Building the volunteer rota

Roles, positions and shifts, and getting the right people on them.

How the rota fits together

• Roles are the type of work, such as Bar, Stewarding or Litter pick. Each has a colour, an optional minimum age and optional requirements.

• Positions are where a role happens, such as Main Bar, Gate 2 or Campsite North.

• Shifts are a time at a position. One shift is one place, so a slot needing three people becomes three shifts to fill.

1. Set up roles and positions

In Roles, create your roles and add positions under each. For requirements, pick the yes/no questions from your form that a volunteer must have answered yes to.

2. Add shifts

In Rota, pick a day and click Add shifts. Choose the position, start and end times, number of places and phase (build, show or break). Times are in festival time, and an end time earlier than the start runs overnight.

Use Copy to next day to repeat a day's pattern.

3. Assign volunteers

Click Assign on an unfilled shift. Approved volunteers are listed best match first, with anything that stands in the way shown in red.

These stop an assignment outright: not approved, not available that day, missing a role requirement, under 18 for an 18+ role, or already on a shift at that time. These are warnings you can override with a reason: shifts over 10 hours, or less than 8 hours between shifts.

4. Publish

New shifts are drafts and invisible to volunteers. Click Publish day when it's ready. Volunteers are notified of each published shift they're on.

Change requests

From their portal, volunteers can ask to come off a shift or move to a free published one, with a reason. Requests appear at the top of the Rota tab. The volunteer stays on their shift until you approve or decline, and any note you add is shown to them.