Create Recurring Shifts

If your volunteers contribute their time on an ongoing basis, create recurring shifts. When you create a recurring shift, you specify how often the shift repeats and the duration. Bloomerang Volunteer automatically bulk creates the individual shifts for you.

You can create recurring shifts in just a few clicks. Save time, streamline your operations, and make reliable schedules that help improve volunteer satisfaction.    

In this article:

• How It Works
• Create Recurring Shifts
• View Recurring Shifts
• Edit Recurring Shifts
• Delete Recurring Shifts
• Related

How It Works

To create a recurring shift, you can:

• Create a new shift and copy it to a recurring frequency
• Copy an existing shift to a recurring frequency

For example, your organization has a daily lunch shift from 12 to 1 p.m. and a daily dishwashing shift from 12:30 p.m. to 1:30 p.m. In Bloomerang Volunteer, create or edit a lunch shift and copy it to a recurring frequency. Select how often the shifts should repeat, when they should start, when they should end (on a date or after a number of occurrences), and whether to group the shifts into a series. Bloomerang Volunteer automatically creates a series of lunch shifts. Repeat these steps for the dishwashing shift. 

Recurring shifts are individual, one-time shifts. These shifts appear in reports, shift reminders, and schedules that you send just like other individual shifts. If you edit or delete an individual shift in a recurring series, other shifts in the series aren’t affected. 

Create Recurring Shifts

To create a recurring shift:

1. Open the opportunity.
2. Click Schedule .
3. To create a new recurring shift:
   1. Click Shifts.
   2. Configure the shift settings. Read more about shift settings.
   3. Click Actions.
   4. Click Copy Shift and select To a Recurring Frequency.
4. To change an existing shift to a recurring shift:
   1. Click the shift to open it.
   2. Click Actions.
   3. Click Copy Shift and then select To a Recurring Frequency.
5. Select how often you want this shift to repeat:
   1. Select or enter a number.
   2. Select Day(s), Week(s), or Month(s).
6. Select the Starting Day, Starting Week, or Starting Month. 
7. Select when this shift ends: On a certain day, week, or month or After a certain number of occurrences. Each shift can have up to 1,000 occurrences.
8. (Optional) If you do not want shifts grouped together into a series, click the toggle to turn off. 
9. Review the Summary to make sure the number of shifts, frequency, and duration are correct. If you change any frequency settings, the Summary automatically updates.
   
10. If you chose not to group shifts into a series, click Create to finish setup. If you chose to group shifts into a series, click Next.
11. Click Choose an option... to group the shifts into a series.
    1. To add shifts to an existing series, select a series from the list or
    2. To create a new series, click New Series and enter a name for the the series.
12. Click Create.

Bloomerang Volunteer creates your shifts, which might take a few minutes depending on the number of shifts. The number of shifts and a time estimate appear above the shift list. 

While Bloomerang Volunteer creates your shifts:

• Refresh the Schedule page to monitor the progress. Shifts appear on this page as they are created.
• You and other administrators can add or edit other shifts and recurring shifts for this or other schedules. 
• You can configure settings on this or other pages. You can also log out. Bloomerang Volunteer continues to create your shifts. 

View Created Shifts

After Bloomerang Volunteer creates all of your shifts:

• A bell notification appears at the upper right.
• Bloomerang Volunteer sends you an email notification.
• A message appears above the shift list that tells you the number of shifts created.
• Shifts that are part of a series display a series icon with the shift title.

To view recurring shifts:

1. Open the opportunity.
2. Click Schedule . Recurring shifts appear in the list. Shifts in the same series have the same shift name unless you renamed individual shifts.
   

Tip: Use filters and columns to customize the shift view.

Note: If something unexpected happens and Bloomerang Volunteer can’t create all of your shifts, a bell notification appears at the upper right. We’ll also email you. These notifications include the number of shifts successfully created out of the total number of shifts. 

Edit Recurring Shifts

Edit an individual shift or bulk edit multiple shifts.

To edit one or more shifts in a recurring series:

1. Open the opportunity.
2. Click Schedule .
3. To edit a single shift, click it.
4. To edit multiple shifts:
   1. Select the shifts.
   2. Click the Take Action button.
   3. To group shifts into or ungroup shifts from a series, select Manage Series.
   4. To change when the shifts happen, select Move Shifts.
   5. To change other settings, select Bulk Change Settings. 

Delete Recurring Shifts

Delete an individual shift or bulk delete multiple shifts. 

To delete one or more shifts in a recurring series:

1. Open the opportunity.
2. Click Schedule .
3. To delete a single shift, click it.
4. To delete multiple shifts:
   1. Select the shifts.
   2. Click the Take Action button.
   3. Select Delete Shifts.
      

Related

• Create and Edit Shifts