One of the new features coming to Three Rings in the upcoming Milestone – Iridium release is Inactivity Types. This new feature spans a variety of different requests by a number of different organisations, and we hope that it’ll give everybody a better way to manage their volunteers.
The new "Inactivity" button, on the Admin tab.
With this new feature, you’re no longer limited to volunteers merely being “active” – when they can do shifts, receive emails sent to “all active volunteers”, and so on – or “inactive”. Instead, you can define your own types of inactivity, and apply your own rules and conditions to them.
Creating a new Inactivity Type and choosing an icon for it.
For example, you might have an “On Holiday” inactivity type, separate from a “Leave of Absence” inactivity type or a “Support volunteer” inactivity type, each representing different reasons why a volunteer might be unable to do shifts. Each different inactivity type can have its own icon, so you can quickly distinguish between them when you see them in the Directory, and of course the full title of each appears at the top of the Directory page of any affected volunteer.
Two Inactivity Types defined, with different rules for each.
You can also customise each inactivity type further by specifying:
- Which rotas are affected. For example, a “Support volunteer” might not be able to do calltaking shifts on your helpline, but they might be eligible to help on fundraising shifts.
- Whether or not this kind of inactive person still receives Comms emails addressed to “All active” volunteers. For example, you might prefer that volunteers who are “On holiday” still receive email bulletins of organisational news, but that volunteers who are “on Sabbatical” are left in peace.
- If volunteers can set this inactivity level for themselves, or whether they need a Directory Manager to do it for them. For example, you might allow volunteers to put their own “Vacation” days in, but not allow them to set a period of “Taking a break” without first speaking to your administrators.
We think that this wide-ranging solutions covers just about everything that anybody’s ever requested that the Inactivity system should be able to do, and more besides! So even if you only use some parts of it, you’re sure to get value out of the new features we’ve just added.
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