Shifts and follow-ups
A shift is a window inside a canvass that people are asked to give: Saturday from ten to one. A follow-up is something the campaign owes somebody after a door: a lawn sign, a call back, a visit from the candidate. This page is how both are run — in the console, and on a phone in the Field OP app, where every one of these screens is too.
Where they are
In the console, a canvass's own screen has a Shifts and sign-ups panel, and Work is the follow-up queue.
On a phone, open More from the top of My missions: Shifts and sign-ups is under Field, and Follow-ups under Work. Choose a canvass, then a shift. Volunteers have no More; their own shifts and their own follow-ups are on My missions as they always were.
What you are offered is what your role may do, and nothing else. If you may look and not change anything, the screen says Read only at the top and shows no buttons.
Planning a shift
Plan a shift asks for when it starts and ends, how many people are wanted, and a note for the people on it — where to meet, what to bring. The times are in the canvass's own time zone, whatever zone your computer or phone is in, and the zone is said beside them. A shift sits inside its canvass: a time before the canvass starts or after it ends is pointed out before anything is sent. Planning a shift sends nothing to anybody.
The number wanted is a target, not a limit. When enough people say yes the shift is marked Full by itself; Open it again lets more be asked. Each shift in the list says how it stands — how many are coming of the number wanted, how many are still to answer — for everybody who can see the list.
Administrators, campaign managers, field leads, organizers and data stewards plan shifts. A captain changes the shifts of a canvass they lead — the time, the number, the notes, closing or calling it off — and does not plan new ones.
Changing, closing and calling off
Change the time, the number or the notes sends only what you changed. Moving the start moves the reminder: everybody who said yes and has not been reminded yet is reminded twenty-four hours before the new time. Somebody who was already reminded is not told again, so ring them.
Close the shift stops anybody else being asked or signing up at a stall, and its poster's code stops working; who was asked and what they said are kept. A poster's code works only while its shift is open: while it is full, closed or called off nobody can sign up with it, and opening the shift again makes the same code work again until the canvass ends. Call the shift off means it is not happening: everybody asked sees it marked as called off on their phone, and nobody is sent a message about it. Both ask once more, saying what they do, before anything changes.
Asking people
Ask people to this shift searches the campaign's people by name — type two letters — and asks the ones you tick, up to two hundred at once. Asking somebody puts them on the roster as asked; it sends no message by itself, so ring them. Somebody who is not in the people file cannot be asked here: a stranger at a stall signs up with the poster's code instead.
Who was asked
Who was asked lists the roster, the people still to answer first, and how the shift stands against the number wanted. Record what somebody told you — Coming, Not coming or No answer. Walked in is never offered: it means the poster's code was used, and nothing else may claim it. A volunteer answers on their own phone and sees nobody else's answer.
People on the roster are shown by a short identifier, not a name: the roster belongs to the shift, and a name belongs to the person's record, where your own permissions decide what you see. If your role reads people, the identifier opens their record — Open their record on a phone. A captain sees the roster of a shift on a canvass they lead, and records answers on it.
The poster's code
Mint a join code for the poster makes the code for a stall or a poster, and draws its square right there — nothing is sent anywhere to make it. Print the poster, copy the code, or share the sign-up link. The poster and the shared link say "Sign up to help" and the campaign's name — the name the sign-up page shows — and never the canvass's, which is a name for the people running it. If the shift already has a code, minting a new one replaces it, and a poster already on a wall stops working; you are asked first. A shift that is full, closed or called off is offered no code: the screen says why, because a code would turn everybody at the stall away.
The code is shown once, on that screen. The record says that a code was minted and when it stops working, never what it is, and the app and the console keep it nowhere else: leave the screen and mint again for another copy. Only somebody who may mint one is ever told a shift's code; anybody else who can see the shift — an observer, a candidate — is not sent it at all. A code lasts until the canvass ends, so one minted after the canvass has finished is already dead — the screen says so before you print it.
Scanning one. Somebody who scans the square with any phone's camera lands on a short public form. In the Field OP app, Sign up to help has Scan the poster's square: on an iPhone it reads the code with the camera, keeping no picture; on Android, and in a browser that cannot read codes, you type the code printed beside the square. Whoever is signed in on that phone, their sign-in is never sent with somebody else's name.
The sign-up sheet
Sign-ups from a stall arrive under Signed up at a stall on the shift, with how to reach each person — tap to call or to write. The sign-up form takes a plain e-mail address and nothing riding along with it: an address with a ?, a second address after a comma, or a line break in it is refused at the stall, where the person can still fix it. An address is offered to write to only when it is a plain address; one with anything else in it — a sign-up from before October 2026, or an unusual but real address such as one with an apostrophe — is shown as typed, not as a link, so check it before writing to it. Nobody on the sheet is in the campaign's records yet. Accept asks first and says what it does: it creates the person, a volunteer role for them on this campaign, and their place on the shift, all at once and in your name. Decline creates nothing and keeps the row, so the campaign can see who signed up and was turned away.
The sheet holds a stranger's name and number, so it is shown only to some roles. A captain or a candidate is told so, never that nobody signed up.
Opening somebody's record
A follow-up about somebody, and each person on a roster, opens that person's record if your role reads people — Open their record on a phone, the name or identifier in the console. The record shows what your own permissions allow; a captain who opens one is told it is not shown to them.
Follow-ups
Mine, Unassigned and All are three views of one queue; choose a campaign, or show the finished ones, which keep their row with who finished them and when. Write one down records a follow-up nobody's door raised: what kind, why it is owed, when, how urgent, and — if you want — who it is about, their door, and who it is for. The record says it was a person's judgement and not a rule's.
On a follow-up, whoever owns it — a volunteer, a captain, a candidate with their own queue — can start it, mark it done, call it off, open it again, and write down what happened. That is theirs whatever their role.
Taking it on, handing it to somebody, putting it back in the queue, calling it off, moving its date and changing its priority are for the people who run the campaign: administrators, campaign managers, field leads, organizers and data stewards. The captain leading a canvass does the same for the follow-ups its doors raised — not for one written by hand, one from another canvass, or one from a conversation marked restricted — and still sees the person they are about by identifier, not by name. Only somebody already in the campaign can be handed one.
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