What are the Shift series settings on an opportunity?
Overview
Building a shift series decides how the shifts get made. These settings decide how people interact with the series once it exists: whether they can join it as a single commitment, whether they can leave, when their commitment starts, and how long it has to last.
There are six of them. This article is for administrators, and shifts need Vome Pro or above.
1. Where to find them
They sit under Shift series settings on the opportunity, alongside its other schedule settings.
Two other places are worth knowing:
- Bulk schedule settings apply these across many opportunities at once, which is how you roll out a policy without opening each opportunity.
- The schedule settings report lists them per opportunity, so you can see at a glance which of your opportunities allow series joining and which do not.
When you create a series on an opportunity that already has settings configured, Vome prompts you to review them rather than letting you build on assumptions.
2. Reservation policy
This decides whether people can reserve a series as one commitment instead of one shift at a time. Four options:
- Off (default). People reserve each shift individually. The series still exists and still generates shifts, but nobody is offered the option to join the whole schedule.
- Allow opt-in. People can reserve a single shift or join the whole series. The most flexible choice, and the right starting point for most opportunities.
- Required. Any shift belonging to a series must be reserved as the whole series. Use this where partial attendance defeats the point, like a mentoring pairing or a training cohort.
- Admin-only. Series shifts are hidden from people entirely and you assign them yourself. Right where you allocate a rota rather than letting people pick.
Note that Off is the default, which means turning a batch of shifts into a series does not by itself let anybody join it. If you built a series so people could commit to the whole thing, this is the setting you have to change.
3. Cancellation policy
Once somebody has joined a series, can they leave on their own? Three options:
- Off (default). They have to contact an admin to be removed.
- Allow anytime. They can leave whenever they want.
- Honor cancellation window. They can leave, but any shift already inside the opportunity's cancellation window stays on their schedule and they are still expected to attend.
The middle option is the one most organizations should look at hardest. Leaving it Off means every departure becomes a message somebody has to action, and the practical result is people who have quietly stopped coming still occupying spots on your schedule. Honor cancellation window is usually the balance you want: people can manage their own commitment, but they cannot drop tomorrow's shift at the last minute.
4. Let users choose their start date
When this is on, somebody joining picks when their own recurring commitment begins. When it is off, the commitment starts immediately.
Turn it on for anything somebody might reasonably want to start next month rather than this week. Leave it off when the point is to fill the schedule now.
5. Commitment length
Three related settings control how long a commitment lasts.
- Minimum commitment. The shortest commitment somebody can make. This is how you stop a twelve-week program collecting people who intend to come twice.
- Maximum commitment. The longest they can make.
- Require open-ended commitment. Forces commitments to have no end date at all. They stay on the schedule until they leave or you remove them.
When these are set, somebody joining sees the choice framed as either a set duration or indefinitely, within the limits you allow.
6. Attention: open-ended and a maximum cannot both be set
These two contradict each other, and Vome will not save the combination. You will see: "A maximum commitment cannot be set when open-ended commitment is required."
That makes sense once you say it out loud, because a maximum is an end date and open-ended means no end date. It is worth knowing in advance, since it usually surfaces when you are halfway through configuring something and cannot see why it will not save. Decide which one you actually mean: a cap on the commitment, or no end at all.
7. What somebody sees when they join
Your settings shape the join screen, so it is worth picturing what you have built.
The shift shows that it is part of a recurring schedule, with a Join recurring schedule action. Depending on your settings, the join screen may include a start date picker, a commitment length choice, a notice that the commitment is open-ended, and a plain-language line about leaving: that they can leave any time, that shifts inside the cancellation window stay on their calendar, or that they should contact the coordinator.
Joining reserves every upcoming shift in the series plus every new shift added later. People cannot cherry-pick occurrences when joining a series. If you want single-shift booking as well, that is what Allow opt-in is for.
8. How this interacts with request to book
If the opportunity is set to request to book, a series join is submitted for approval like any other reservation, and an admin has to approve before the person is added to the shifts.
Worth weighing: one join request commits somebody to every future occurrence, so it carries more than a single shift request does. On an instant-book opportunity they are added straight away.
Summary
- Six settings, all on the opportunity, applying to every series inside it.
- Reservation policy: Off (default), Allow opt-in, Required, Admin-only. Off means nobody can join the series.
- Cancellation policy: Off (default), Allow anytime, Honor cancellation window. The last is usually the right balance.
- Let users choose their start date, or the commitment starts immediately.
- Minimum and maximum commitment, plus require open-ended.
- Open-ended and a maximum cannot both be set, and Vome will refuse to save it.
- Joining takes every upcoming shift plus every future one. No cherry-picking.
- On a request-to-book opportunity, series joins need approval.
- Apply them in bulk across opportunities, and review them in the schedule settings report.