Our volunteers sign up for multiple activities: Driving an ill person to a hospital, shopping, taking care of animals, work in the garden and so on. It is necessary that they can sign up for more than one activity at the same time. It is also necessary that they are able to register all days they are available: Weekdays and different parts of the days (morning, afternoon, evening) at the same time.
When someone needs a volunteer they must be able to search for him/her by activity and availabily (day and time of the day).
Is it possible to achieve this with Toolset?
I made a mistake in the title: It is not the searchform that needs the 2 dropdowns, it is the listing form.The searchform needs only one of them: for availability. Another multi select method within a category will also do well .
If it doesn't work out I would like a Google hangout at a later moment. For now I be happy with an answer to my question.
Hi, it sounds like you would like your Volunteers to be able to select from one or more Activities, and select one or more time slots when they would be available on one or more days of the week. Then this information would be stored in their profile somehow, so that your site users can search for Volunteers that match their activity, timeslot, and date criteria. Is that correct?
How are these options all combined - independently or collectively? For example, can a Volunteer sign up for Driving on Monday and Tuesday Mornings, and Gardening on Wednesday mornings and Wednesday evenings? Or can they only sign up for Driving and Gardening, and Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday mornings? Can the Volunteer sign up for specific activities on specific dates (like Gardening August 29 in the Evening) or are they only able to sign up on a daily basis (like all Mondays or all Tuesdays)? I need a bit more detail about the granularity of these Activity signups to be able to give you more advice here.
Toolset can help with any of these organizations of data to some degree. It really depends on how you want to allow people to search through these Volunteers using Activity filters, Time filters, and Day or Date filters in a search form, and how flexible these search criteria need to be.
Perhaps you could explain in a bit more detail what you would like to do and I can try to offer more guidance.
Hi Christian,
Thank you so much for your quick reply.
The way you describe our problem is correct:
“Hi, it sounds like you would like your Volunteers to be able to select from one or more Activities, and select one or more time slots when they would be available on one or more days of the week. Then this information would be stored in their profile somehow, so that your site users can search for Volunteers that match their activity, timeslot, and date criteria. Is that correct? “
Except for the date that is not necessary.
To answer your question: “Or can they only sign up for Driving and Gardening, and Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday mornings?” This is exactly the way we want it!!
When someone needs a volunteer we want that person to be able to search by Activity and Timeslot and it would be perfect if they could add Location to it.
When a Volunteer does an Activity we make a note on their profile. When we search someone we want to spread the activities evenly: We don't want to ask Person A who is already busy 2 days a week, but rather ask Person B, who has no activities at the moment. To achieve it would be very handy, if this could happen: After a search, we see the search results and in these profiles we want to see how many activities a person already does.
Thank you so much,
Marianne
To answer your question: “Or can they only sign up for Driving and Gardening, and Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday mornings?” This is exactly the way we want it!!
Okay great. So this means a Volunteer is available to do any of the selected Activities during any of these time slots, assuming they are not already busy during that time slot.
When someone needs a volunteer we want that person to be able to search by Activity and Timeslot and it would be perfect if they could add Location to it.
Location search is possible when you have predefined Locations to choose from, like States and Cities. One thing we do not currently support is a radius-based search, so it's not currently possible to search for matching Locations within 5 mi/km of some specific address or Zip/Postal code.
When a Volunteer does an Activity we make a note on their profile.
Okay this could be accomplished with a group of custom fields, or by creating child posts for each Activity and Time slot. Custom fields will be easier for your users to search through, but child posts will be easier to manage on the back end. We could help you decide which is right for your case.
After a search, we see the search results and in these profiles we want to see how many activities a person already does.
Sure, when you display a list of search results, you can also display related information about each result inline. You could display a list of Activities they are already performing, along with the Time slots for each Activity, or a simple count of Activities they are already performing, or the Time slots when they are currently busy...lots of different ways to handle this display based on what you need to see here. You could also include a link to each Volunteer's profile editor, where you can manage their Activities. Or, you could include a form in each Volunteer result that allows you to add an Activity to their profile right from the search results.
Let me know if you have additional questions about this.
Hi Gregg,
The last couple of days I wasn't able to work on the database.
You gave me a lot of advice and I'll want to work on it further. Don't know at this moment whether I need more assistance.
May be it's best to close now and I'll come back at you when I encouter new problems.
Thank you so much for all your help!!!
Marianne
Okay that's fine. You may mark this ticket as resolved now, then open a new ticket if you have additional follow-up questions. Thanks!
Hi Christian,
For now I'll go on with all I learned from you.
I'll come back when I need help again.
Thanks!
Marianne
