Tasks - Events & Projects

Tasks are compromised of events and projects. For an event, think canvassing Saturday from 11:00am - 4:00pm For a project, think design a campaign website and it needs to be complete by March 1.

• An event has a specific start and end date time . Generally that duration is hours, not days.
• An event can also be recurring as in every Wednesday from 2:00 - 4:00
• A project has a specific start and end date (no time) where the start is generally the day it was created and the end can be either the day the project is preparing for or election day when the need for the project then ends.
• An event has everything a project has plus Hosts & Shifts.

Creating, editing, and deleting an event can only be done via the event scheduling page. Creating, editing, and deleting a project can only be done via the project page.

Any task in the past or present cannot be edited or deleted. In addition, an task is never actually deleted. It is marked deleted, retained in the database, and is then only view-able by an administrator.

Shifts

An event can have shifts. If it does, volunteers sign up for specific shifts.

Shifts can start before and/or end after the event start/end time. This way you can have an 11:00 event with a setup shift that starts at 10:30.

Shifts can list skills and/or certifications required for a shift. If these are listed a volunteer must have one of the required skills and certifications. They do not need to have all of them. If you require a skill and certification, they must have at least one of each.

Remember that the volunteer sets their skills. So they may be very skilled at a requirement you set for a shift. But if they did not set that skill in their profile, they will not see that shift.

If a volunteer does not match any shifts due to skills/certifications, they will not see that event.

Important when editing shifts. A volunteer signs up for a shift based on its order in the list of shifts. If a volunteer signs up for shift #2 and you then delete that shift, then shift #3 becomes shift #2 and they are now signed up for that shift.

You can edit and delete existing shifts. You can add new shifts to the end of the list. You can not change the order of shifts.

Recurring Events

A recurring event, if it started in the past, and if its datetime and/or recurrence setting(s) are changed, will actually then be split. The existing event will be ended as of the day of the edit and a new recurring event will be created for the future instances. This is done for any change other than the end date.

For the case where the only recurrence change it to change the end date, then there is no split. The new end date can only be set to now or later. If set to any earlier datetime than now, then the end will be set to now.

In the case of deleting a recurring event, it only deletes future instances of the series. The past instances are retained. Therefore, a delete actually is identical to changing the end of the series to the time of the delete.

Admin Information

An event has several properties that an administrator will need to change at times:

• Maximum Signups - If set to 0, this is ignored. Otherwise, this is the maximum number of signups it will accept for an task. Once that maximum is hit, that task will no longer be suggested. Note that if two volunteers signup for the same task, at the same moment, when there is one slot left, both will be accepted. This number is not a hard limit, it’s a means to tell the system to stop suggesting an task.
• Semantic Rating - When a task is created, an AI service will read the task and make a determination about the suitability of the task. This is checking for bad actors creating an embarassing task. This is on a scale of 0% … 100% with 0 means it is fine and 100 means it is very bad.
• Accepted - When a new task is created by a Volunteer or a Host, this is off (false). The campaign Admin can then review all tasks where this is off, and set it on (true) after review. Setting this to one does not means the task is approved. It just means it has been reviewed.
• Private - A private task can only be edited and/or viewed by the user that created the task and the managers of that campaign. A task created by a Volunteer or Host may be set to private until the admin reviews it and changes it to public. A task that is only for campaign managers will remain private.
• Enabled - A task that is disabled (Enabled is off/false) is frozen. No one can sign up for it, but existing signups remain. No notifications will be sent concerning it. This should be used temporarily when determining if a task needs to be deleted.
• Closed - The system will close each task when it ends. Once a task is closed the task owners and the volunteers attending will be asked to rate the task. Generally closing will be done by the system and it is a one-time one-way change. However, it can be turned on/off by the Admin if needed.