Event Volunteer Scheduling

When an event has the Volunteer Scheduling feature enabled, the Serving tab on the event detail page becomes the hub for defining what volunteer roles you need and assigning people to fill them. This article covers the full workflow from defining serving needs through auto-scheduling and reminders.

For broader volunteer management (qualifications, availability, teams) see the volunteer-management section.

Tip: To plan many weeks and people at once — invite, confirm, remind, and fill an entire rota visually from one screen — use the Schedule Grid. This article covers setting up a single event in detail; the Schedule Grid is the across-everyone view.

Defining Serving Needs

A serving need is a single open volunteer slot for an event (e.g., "1 sound tech," "2 greeters," "3 nursery workers").

Adding a Need

1. Open the event and click the Serving tab.
2. Click Add Serving Need.
3. Choose a Position from your church's serving positions list (e.g., Greeter, Sound Tech, Children's Lead).
4. Enter the number of slots needed.
5. Optionally add notes (e.g., "Need someone with the new soundboard training").
6. Save.

Each saved need creates the open slots; you then assign people to those slots.

Assigning Volunteers

There are several ways to fill the slots, from manual single-person assignment to fully automatic.

Manual Single Assignment

1. From a serving need's row, click Assign.
2. Search for a person.
3. Select their assignment status (Pending, Confirmed, Declined).
4. Save.

Bulk Assign Multiple People

If you know who you want for several positions at once:

1. Click Bulk Assign on the event's Serving tab.
2. Search and select multiple people, mapping each to a position.
3. Save.

Assign a Whole Team

If you have a serving team configured, you can pull in every team member in one click:

1. Click Assign Team.
2. Choose the team and which positions to fill from team members.
3. Save.

Show Available Volunteers

To see who is available for the event date (filtering out people who have submitted unavailability through the portal), open the available-volunteers view. It shows a list of candidates with their availability status flagged.

Auto-Scheduling

TimelyChurch can score and pick the best volunteer for each open slot automatically. The scorer considers qualifications, availability for the event date, and recent serving load (so the same volunteer is not asked every week).

Auto-Fill One Position

Auto-fill a single open slot on a serving need:

• Click the Auto-Fill action on the position.

Auto-Fill the Whole Event

Auto-fill every open serving slot in one operation:

• Click Auto-Fill All on the event's Serving tab.

Inspect Scored Candidates

If you want to see the ranked list of candidates the scorer would pick from for a position (without committing), open the scored-candidates view. It shows each candidate with their score, qualifying factors, and any blocking issues (unavailability, missing qualification).

Tip: For series-wide auto-scheduling that fills every event in a recurring series at once, see the Auto-Fill Series workflow in Managing Event Series.

Quick Actions

A few shortcuts speed up common patterns when filling an event.

Copy Volunteers From a Similar Event

If last week's worship service had a great team, just clone it:

1. Click Copy From Event.
2. Search a similar event (the system suggests events of the same type and template).
3. Choose which positions to copy.
4. Save.

Bulk Confirm Assignments

After auto-fill places candidates as Pending, you can bulk-set them to Confirmed without clicking each one.

Sending Volunteer Reminders

Once volunteers are assigned, TimelyChurch can send reminder emails about their upcoming serving role.

Manual Reminder Blast

Send reminders for an event right now:

• Click Send Volunteer Reminders on the Serving tab.

Automated Daily Reminder

TimelyChurch automatically runs daily at 6:00 PM and emails every volunteer who is serving the next day, without any manual intervention.

Email Action Links

Volunteer reminder emails include accept and decline buttons. The volunteer can confirm or decline directly from the email without logging in. The link is secure (cannot be tampered with) and tied to a specific assignment.

Substitute Requests

When a confirmed volunteer cannot serve, they (or an admin) can mark the assignment as needing a substitute. From there you can create a substitute request, cancel it, or fulfill it (mark it as filled).

The substitute workflow ties into the broader notification system so eligible substitutes are notified and can claim the open slot.

Team Schedule Templates

If a serving team has a published schedule template, applying it to an event auto-creates all the standard serving needs for that event in one step. Set this up at:

• Templates tab under the team configuration page (Groups > [Team] > Templates).
• Apply to a single event: when creating the event, select the template from Apply Template.
• Apply automatically: configure the template's auto-apply to event types rule (e.g., "Worship"), and every new event of that type arrives with the template's positions pre-loaded -- no manual application needed.

This auto-apply behavior is the single biggest time-saver in volunteer scheduling. For the full setup walkthrough, see Team Schedule Templates. For the full mental model, see How Volunteer Scheduling Is Organized.

Per-Event Serving Workflow Summary

A typical worship-service flow:

1. Create the event (or generate it from a series); template auto-creates the serving needs.
2. Run Auto-Fill All to score and propose candidates.
3. Review proposals; manually swap any that look off.
4. Click Bulk Confirm to confirm all the auto-fills.
5. Click Send Volunteer Reminders (or wait for the 6 PM daily job to handle it).
6. Volunteers click Accept/Decline in their email; declines convert to sub requests automatically.