The New Psalter Roster Systems

Following a proposal recently submitted to Church Council, and approved at its meeting on 22 Feb 2014, work has been proceeding on developing the new systems described therein.

User visible features of the new systems include:

• A standardised format for all rosters. This has dramatically facilitated the rapid development of the new system, and will allow new rosters to be added very quickly.
• All rosters have a preferences page which allows rostered people to specify what duties they wish to undertake, how frequently they want to do them, and how long an interval they wish to be notified of pending allocations.

• All rosters share a single unavailable page (RosterUnavailable), so that users need only specify their absences once for all rosters on which they volunteer. Note that this page is only accessible to people logged in, so that information about absences is restricted to church people only.

• (more to come)

These new rosters have the following features: (the flag indicates now operational)

1. Up to a year's allocation in advance, at the choice of the coordinator or roster participants.

2. Automatic allocation for all duties not otherwise allocated for 4 weeks in advance.

3. Option for "half swaps".

4. Single RosterUnavailable page to allow notification of unavailability across all ThePsalter rosters.

5. Automatic email reminders, both

   1. at allocation time, and

   2. for the coming week.

6. Ability for roster participants to request no email reminders.
7. Alerts to roster coordinators of those not receiving reminders, either because they have no email address, or because they have specifically requested no email reminders.

8. Ability for roster participants to allocate themselves manually beyond 4 weeks (subject to coordinator discretion).

9. Ability for roster participants to identify their preferred allocation period (subject to coordinator discretion).

10. (Possible implementation, depending upon demand) A button or link which when clicked will show the roster in a different format, adapted to the needs of the roster group, and stylised for printing.

11. Ability for roster participants to identify their preferred intensity (minimum period of time between allocations).

Rosters with these features completed to date: RosterGreeting, RosterVestry, RosterCommunion, RosterDoor, RosterSound, RosterPreaching (manual allocation only).

The Fixed Term, or Allocation Period

This is one of the parameters that may be specified in the preferences page. It is a numeric value in the range 1-52, and identifies for how many weeks a person wishes to see when they have been rostered. Allocations are "fixed" (in terms of the old Salt Roster nomenclature), and may be regarded in the same way as paper rosters where names are fixed once allocated, unless they are specifically changed with the approval of the roster coordinator and they person swapped with.

Once outside this period, people can notify absences as imminently as the allocation period plus 1 week. This is the core flexibility of the new system. The Allocation Period is also the notice that you need to give of impending non-availability. A Short allocation period also indicates that you are prepared to act as "emergencies" for those caught by illness or other circumstances that prevent their fulfilling their duties.

The Exclusion Period, or Rostering Intensity

This parameter (a numeric value in the range 1-13) identifies the shortest period that may occur between successive roster duties for a given individual. For example, an exclusion value of 8 means that one would never get allocated within 8 weeks of a previous allocation. This parameter allows you to specify your rostering intensity in terms of the maximum number of times a year you can be rostered (divide your chosen number of times into 52, and that gives you the number you want to put in this column). This value also determines the maximum "catch up" rate after a period of absence. Indeed for most people this will be the only time that it comes into effect.

Users are encouraged not to specify too large a value for this parameter, as it reduces the effective number of volunteers, and forces more duties on to those with lower values.