❖ Heads up! This article is intended for Site Managers. If you're a Program Facilitator looking for more information about how to review your programs, click here!
You've created Programs and awesome volunteer Opportunities that your volunteers can respond to, so now it's time to start scheduling them! In this article, we cover:
- Volunteer availability
- Scheduling with the scheduling tool
- How to invite available volunteers to respond
Volunteer availability
Before we dive into how to schedule volunteers, let's talk about volunteer availability. Depending on how you've set up your site's User Registration settings, a volunteer can select what day and time of day they're available for scheduling. They can also opt to not be scheduled on specific days or they can disable Allow Scheduling. All of these settings can impact your ability to schedule them for an Opportunity.
User Registration settings
To ensure volunteers can select their available dates for scheduling or disable this feature:
1. Go to Settings > User Registration. 
2. Find Availability under Standard Question Options. 
- To enable this feature when the volunteer registers on your site, check the box under Show.
- To enable this feature when the volunteer visits their profile area, check the box under Profile.
- To require this feature, check the box under Require.
- When you check Require, it auto-selects the Show and Profile boxes too.
- To disable this feature, uncheck all boxes.
- When this feature is disabled, volunteers won't be able to select their available days and times of day when registering on the site or from their profile.
3. Be sure to click Update Standard Questions to save your changes.
What does it look like to the volunteer?
Now, let's take a look at this from the volunteer perspective. Remember, they only see the option to check the days and times of day they're available if you have this feature enabled or required.
- Here's what it looks like on the Create an Account page when they click Sign Up on your site:
- Here's what it looks like if you have this enabled for their profile and they click Edit Profile:
- Here is the Allow Scheduling feature that volunteers can enable or disable from their profile area:
What if a volunteer doesn't select availability?
If a volunteer doesn't select availability, then they're considered potentially available and can be scheduled by you or another site manager.
Why can't I schedule a volunteer?
If you're running into trouble scheduling a volunteer for an Opportunity, you might want to check their availability and whether or not they've disabled Allow Scheduling from their profile. You won't be able to schedule a volunteer if:
- The Opportunity is outside of their checked available days and times.
- They turned Off Allow Scheduling.
- The Opportunity has a duration type of Flexible or Multi-Date.
- You can only schedule with the scheduling tool for Opportunities with durations of Custom Shifts, Recurring Shifts, and Happens On.
Scheduling with the scheduling tool
You can schedule volunteers for shifted Opportunities with the Scheduling tool. Remember, you can only schedule volunteers for Opportunities with duration types of Custom Shifts, Recurring Shifts,
1. Navigate to Volunteerism > Scheduling from the left-hand of your Site Manager panel. 
2. Click the Schedule Volunteers button. 
3. Use the Select Opportunity dropdown to select the volunteer Opportunity you want to schedule. 
4. Select the shift(s) you wish to schedule for and click Continue. 
5. Type the name or email address of the user you wish to schedule and click Search. 
- You can also click Search while the field is empty and a list of users who have Allow Scheduling turned on in their profiles displays.
✏️ Quick tip: Want to filter your search? You can search users by category!
- Click Search By Category.
- Select the filter type you want to apply—e.g., User Data, Volunteer, or Program.
- User Data—this includes filters specific to the users, e.g., Name, Date of Birth, User Tag, etc.
- Volunteer—this includes filters specific to the users' volunteerism, e.g., what user groups they're a member of or which volunteer Opportunities they've responded to
- Program—this includes filters that are Program-specific, e.g., if they're a Program Facilitator and any Initiatives they've been involved with
- After selecting your filters, click Submit Filter.
- Check the boxes beside the volunteers you wish to schedule and click Add To List.
- You can review any possible schedule conflicts for a user under the Alerts column.
6. Check the boxes beside the users you wish to schedule and click Add To List.
7. Review your selections. From here, you can:
- See any potential scheduling conflicts for the volunteers you've selected under the Alerts column
- Schedule more volunteers for the Opportunity if needed
- Remove a volunteer from scheduling
- Update a volunteer's response question answer
- Send a confirmation email to the volunteers you're scheduling—we recommend this step
- Email the volunteers you're scheduling
- Volunteers won't be able to reply to these emails, so it's a good idea to include a reply email address in the body of the message
- You can message volunteers in bulk by clicking Message Volunteers or individually by clicking the envelope icon under Options for the individual you wish to email
Scheduling from the calendar
You can also schedule volunteers for Opportunities from the calendar on your Scheduling page.
1. Find a date on the calendar that has the Opportunity you wish to schedule.
2. Click View More.
3. Click Options for the shift you want to schedule.
4. From the dropdown, select Schedule users for this shift. 
- You can also schedule a team for this shift or view a list of available volunteers to schedule from.
5. Type the name or email address of the user you wish to schedule and click Search.
- You can also click Search while the field is empty and a list of users who have Allow Scheduling turned on in their profiles displays.
✏️ Quick tip: Want to filter your search? You can search users by category!
- Click Search By Category.
- Select the filter type you want to apply—e.g., User Data, Volunteer, or Program.
- User Data—this includes filters specific to the users, e.g., Name, Date of Birth, User Tag, etc.
- Volunteer—this includes filters specific to the users' volunteerism, e.g., what user groups they're a member of or which volunteer Opportunities they've responded to
- Program—this includes filters that are Program-specific, e.g., if they're a Program Facilitator and any Initiatives they've been involved with
- After selecting your filters, click Submit Filter.
- Check the boxes beside the volunteers you wish to schedule and click Add To List.
- You can review any possible schedule conflicts for a user under the Alerts column.
6. Check the boxes beside the users you wish to schedule and click Add To List.
7. Review your selections. From here, you can:
- See any potential scheduling conflicts for the volunteers you've selected under the Alerts column
- Schedule more volunteers for the Opportunity if needed
- Remove a volunteer from scheduling
- Update a volunteer's response question answer
- Send a confirmation email to the volunteers you're scheduling—we recommend this step
- Email the volunteers you're scheduling
- Volunteers won't be able to reply to these emails, so it's a good idea to include a reply email address in the body of the message
- You can message volunteers in bulk by clicking Message Volunteers or individually by clicking the envelope icon under Options for the individual you wish to email
Schedule volunteers outside of the scheduling tool
While we recommend using the Scheduling tool, you can also schedule volunteers from the User area of your site.
To schedule volunteers outside of the scheduling tool:
1. Navigate to Volunteerism > Users. 
2. Click on the user in the table that you want to schedule for an Opportunity. 
3. On the Edit User page, click Schedule. 
4. Select the Schedule button to search for an Opportunity and schedule them:
How to invite available volunteers to respond
Another option is to alert available volunteers about an Opportunity by inviting them from the Scheduling area. This option sends the Schedule Recruitment notification to those volunteers.
1. Go to Volunteersim > Scheduling.
2. Select the Opportunity title in the calendar. 
3. Click View available volunteers. 
4. Scroll to Available Volunteers. 
5. Check the boxes beside the volunteers you wish to send the notification to. 
6. Click Invite Volunteers. 
7. A warning pops up asking you to confirm your selections.
- Click Yes to confirm or No to cancel.
8. If you click Yes, then the notification is triggered and those users receive the Schedule Recruitment notification in their inbox.
- The notification includes information about the Opportunity and a link they can follow to that Opportunity's page.
- Here's what the volunteer receives:
