Tips and tricks

Here you will find some useful tips on how to work with and make the most of VOLAGIC.

Using emojis

Emojis are part of our everyday lives and are used constantly in emails, mobile messages and advertising. To make your Job, Group and Event names in the Helper section more engaging, you can easily combine the names with emojis. There are a few things to keep in mind:

  • Only use emojis alongside text. The text should always provide the clear description.
  • Ideally, use only 1 emoji per Job / Event / Group.
  • Only use UTF-8 emojis.

To ensure that emojis are displayed correctly on all systems, please use UTF-8 emojis only. You can easily find an overview of available emojis using a search engine. You can then simply copy the icons and paste them into VOLAGIC.

Plus email addresses

From time to time, you may need to add people to VOLAGIC who do not have their own email address. This might be an honorary member who occasionally still takes on Tasks for the club, or members of the U11 girls' team who run the kiosk during a home match of the women's team.

There are several ways to add these people to the system. Our recommendation: plus addresses!

What are plus addresses?

If your club has a general email address, you can use it to add additional people. For example: info@yourclub.com. By adding a "+" and any identifier after "info", you can create "new" email addresses.

info+stefan@[youremailaddress].ch
info+susi@[youremailaddress].ch
info+melanie@[youremailaddress].ch

All these emails are delivered to info@[youremailaddress].ch! This means you can create as many addresses as you like from a single email address. There are several advantages to this. If you add several people using the same email address, they will all appear as options when logging in to the Helper section. Plus addresses avoid this problem because each person has their own login details. In the example above, Stefan, Susi and Melanie each have their own login. However, all confirmation and reminder emails are sent to the same address: info@[youremailaddress].ch. You can configure your email system to sort these messages into different folders based on the identifier following the "+".

Important

Plus addresses are supported by many email providers, but not all of them. You can easily test whether your provider supports them by sending yourself an email using a plus address. If it arrives, the feature is supported.

You can find a detailed article on the subject at Cyon.

Cake donations

Cakes sold at your event are often baked and donated by members or people associated with your organisation. To help you organise this through VOLAGIC as well, here is one possible approach.

1. Job

First, create a Job for the cake donation. We recommend defining the Job value so that the desired value is credited per Task. If cakes are donated without anything being credited in return, you can also set the Job value to "0".

2. Event / Shift

If you already have an Event that fits the cake donations in terms of both theme and timing, we recommend creating an additional Shift. You can schedule it for the time when the cakes should be delivered.

  • Exact delivery time: You can create a Shift with a duration of "0". Simply enter the same time for "to" as for "from".
  • Defined delivery period: If the cakes are to be delivered between 09:00 and 12:00, set the Shift duration accordingly.

You can also create a separate Event for cake donations. If you only need the cakes on one day at a specific time or during a specific period, you can use an Event without Shifts. If you have different "delivery time slots", create an Event with Shifts. From the Pro subscription onwards, you can also spread this across several days.

You can use the notes fields in the Event or Shift to provide more detailed information, for example: "Please deliver the cakes between 09:00 and 12:00." You can also create a Location and assign it to the Shift so that Helpers can immediately see where they should deliver the cakes.

3. Tasks

If you already know how many cakes you need, create that number of Tasks using the "Cake donation" Job. If you want to leave the number of cakes open, simply create a large number of Tasks.

IMPORTANT: Cake donation Tasks are also included in the statistics and may distort the figures!

4. Cake information (if required)

To find out which cakes people are bringing, you will need to use a workaround.

  • Create a public document online, for example using Google Sheets or Google Docs.
  • Send an email to the Event or Shift Helpers (for the Shift in which you advertised the cake donations) and include a link to your public document.
  • Ask the Helpers to specify in the document which cake they will bring.

This allows you to organise the cake donations while also knowing which cakes will be provided.

Optional: Defining specific cakes

If you know exactly which cakes you need, you can create the Jobs accordingly. This will result in a longer list of Jobs, but it allows you to specify exactly what you need from your Helpers.