An overview for building and managing schedules so volunteers know when, where, and in what role they are serving.

Once you have assigned a volunteer a role on a team, you are ready to add that volunteer to a schedule. A schedule lays out who is serving, in which role, and at what times. After you create one, you will find it on the Schedules tab of the team or registration event it is associated with.

From a schedule, you can:

• Assign volunteers to roles and serving times, and fill gaps with substitutes.
• Publish the schedule so volunteers can see, accept, or decline their assignments.
• Message everyone who is serving, and send automatic reminders before each serving time.
• Track who has accepted or declined, and accept assignments on a volunteer's behalf.
• Copy an existing schedule to reuse its settings and save setup time.

You can build a schedule around existing events, or create a brand-new serving time for activities outside an event, such as scheduling volunteers to drive people to and from a service.

As you schedule volunteers, you can see helpful details: when each person last served, their serving preferences, and whether they have conflicts or other commitments. Realm also recommends volunteers based on their preferences, found on the skills and interest tab of their profile, and how recently they served. Although schedules are tied to a team, you can search all of Realm to assign people who are not on the team, and choose from a list of substitutes when no one is readily available.

Training or serving as a team leader? Team leaders can create and manage schedules for their own teams. See Volunteer Leaders: Managing Schedules.