Brief the rota: where to stand and what to do
Kadim has always held who is on. Until now it did not hold what the day is, so that part went into the WhatsApp group: typed once, read by some, lost by Thursday.
A briefing lives on the rota itself. Whoever taps your share link reads it on the same page they claim on, and it lands in their phone's calendar with the duty. You do not type it twice, and nobody has to scroll a group chat to find it.
Nothing here is required. A rota with no briefing looks exactly as it always has.
Add a briefing
Open the rota's board and tap Add a briefing. Two boxes open together.
What is this rota? One short paragraph in your own words:
Eid funday, 10am to 2pm. Families welcome, come to the side entrance.
Where inside the mosque? The spot inside your venue, not your address:
main hall car park
Kadim already knows your mosque and its site, and already puts them on the rota and in the calendar entry. This box answers where inside: the annexe, the main hall car park, the sisters' entrance. It is added to the address, never instead of it.
It saves as you go, so there is no Save-and-come-back. You can change it or clear it at any time. Changing a briefing never texts anyone, even after people have claimed: nothing about the time they committed to has moved. (If you need to tell the crew something that changed after they claimed, that is a different thing, and it is coming.)
Group the day into areas
A funday is not eight loose jobs. It is a car park, a kids' zone and a welcome desk.
While you are building the rota, open a role's Settings and put a short label in Area. On a rota you have already published, the same two boxes are under Edit this slot on the board:
Car park
Type it once. Every other row then offers it as a chip you can tap, so grouping eight slots into four areas is a few taps, not four more typings. Tapping the chip is better than retyping it: "Car park" and "car park" would show up as two separate headings.
On your board and on the share page, slots with the same area now sit under one heading, with the number in that area beside it. A slot with no area stays exactly where it is. Kadim does not sweep leftovers into an "Other" pile.
Say what to do in a slot
In the same place, What to do here is one line for that slot alone:
High-vis jackets are in the porch cupboard.
The volunteer who claims that slot sees it on the rota, in the confirmation when they claim, and in their calendar entry on the night before. A volunteer on a different slot never sees it, because a note belongs to its slot.
Keep it to a line. If it needs a paragraph, it belongs in the rota's briefing at the top.
What not to write in a briefing
Everything you type here is readable by anyone who has the share link.
That link is meant to be forwarded. It goes into the mosque WhatsApp group, and from there to a family group, and someone forwards it to a friend. It needs no account and no password, by design, and that is what makes claiming a slot take thirty seconds.
So treat these boxes like a noticeboard in the porch. If you would not pin it up where anyone walking in could read it, do not type it here:
- No phone numbers. Not yours, not a volunteer's, not the caretaker's. If someone needs reaching, Kadim already puts your first name on the calendar entry.
- No children's names, and nothing about a particular child.
- No home addresses, and nothing about someone's circumstances.
- No alarm codes, key-safe codes or gate codes. A code on a forwarded link is a code that has left the building.
- Nothing about a named person's health, family or safeguarding. That belongs in the safeguarding record, which is locked to your trustees.
Write about the place and the job, never about a person.
What happens in the volunteer's calendar
If a volunteer has added their duties to their phone calendar, their entry for this rota now carries the briefing too:
- the location reads your mosque and site, then your within-venue spot;
- the description starts with what the day is, then their own slot's line, above the crew list and the drop link that were already there.
It is the same calendar entry as before. It just finally has something in it.