The best volunteer management software for recurring events
Quickly repeat your event across multiple dates
It is common to have an event that repeats multiple times. Helper Helper makes it easy to create and manage these opportunities.
Our platform allows you to select multiple dates on a calendar or repeat on specific days of the week.
This page explores the best practices and options to configure the behavior of your recurring opportunities.
Creating recurring events in the Helper Helper admin panel
Select the “Add Multiple Recurring Dates” link from the “Add Opportunity” screen in Helper Helper.
A popup box appears where you define how this event repeats. If it repeats consistently each week, you select the “repeat every week” option. Otherwise, “select dates from a calendar.”
Options to select multiple dates for your event
When selecting the dates from a calendar, you can choose any date you like and add it to a list of the dates when this opportunity will occur.
Choose how we display your repeating events
Separate vs Combined Opportunity Listings
When you add an opportunity with multiple recurring dates, Helper Helper will create separate opportunities for each date that your event exists.
Generally, this is the best way to handle a repeating event that occurs sporadically. It ensures that the event appears multiple times in the “Find Opportunities” screen of your users’ app. This way, when they are browsing opportunities they can see every date something is available and sign up for the event that best fits their schedule.
It is also useful for administrators as you will have separate sign up lists and check-in links for each day the event occurs and it won’t be muddled with a lot of future or past time slots that are unrelated to the current day.
However, there are some cases where listing this event multiple times in your users’ app may not be desired. Particularly in cases where an opportunity is happening every day, these opportunities can begin to crowd out other opportunities and lead to extra scrolling for your users.
In those cases, it is possible to condense all of your repeating events into a single opportunity listing that will appear only once in your user’s app when they are searching for available events.
To condense these repeating dates into a single opportunity listing, you will need to first create your opportunity on a single date and then ‘Edit‘ the opportunity. The link to add multiple dates will change to “+ Add Multiple Dates to this Opportunity” and you will be able to add all of your dates into this single opportunity listing.
Whether you choose separate or combined listings will really come down to your own preference. If you are repeating this event every day or hundreds of times, it may crowd out other events you are making available. In those cases, we suggest combining them into a single listing. Otherwise, it is nice for your users to quickly see from the opportunity listings page when all of the events are occurring.
How it works in the app
The following example shows how a repeating opportunity will appear in the app using separate listings (multiple dates added when the opportunity is created) or a combined listing (multiple dates added by editing opportunity after it is created). Other than that, the opportunity is configured the same in both scenarios.
Separate Listings
When you add multiple recurring dates during the opportunity creation process, the opportunity will be duplicated for each date that it occurs.
You can see how this appears in both the app listing on the left, and if one of the opportunity dates is clicked and the user is prompted to sign up.
Usually this is the preferred option for events that occur only a few times or rather sporadically. You can see how it can overwhelm the ‘Find Opportunities’ screen if it repeats daily for a long period of time.
Combined Listing
If you desire to use a combined listing for an opportunity that occurs on multiple dates, you will need to first create the opportunity on a single date and then “Edit” the opportunity to add additional dates.
You can see how the combined listing appears in both the app listing on the left, and when it is clicked and the user is prompted to choose a date and sign up.
Usually this is the preferred option for events that occur almost every day for a longer period of time. Regardless of whether you choose separate or combined listings, users can sign up for multiple dates.
