Replacing a sign-up sheet with a roster

Occurrences live in a scheduling group, and a coordinator acts on the groups they’re scoped to. Under Manage › Groups, choose New scheduling group and create one just for the event, so its organiser can run it without touching the Sunday rota and a roster run covers only the event. Add the organiser in the Coordinators card on the same form, then Create group.

Chairman, Musician, Reader and Doorman almost certainly exist already — reuse them. Under Manage › Roles › New role, add the hospitality roles (Afternoon Tea, Dinner, Morning Tea). Put the standing instruction in the role’s Description, add at least one eligibility rule (Add predicate → Adult), and consider two settings:

• Willing to do this role by default — uncheck it for a hospitality role so no one’s preference says they’re willing. (See step 4 for what this does and doesn’t do.)
• Volunteers require coordinator approval — turn it on for a role whose sign-ups you want to vet, such as Chairman.

Under Manage › Occurrences › New occurrence, add a standalone occurrence in your group for each sitting: a name, date, start time and length, the location (tick This occurrence has a location), and a role slot per role (Add slot). Keeping the hospitality spots as their own short occurrences gives them their own times, as on the sheet, and lets the same person read at 3pm and oversee afternoon tea without a clash. The six show up together in the Occurrences list when you set the date range to the event.

Under Manage › Runs › New run, pick Custom dates, set the event’s dates, tick your group and Start run.

Important: the solver fills every slot it can — including the hospitality roles, which it marks “Assigned despite not opting in to this role” because you turned their default willingness off. Turning willingness off does not leave a spot empty by itself; it only flags the fill as an exception. To run a spot as a sign-up, you open it yourself in the next step.

In the draft, use the pencil (Edit assignment) on a filled row, give a reason, and choose Unfill this slot. Each cleared slot shows as unfilled — those are your sign-up spots. Here the three hospitality spots and two of the duty spots have been cleared, leaving five open.

Publishing a roster with empty slots is allowed — Publish › Publish everything. Anyone the solver rostered gets the normal notification and acceptance.

Note: the published roster page lists who is on each duty, but it hides the empty spots and shows no “9 of 10 filled” count. The open spots live on the event pages — which is where members take them (step 8).

A sheet works because its link gets emailed around. Under Announcements › New post, write one pointing members at the open spots (“Five spots still open — open the session from Occurrences and take one”). It reaches everyone’s Home feed; tick Notify members if you also want an immediate push.

Members take an open spot from the event, not the published roster. They open the session — from Occurrences or the Calendar — and an empty slot shows Unfilled with a Volunteer for this link where the sheet had “Sign Up”. Tapping it fills the spot immediately and it reads as taken for everyone else. The spot is now a duty: it appears under Duties and on their calendar, the reminder goes out, and they can propose a swap or ask for cover if they can no longer do it. A member who’s unavailable, or already at their own maximum, is told so instead of being allowed to double-book.

For a role you marked Volunteers require coordinator approval (here, Chairman), the member volunteers the same way but is told a coordinator will confirm it. Until then the sign-up waits in the coordinator’s approvals queue (step 13).

The Coordinator overview (Manage › Coordinator) is the organiser’s live view. The Force assign card counts unfilled slots across the window, and Volunteer approvals counts the sign-ups waiting on you.

For a spot that needs a word with whoever takes it (“please arrange the praying brethren beforehand”), open the session and, on an unfilled slot, choose Open to volunteers and add a note. The member sees the note when they claim it.

A coordinator can also simply Force assign a specific person to any empty spot, as they would pencil a name onto the sheet. The person is notified and can decline.

Sign-ups for approval-required roles wait in Manage › Coordinator › Volunteer approvals. Open Review and Confirm to pin the member, or Decline to return the slot to unfilled.

The event is in the records like any roster: who did what, downloadable from the published roster header as PDF, CSV or iCal, and the solver’s history knows those members served, so it spreads the next duties fairly.