MOW Scheduler Tutorials :: Help Wanted Page
Overview
The "Help Wanted" page is a public (no log-in required) web page your volunteers may visit to view and sign up for slots that are open (don't yet have minimum required number of volunteers) in the upcoming days and weeks.
The Help Wanted page is like a simplified version of the Weekly Schedule your staff uses, but with a few important exceptions:
- there's no info on current assignments, only shows which slots need help
- only "public" Jobs, Job Groups, and Events are shown. You can hide selected jobs or entire job groups from the public Help Wanted page by changing their visibility in the settings.
- only Jobs and Job groups that have at least one unfilled shift for the specified week are shown on the Help Wanted page
Setting Up the Help Wanted Page
The Help Wanted page is available at https://yoursite.mowscheduler.com/helpwanted
Signing in is not required, but if you are signed in you will see the usual site navigation options. Public visitors only see options to go to Home or Sign In. Hint: if you'd like to see what the Help Wanted page looks like to a public visitor, open it in an "incognito window" (Google Chrome), "private window" (Firefox), or "InPrivate window" (MS Edge)
The Help Wanted page includes some information besides the schedule itself, and you can edit this information:
- Message to volunteers: this is the text just below the page title (highlighted in yellow box in screenshot above). To edit it, go to "Manage Public Page Content" page on the menu under System Admin > Configuration and Setup > Help Wanted Page Content and set up the message you want your volunteers to see.
- Contact info: you can edit your organization name and the main volunteer coordinator phone number from the System Admin > Our Organization page.
- Recipient(s) for the Contact Form: these are specified on the System Admin > Staff Notification Subscriptions page (edit the entry for General Inquiry)
Controlling the Schedule Content
In general the Help Wanted schedule doesn't require much attention (that's kind of the point!) but you do have control of certain aspects of how it looks to your volunteers
Control which jobs are visible
Open shifts are only displayed on the Help Wanted page if both the Job and the Job Group have "public" visibility, as specified in the Job Settings and Job Group settings. By default, all Jobs and Job Groups are public.
Also, you can prevent a specific shift from being displayed on the Help Wanted page by clicking the "Don't show as short-handed" checkbox on the shift detail page, but note that this also prevents the slot from being display as "pink" on the staff's Daily and Weekly schedules.
Link to a specific Job Group
If you'd like to send volunteers a link to the Help Wanted page for a specific Job Group, you can get that link from the System Admin > Configuration and Setup > Manage Job Groups page
alternate method: use the Job Groups filter on the Help Wanted page itself and copy and paste the resulting URL. This URL is a little messier than the one you get from the Job Groups page, but it can include more than one Job Group at a time.
Note that all future one-time events are shown on the Upcoming Events side panel, regardless of the Job Group filter. This allows you to promote one-time events further in the future than your immediate needs for "routine" jobs.
Job Description, Job Group Description, and Job/Shift Attachments
As seen on the screen shot below, the Job Group descriptions and Job descriptions are shown on the Help Wanted page and can be very useful for providing the information your volunteers might want or need prior to signing up for a shift. In addition, you have the options of providing "attachments" (files or text snippets) to jobs or specific job shifts that may be read prior to sign-up.
IMPORTANT: This information is visible on the public Help Wanted page to the entire Internet, so do not include any personally identifiable information about clients or volunteers!
In addition to the above "public" info, it is possible to provide attachments that may be accessed by the volunteer only after they sign up for a shift and their signup is approved. More info is available on these "assignee only" attachments here
Help Wanted in the Volunteer Portal
The version of the Help Wanted page available to Volunteer Portal users after signing in is almost identical to the "public" version, with a couple differences:
- never requires a "captcha" to sign up for a shift
- the shift sign-up form goes straight to the "confirm" button, since we already know exactly which volunteer is signing up. This means the Volunteer Coordinator won't need to do a volunteer lookup to confirm the assignment, and if the volunteer is eligible for auto-approval their signup will always be approved immediately
- if the user has specified any "default job groups" in their My Account preferences, the Job Groups filter will automatically be set to show those groups
