Scheduling volunteers

The Tuesday job is finding out who is missing this Sunday and fixing it before Saturday night. This article covers the Volunteer schedule page, filling slots, sending the ask, and what happens when someone says no.

Where it lives and how it is laid out

In the sidebar under Sundays, click Volunteer schedule. The page is titled Volunteer Schedule at /schedule, with the subhead Who's serving each week. The service plan itself lives on Services.

Top to bottom:

• The hero, for the date you are working: 12 of 18 slots filled · Sunday, July 26, a meter, and a legend reading N confirmed, N waiting on reply, N penciled in (only when it is above zero) and N still open. On the right, either N of M crews still need someone or Every crew on this date has its people.
• One Scout notice, at most. A charcoal strip with one sentence, a Why disclosure, and one button. Scout raises a decline first, then a double-booking, then a crew where everyone is new to their position. When none of those apply the strip renders nothing, which is not a bug.
• Date bands, each carrying either a count like 13 open across 4 teams (that counts distinct teams, not crews) or a green Fully staffed pill. Only the first date is expanded. A later date shows a compact tile strip with Show crews to open it and Collapse to fold it again.
• Crew cards. A crew is one team, on one date, at one service time. The card shows filled over total, a meter, the roster, one primary button, and Open service →.

Three views sit in the top bar under the control labeled Schedule view: By week (the default), By team, and Board. Your pick is saved in that browser and restored next visit. On the first two, arrows either side of the date range (Earlier weeks and Later weeks) move two service dates at a time.

The horizon is the next 8 services, not 8 weeks, and it merges every service template. If you run Sunday and Wednesday services, that is about four calendar weeks.

What each slot status means

Five states, three sets of words depending on where you are looking.

| The state | Board chip and person modal | Crew card row | |---|---|---| | Nobody on it | Empty | a dashed Assign a {Position} button | | Penciled in, nobody asked | Planning / Staged | Not asked yet | | Asked, no reply yet | Requested | Waiting | | Said yes | Confirmed | no tag | | Said no | Declined | Declined, name struck through |

A declined slot keeps the person on it. On the Volunteer Schedule that slot counts as still open, because for "will this crew show up?" a no is a hole.

Fill an empty slot

1. 1

   Click the dashed button

   On the crew card, every empty slot is a dashed Assign a {Position} button.

2. 2

   Read the shortlist

   A panel opens on the right, titled with the position and subtitled with the date and service time. It shows Scout found N matches, up to three people. How Scout suggests volunteers covers the ranking.

3. 3

   Click Stage

   Stage puts that person on the slot as penciled in. Nothing reaches them yet.

4. 4

   Or search everyone

   Click Search all people, type at least two characters into Search by name..., and click a result. Back to suggestions returns you to the shortlist.

If the panel reads No team members for this role yet, nobody is attached to that position. The body text points to Settings → Teams; the real path is Teams in the sidebar. See Setting up a serving team.

Filling a whole crew, and where Auto-Fill lives now

On a crew card with empty slots, the primary button reads Fill this crew. Scout stages someone into every slot that is empty with nobody on it. It never replaces a decline and never overwrites a person already penciled in. The toast says what happened: 3 added to Production, or No one was free for Production.

A card shows one primary button, chosen by the crew's state. A decline outranks everything (Find a backup), then empty slots (Fill this crew), then penciled-in slots (Send N requests). So a crew with both holes and penciled-in people offers Fill this crew, and you close the holes before you send.

There is no Auto-Fill All and no Send All Requests on the Volunteer Schedule. Both were removed so one click can never mail eight weeks of volunteers. The remaining Auto-Fill works on a single service: open the service (Open service → at the bottom of any crew card), click Teams in the service header, and the Teams panel shows Auto-Fill whenever that service has empty slots. It stages people into every crew on that one service.

Send the requests

Three buttons send. They differ only in how much they cover.

• The hero's Send N requests covers every penciled-in slot on the focus date, across every team and every service time on it.
• A crew card's Send N requests covers that one crew.
• The service Teams panel's Send Requests (N) covers every penciled-in slot on that service.

On the Board, click a penciled-in chip (they render in italic) to select it, keep clicking to add more, then use Send N requests in the bottom bar. Cmd or Ctrl plus Enter also sends, and Escape clears the selection.

A send flips those slots to Requested and fires one push notification per volunteer, titled Can you serve Sunday? with the body {Team}: Sun, Jun 15. Tap to confirm or decline. Someone asked for several spots on one date gets a single push rather than one per slot. The ask also appears as a card in the member app under My Schedule.

That is the entire outbound channel. There is no serve-request email and no text message. A volunteer with no Scout account gets no notification at all, and the slot still flips to Requested, so you have to tell them yourself.

When the answers come back

In the member app, a card whose pill reads requested carries Confirm and Decline. Serving requests and the schedule shows their side of it.

• Confirm flips the pill immediately and emails the team's leads, subject {Name} confirmed for Sun, Jul 26 {Position}, with a View schedule → button.
• Decline opens a sheet, Can't make it this time?, and takes Yes, decline. No reason is captured anywhere. The leads get [Action needed] {Name} can't make Sun, Jul 26 {Position} with a Find a backup → button that lands on that exact crew card.

Those emails go to people whose team role is Lead and who have a Scout login. If the team has no lead, the email fans out instead to owners, admins, and everyone in a role that can assign volunteers, so one decline can reach your whole staff. Setting a lead on the team is what narrows it.

After a volunteer declines, Scout will not suggest them for that same slot again. That only holds for a decline the volunteer made. If you cycle a Board chip to Declined yourself, Scout may suggest that person for that slot again.

There is no swap, no sub request, and no way for a volunteer to hand a slot to someone else. Declining is their only exit, and finding the replacement is yours.

Double-bookings

Scout will not put one person in two positions on the same service, even at different service times. Staging them a second time fails with Already serving as {Position} at this service, and the crew card tags the row Double-booked.

One rule decides whether two slots actually collide in time: two different explicit service times do not overlap, and a slot with no service time (an all-morning team) occupies the whole date, so it overlaps everything on that date. That rule words the pills in Search all people: a red Already serving at this time when the times genuinely clash, a soft Serving this service when they do not. The soft one reads as permitted, but staging still fails, because the block is per service rather than per service time.

What the coverage numbers mean

Coverage is only ever stated about something you can go fix: a crew card's 4 / 5 and its meter, a date or team band's 13 open across 4 teams or Fully staffed, a small meter under each date column on the Board, and the hero for the focus date. There is no overall coverage percentage anywhere. The instance-wide bar was removed on purpose, because one number across every team and eight weeks moves whenever anything moves and never tells you which crew needs a person.

One figure does disagree with itself across surfaces. A declined slot counts as open on the Volunteer Schedule, and as filled on the service Teams panel and on the shared Run of Show, which applies no status filter. See Sharing the Run of Show.

Controls that are not there

• No drag and drop. Every assignment goes through the assign panel.
• No copy last week and no repeat this crew.
• No rotation or recurring scheduling. There is no "every other week" or "1st and 3rd Sundays". Slots are created per service from the counts on the service template.
• No print view, PDF, CSV, or calendar export, and no calendar subscription for volunteers.
• No way to message a volunteer from the schedule. The only outward button on the crew person modal is Details, which opens their profile. Scout sends no texts and hosts no chat.
• No availability or blockout dates from volunteers. Scout does not know who is away, so a shortlist can offer you someone on vacation.