Allocation Strategies

From your membership's perspective the first step towards duty allocation is typically an opportunity to select the future duties that they prefer. DutyMan offers two distinct strategies for allowing members to choose their duties - Multiple Choice and First Come, First Served. Choose the one which best suits your club or organisation, or use a combination of the two - one first and then the other.

Note: both strategies employ an allocation roster which is separate from your active roster. Please read the Allocation Roster topic to understand the difference between the two rosters before you upload your list of duties.

A third strategy - giving the membership no choice - means that you can go straight to the Allocation Workbench.

If allocation strategy is None then all references to duty allocation are hidden apart from the DutyMan administrator's Allocation menu.

Multiple Choice

Multiple Choice is implemented as a New Duties web page, visible when a member is logged in. Each member can choose more duties than he or she is required to perform. More than one member may choose the same duty. Members may also indicate dates when they are not available. When all choices have been submitted, the duty allocator uses the Allocation Workbench to select the most appropriate person from short-lists for each duty.

The Multiple Choice strategy provides flexibility for the duty allocator but may require additional effort.

First Come, First Served

First Come, First Served is implemented as a duty allocation web form emailed to members. Each member chooses only the duties that he or she wishes to perform. Each duty is allocated to the first person to choose it. Members can change their choices up to a predetermined cut-off date. After the cut-off date the duty allocator allocates any unselected duties using the Allocation Workbench.

The First Come, First Served strategy potentially requires less work for the duty allocator however there is no flexibility in deciding who performs each duty.

Pre-allocation

Both strategies allow pre-allocation of duties.

Optimum Duty Type Selection

Both strategies support Optimum Duty Type selection to restrict the choices that members can make.