4S, they can get started. But before we walk through the process with EarthCorps, let’s talk briefly about time zones.
Many organizations have multiple events, in multiple locations, across multiple states. (Think of the coordinated, nationwide park and beach cleanup events that EarthCorps might sponsor for Earth Day.) Having events in multiple time zones can be confusing if volunteers don’t know what time the event begins in their local time. V4S solves this issue by allowing you to set an event’s time zone at multiple levels.
When you create a shift in V4S, Salesforce assumes that the time entered is in your time zone and encodes it that way. Your employees in your “home” Salesforce org aren’t affected, because they always see the shift time in the time zone they have set for Salesforce. But volunteers on your website who aren’t in your time zone don’t see the correct time. To have the shift displayed in a different time zone from the one entered by the user who created the shift, you define the time zone at either the campaign or job level.
- Campaign—If the entire volunteer campaign is located in one time zone, set the Volunteer Website Time Zone for all jobs and shifts at this level. For example, because EarthCorps’ REVIVE event takes place in Seattle, the Volunteer Website Time Zone on
the campaign is set to America/Los_Angeles.
- Job—If jobs within a campaign are located in different time zones, set the Volunteer Website Time Zone at the job level. For example, your organization is hosting a nationwide fundraising run and you need volunteers in multiple states. For the jobs
in California, set the Volunteer Website Time Zone to America/Los_Angeles. For the jobs in New York, set the Volunteer Website Time Zone to America/New_York, and so on.
Now when a volunteer accesses the shift information on your website, the start time of the shift is the start time in the selected time zone.
So now we’re ready to set up the campaign.
- In Salesforce, click the App Launcher (
) in the navigation bar, and choose the Volunteers app.
2. Click the Campaigns tab, and then click New.
3. Select the Volunteer Campaign record type.
4. Click Next.
5. Enter your campaign name. EarthCorps enters the agency name: CITY OF SEATTLE.
6. Select the Active option. If you don’t select this option, the campaign doesn’t display on the Shift Calendar or on your website.
7. The following fields are used mostly for filtering and reporting on your campaigns. Make your selections based on how your organization wants to use these fields, and use them consistently so that your reports are accurate.
a. From the Type drop-down list, select the type of campaign for your event.
b. Choose a Status. For this campaign, Dianna uses the In Progress status.
8. From the Volunteer Website Time Zone drop-down list, select the timezone where the event is occurring. EarthCorps is located in Seattle so Dianna’s going to select America/Los Angeles.
Your screen should look something like this:
9. Click Save. The Campaign Detail page appears.
Congratulations! You’ve just set up the first level of your volunteer event campaign.
