Creating an Occurrence

 For "Individually Scheduled" opportunities - the only occurrence you'll need will be automatically created when you use the volunteer opportunity wizard. All connections are tracked in the one occurrence record.

For date and time specific opportunities, the wizard will allow you to create one or more occurrences for each date and time you wish to recruit volunteers for.  You an always add additional date and time specific occurrences to an existing date and time specific volunteer opportunity.  Here's how:

Navigate to the Volunteer Opportunities Tab.

Choose the Volunteer Opportunity to which you wish to add the occurrence.

(Classic) Scroll down to the Occurrences section of the page and click the "New Occurrence" button

Scroll down to the Occurrences section of the page and click the "New Occurrence" button

You can also opt to select new occurrence from the Create New Occurrence Link in the Volunteer Opportunity Overview

There are only a few fields you need to populate to create a new occurrence

Items 1 - 4 below are required.  To quickly create an occurrence - just fill out these four fields.  Everything else in the record is optional!

There are only a few fields you need to populate to create a new occurrence

Note: Your page layout may vary depending on whether you've enabled certain advanced features and/or custom fields.  But whatever the layout - only these four fields must be populated to create a new occurrence.  Everything else will be automatically filled in for you or is optional.

The required fields are at the top of this layout.

1.  Volunteer Opportunity (required):   Put in the name of the volunteer opportunity  (if you used the related list button this may be automatically filled in for you).  Use the lookup icon to select the correct volunteer opportunity name.

2. Location (required):  Use the lookup to find the location of this occurrence.  (If the location isn't already created, you'll need to create a location record first in the locations tab)

3. Start Date & Time / End Date & Time must be filled in.  (In classic, this is one field for date and time and it should be formatted as shown on the right of field. (click on the field to popup a calendar and choose the date.

4. Status (Required):  Choose a Status from the picklist.

  • Active means it will be on public website (once volunteer opportunity is published
  • Pending means you've created the occurrence but don't want it to show up on the website, YET
  • Awaiting Approval means it was added by a partner, and you have to approve it to publish this new occurrence
  • Admin is for occurrences you never mean to have show up on the public site
  • Inactive (means it has been archived or retired -- never meant to show up on the site again
  • Canceled means the occurrence HAD been active, but has since been canceled.

All the other fields in the occurrence record can be left blank if you want the default information from the volunteer opportunity to be automatically filled in for you.  OR - you can choose to manually enter different information for Opportunity Coordinator, Min and Max Attendance, Registration cutoff and start date, etc. (See below)

But at this point - you can click Save and your occurrence will be published IF the occurrence is saved in ACTIVE status, and the volunteer opportunity is already active.

After clicking SAVE

Review and Confirm your Occurrence

Note that the posting status was updated automatically.   You can now edit the record if you wish to change any of the defaults.

Here is a complete list of other sections and fields in the occurrence record that may or may not appear in your page layout.  They are not required but enable additional customization to your occurrence if used.

Occurrence Schedule and Status, Coordinator Information and Registration Information

Posting Status:  (leave this blank.  It will automatically be populated for you based on the status of the occurrence and the volunteer opportunity)

Recurrence: (leave this blank. It will automatically be populated whenever an occurrence is created as part of a recurrence.

The next two sections can be left blank, and the default information from the Volunteer Opportunity will be brought over when the record is saved.  If you wish to use values other than the default values for these fields, you can populate them as desired.

You can now SAVE your occurrence (or - fill out advanced and optional features as described below).  Once the new occurrence has been saved you can review and publish your occurrence if its not been created in Active Status.

Advanced Features for Occurrences

The sections that follow may or may not have been enabled in your instance of HOC.  Your system administrator can make some or all of these features available.  If available on your page layout - these are all optional items when creating an occurrence.

ADVANCED OPTIONS:

Turn off Teams - allows you to prevent teams from signing up for this occurrence.

Include Pending for Max Attendance - used if you wish pending connections to count towards the maximum number of connections that can be made to the volunteer opportunity. Useful in some cases when doing date and time specific - express interest opportunities to prevent too many people from expressing interest.

Turn off Waitlist - turns off waitlist functionality for this occurrence.

Grouped Occurrences:  automatically populated if the volunteer opportunity is using grouped occurrences.

 

Save new Occurrence

EMAIL MANAGEMENT FOR THIS OCCURRENCE:

The first column of options suppresses one or more of the automated emails sent to volunteers for this occurrence.

The second column of options suppresses one or more of the automated emails sent to opportunity coordinators for this occurrence.

See this article for additional information on these emails:

Optional features for occurrences

These additional sections are optional to use and generally must be enabled by your system administrator.

Optional Check-In Kiosk -- (If your organization has the Check-In Kiosk add-on) checking this box will enable QR codes for the check-in process.

Automate Not Attended - checking this automatically marks attendance to not-attended for anyone who did not check in via the kiosk for this occurrence.

Enable QR Check-In - if you wish to have volunteers print and check-in using QR codes, check this box.  

See this manual for detailed info on these features in the Check-In Kiosk

Optional Occurrence Name and Description:

This is a feature that allows individual occurrences to have names and descriptions. (useful for identifying shifts and./or roles within an opportunity. See this article for more detail on this functionality:

Optional Occurrence Level ARS Workflow

If you have the Advanced Registration System add-on and wish to have an ARS workflow applied to this occurrence (but not the entire volunteer opportunity), you can place the workflow name here.   See this article for info on the ARS

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