How is Vome structured?

Overview

Five words carry the whole platform: organization, site, category, opportunity and shift. Once you understand how they nest, every screen in Vome makes sense. Misunderstand them and you will be reorganizing your account in three months.

This article is for administrators setting up a new account. It is worth reading before you build anything.

1. What are the building blocks?

There are five, nested from largest to smallest.

Organization: your account, at the top. It holds everything below it and carries your general information.
Site: a location, region or administrative division. Available on the Enterprise and Ultimate plans.
Category: a folder that groups opportunities together.
Opportunity: the thing users are approved for.
Shift: a scheduled task inside an opportunity.

Each one lives inside the one above it. A shift belongs to an opportunity, an opportunity belongs to a category, and so on up the chain.

2. What is a category?

A folder, and nobody is ever assigned to one. That is the part people get wrong most often.

Categories exist to organize your opportunities into something you can navigate: departments, locations, programs, events, or a single broad grouping such as "All special events". If you find yourself trying to approve someone for a category, what you actually want is an opportunity.

3. What is an opportunity?

An opportunity is the thing users are actually approved for, and every opportunity lives inside a category.

It helps to think of an opportunity as a container rather than a schedule. It is the gateway that a schedule sits behind. Approval happens at this level, which is why this word matters more than any other on the list.

4. What does a shift need?

Three things, and only three. A shift is a scheduled task inside an opportunity, and it requires:

A date
A start time and an end time
A maximum number of spots

Everything else is optional: title, description, location, coordinators, waitlist policy, tags and notification policy.

5. Do I need sites?

Probably not. Sites are for larger organizations that need to segment themselves, and they require the Enterprise or Ultimate plan.

A site is a location, region or administrative division. It gives each part of your organization its own page, its own people and its own coordinators. If you operate from a single location, you do not need sites and can skip them entirely.

6. What is the one rule to remember?

Users only ever see shifts inside opportunities they have been approved for.

Almost every visibility question you will have later comes back to that sentence. If someone cannot see a shift, check whether they are approved for the opportunity it belongs to before you check anything else.

7. How do I map this to my own organization?

Four shapes cover most accounts.

Multiple chapters or branches: the category is a chapter, city, region or department, and the opportunity is a role within it.
One location with several programs: the category is a program or service area, and the opportunity is a role within that program.
Event driven: one "Events" category, with each event as its own opportunity.
Hybrid: programs get their own categories, and events are grouped together under one.

Pick the shape closest to how you already describe your organization out loud. That is usually the right one.

Summary

Organization holds sites, sites hold categories, categories hold opportunities, and opportunities hold shifts.
A category is only a folder. Nobody is assigned to one.
An opportunity is what users are approved for. It is a container, not a schedule.
A shift needs a date, a start and end time, and a number of spots. The rest is optional.
Sites segment a larger organization and require the Enterprise or Ultimate plan.
Users only see shifts inside opportunities they are approved for.

How is Vome structured? Categories, opportunities and shifts