"Go Live" Checklist

1. Turn on the daily email and text reminders. Check the scheduled send times, and adjust them if necessary. A few volunteers may ask to stop receiving reminders -- they may feel the reminder doesn't help them or is too intrusive, especially if they volunteer frequently on a regular schedule. You can easily disable reminders for an individual volunteer through their Contact profile.
2. Turn on the monthly email reminder. Monthly email reminders can not be turned off for individual volunteers; they're not frequent enough to be bothersome.
3. Configure the "Volunteer Self-Cancel" feature which enables the volunteers to cancel a scheduled assignment using a link in the email and SMS reminders, or from the volunteer portal. If you'd prefer that volunteers not be allowed to make last-minute cancellations online, you can choose the "early only" option.
4. Block out the holidays - Use the "cancel day" feature to cancel scheduled holidays, so that volunteers don't receive reminders to work on days you're not operating. We recommend scheduling holidays annually ahead of each new year.
5. Set up additional user accounts for members of your volunteer management team.
6. Make sure the correct "Main Volunteer Coordinator" contact info is listed on the "Our Organization" page. The phone number from this page is displayed on the public Help Wanted page. The specified email address is the default mail box for volunteer signup and cancellation notifications.
7. Ask us to wipe the data of job shifts prior to your "go live" date. This will ensure that play data from your learning curve and testing phase doesn't skew volunteer metrics such as number of shifts, miles and hours earned.
8. Set up email notification subscriptions so that various types of messages go to the right administrators. This is especially useful for programs that delegate groups of routes/jobs to separate coordinators.
9. Spread the word about the public "Help Wanted" page, where volunteers can go online to review and sign up for the upcoming shifts that require help.
10. Let your volunteers know they can also register for a Volunteer Portal account to manage their own contact information and see their upcoming commitments. You can get them started by following instructions here. Volunteer Portal is an optional feature that we can turn on at your request.
11. Integrate your volunteer application form with MOW Scheduler

We recommend going through items 1 to 7 at a minimum before going live. The other items are less time-critical and therefore can be completed after you're up and running.