How draft and publish work on a roster
Why roster changes stay private until you publish, and what publishing sends
A roster has two versions at all times, shown on the same board: the one you are working on, and the one your volunteers can see. Publishing is the single action that moves changes from the first into the second, and it saves your work and tells the affected volunteers in one step.
Publishing sends emails immediately
The moment you publish, SupporterBase emails every volunteer your changes affect, and there is no undo.
Nothing reaches a volunteer until you publish
Building a roster takes a lot of small changes, and volunteers would stop reading if every one of them sent an email.
- Adding a shift, changing its time, assigning someone and removing someone are all invisible to volunteers, and none of them sends an email.
- Those changes sit on the board as drafts for as long as you want, private to you and the other organisers.
What publishing does
- You can publish one shift, select several and publish those, or use Publish all.
- The dialog previews the impact of whatever you have selected, and the count of affected volunteers changes as your selection does.
- Publishing one settled day of a roster that spans several days is the normal way to work.
- Open spots on shifts that allow self-signup appear on the public sign-up form for volunteers to claim. Until you publish, that form does not show the shift at all.
Who gets an email
| The dialog says | What the volunteer is told |
|---|---|
| Added to a shift | They have been rostered on, with the role, date and time |
| Shift details changed | Something about a shift they are on has moved |
| Shift cancelled | A shift they were on is no longer happening |
- Only the people your changes affect are emailed, grouped in the publish dialog by what is happening to them before you confirm.
- If a change affects nobody, the dialog says so plainly: Nobody gets an email.
- Adding an empty shift, or tidying a role name on a shift nobody is on yet, updates your board and reaches no one.
Cancellations ask you to confirm twice
If publishing would tell somebody their shift is cancelled, you have to tick an acknowledgement first.
After a shift is published, changes queue up again
A published shift you then edit goes into Changes to publish, and it can be live for volunteers while looking different on your board.
- Your volunteers still see the last published version of that shift.
- Your board shows the new version, marked as having changes.
- Nobody is emailed about the edit until you publish again.
- Taking a volunteer off a published shift marks it Pending removal. They are still on the roster your volunteers see, and still expecting to turn up, until you publish the removal.
- A Pending removal can be undone until you publish it.
Exports only ever show the published roster
When you export a roster to PDF or CSV you get the version your volunteers see, draft shifts are left out entirely, and a shift that matters on the day needs publishing before you export it.