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Using Shifts App to coordinate volunteer schedules - Am I crazy?

Steel Contributor

So, I've been tasked with the following: we have events where we send volunteers to help with any work associated with the event or to sit in a booth and answer questions, assist elsewhere. Shifts would be awesome to use here to kind of just set up a schedule where it could allow up to X number of people to sign up for an hour slot. 

 

I'm thinking maybe to cover the function a non-user account could be assigned to all the slots and people who put in a swap request to get the slot associated with the work period. Not sure how that would look in the Shifts UI yet but I'm guessing it would look really cluttered. So has anyone in the community implemented this kind of functionality in Shifts? Am I crazy to try to use Shifts like this? Any ideas that I'm overlooking?

 

I have a User Voice feedback post asking for the feature (https://microsoftteams.uservoice.com/forums/555103-public/suggestions/38145301-shifts-as-a-volunteer...) please vote if you agree that this would be a great feature to have in the Shifts app.

 

Thanks!

2 Replies
best response confirmed by Timothy Balk (Steel Contributor)
Solution

@Timothy Balk I haven't tried this, but I also have a similar need. Can't you already do something like this with Shifts "as-is" by using the "Open Shift" feature, rather than using a non-user account? When you create an open shift, one of the fields to enter is "Slots" which allows you to tell how many open slots there are that need to be filled. I haven't thought it through thoroughly so perhaps I'm missing something in your use case that this wouldn't handle.

Ah, yes - that's what I was missing! I was demoing the function for a user and wasn't seeing the add open shift for some reason. Now to start documenting.

 

Edit: I know what I did... I changed my self on a shift to be a member and that effectively removed all my permissions to manage the Shifts app for that Team (and removed my ownership in that Team as well).

1 best response

Accepted Solutions
best response confirmed by Timothy Balk (Steel Contributor)
Solution

@Timothy Balk I haven't tried this, but I also have a similar need. Can't you already do something like this with Shifts "as-is" by using the "Open Shift" feature, rather than using a non-user account? When you create an open shift, one of the fields to enter is "Slots" which allows you to tell how many open slots there are that need to be filled. I haven't thought it through thoroughly so perhaps I'm missing something in your use case that this wouldn't handle.

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