Shift Signups page does not display all available shifts

[kitsuta]

So due to anticipating a very high demand this year, Registration has several "Pre-Registration" shifts with 50 slots.

Unfortunately, if you view the shifts you can sign up for at https://prime.uber.magfest.org/m13/signups/shifts#/, almost none of those are displayed.

Many other shifts are missing for my staffers, so they can't sign up for the most important shift times. Oops.

This is what my signups page looks like. It should have dozens more "Pre-Registration Back Pickup" shifts, as well as more "Shift Lead" and "Registration Manager" shifts.

Job Department  Start Time  Duration    Weight  
Registration set-up ?   Reg Managers    2pm Wed 8 hours x1  Signed Up  Drop
Shift Lead ?    Reg Managers    12pm Thu    3 hours x1  Sign Up
Pre-Registration Badge Pickup ? Regdesk 12pm Thu    3 hours x1  Sign Up
Registration Manager ?  Reg Managers    12pm Thu    3 hours x1  Sign Up
Pre-Registration Badge Pickup ? Regdesk 3pm Thu 3 hours x1  Sign Up
Registration Manager ?  Reg Managers    3pm Thu 3 hours x1  Sign Up
Shift Lead ?    Reg Managers    3pm Thu 3 hours x1  Sign Up
Pre-Registration Badge Pickup ? Regdesk 6pm Thu 3 hours x1  Sign Up
Registration Manager ?  Reg Managers    6pm Thu 3 hours x1  Sign Up
Shift Lead ?    Reg Managers    6pm Thu 3 hours x1  Sign Up
Registration Manager ?  Reg Managers    9pm Thu 3 hours x1  Sign Up
Pre-Registration Badge Pickup ? Regdesk 9pm Thu 3 hours x1  Sign Up
Shift Lead ?    Reg Managers    9pm Thu 3 hours x1  Sign Up
At-Door Badge Sales ?   Regdesk 9am Fri 3 hours, 15 minutes x2  Sign Up
At-Door Badge Sales ?   Regdesk 12pm Fri    3 hours, 15 minutes x2  Sign Up
At-Door Badge Sales ?   Regdesk 3pm Fri 3 hours, 15 minutes x2  Sign Up
At-Door Badge Sales ?   Regdesk 6pm Fri 3 hours, 15 minutes x2  Sign Up
At-Door Badge Sales ?   Regdesk 9pm Fri 3 hours, 15 minutes x1.5    Sign Up
At-Door Badge Sales ?   Regdesk 12am Sat    3 hours, 15 minutes x1.5    Sign Up
At-Door Badge Sales ?   Regdesk 3am Sat 3 hours, 15 minutes x2  Sign Up
At-Door Badge Sales ?   Regdesk 6am Sat 3 hours, 15 minutes x2  Sign Up
At-Door Badge Sales ?   Regdesk 9am Sat 3 hours, 15 minutes x1  Sign Up
At-Door Badge Sales ?   Regdesk 12pm Sat    3 hours, 15 minutes x1  Sign Up
At-Door Badge Sales ?   Regdesk 3pm Sat 3 hours, 15 minutes x1  Sign Up
At-Door Badge Sales ?   Regdesk 6pm Sat 3 hours, 15 minutes x1  Sign Up
At-Door Badge Sales ?   Regdesk 9pm Sat 3 hours, 15 minutes x1  Sign Up
At-Door Badge Sales ?   Regdesk 12am Sun    3 hours, 15 minutes x1.5    Sign Up
At-Door Badge Sales ?   Regdesk 3am Sun 3 hours, 15 minutes x2  Sign Up
At-Door Badge Sales ?   Regdesk 6am Sun 3 hours, 15 minutes x2  Sign Up
At-Door Badge Sales ?   Regdesk 9am Sun 3 hours, 15 minutes x1  Sign Up
At-Door Badge Sales ?   Regdesk 12pm Sun    3 hours, 15 minutes x1  Sign Up
At-Door Badge Sales ?   Regdesk 3pm Sun 3 hours, 15 minutes x1  Sign Up
At-Door Badge Sales ?   Regdesk 6pm Sun 3 hours, 15 minutes x1  Sign Up
At-Door Badge Sales ?   Regdesk 9pm Sun 3 hours, 15 minutes x1  Sign Up
At-Door Badge Sales ?   Regdesk 12am Mon    3 hours, 15 minutes x1.5    Sign Up
At-Door Badge Sales ?   Regdesk 3am Mon 3 hours, 15 minutes x2  Sign Up
At-Door Badge Sales ?   Regdesk 6am Mon 3 hours, 15 minutes x2  Sign Up
At-Door Badge Sales ?   Regdesk 9am Mon 3 hours, 15 minutes x1  Sign Up
At-Door Badge Sales ?   Regdesk 12pm Mon    3 hours, 15 minutes x1  Sign Up
Shift Lead ?    Reg Managers    3pm Mon 3 hours, 15 minutes x1  Sign Up
Registration Teardown ? Regdesk 6pm Mon 3 hours x1  Sign Up
Registration Teardown ? Reg Managers    6pm Mon 3 hours x1  Sign Up```

[kitsuta]

Looking into it more, this is because #67 was only partially implemented. The end result is that staffers are completely prevented from seeing non-restricted shifts in the same time slot as restricted shifts.

So... I'd like that view changing checkbox, please. :)

[EliAndrewC]

Ah, I forgot about that view-changing checkbox. Whoops.

Still, is that even really necessary? Just so we're clear, the behavior we're currently seeing should be as follows (with numbers being randomly just made up for the sake of an example):

• an unrestricted job is created that runs from 10am - 2pm with 50 open slots
• a restricted job is created that also runs from 10am - 2pm with 2 open slots
• untrusted volunteers will only see the unrestricted job, just like always
• as long as there is at least 1 unfilled slot in the restricted job, trusted volunteers will ONLY see the restricted job
• once all of the slots in the restricted job are filled, trusted volunteers will see the unrestricted job

So please correct me if I'm wrong, because I'm just trying to understand the reasoning behind this feature request. It sounds like you're saying, "I have a restricted job and an unrestricted job with exactly the same start and stop times, and even though there are unfilled slots in the restricted job, I'd like trusted volunteers to be able to sign up for the unrestricted job."

Is that correct? If so, then why is that desirable? This seems like a misfeature. (I ask because I want to make sure that we're not seeing some kind of bug where trusted people aren't seeing unrestricted jobs even when the restricted ones are filled, which would definitely be a serious bug.)

[EliAndrewC]

Brent has explained the reason why this is being requested, which is to support the following use case:

• a trusted volunteer is assigned to 2 different departments
• there are restricted shifts in 1 of those departments with the same start/stop times as unrestricted shifts in the other department
• as a result, the volunteer literally cannot sign up for any shifts in the department with the unrestricted shifts, but we'd like them to be able to choose

Three potential solutions suggest themselves:

1) Leave it as it is. This is my preference, since we have a shortage of trusted people, so we really need them to take restricted shifts when possible.

2) Make the restriction per-department. So we'd only hide unrestricted jobs if there's a restricted job in the same department. This would be a super-simple change and seems pretty reasonable (although I'd still prefer to funnel trusted people towards restricted shifts as aggressively as possible).

3) Change the UI so that the volunteer has some way to show all shifts on the signups page. I would prefer not to complicate the UI to support something that I see as a misfeature, but if the consensus is that we want this, it would be a fairly simple change.

[kitsuta]

Well, we have the immediate problem solved, so we can take our time deciding here.

Honestly, as a department head and a volunteer, I don't think locking shifts away from volunteers is a generally good idea. I specifically want my top-level staff (all marked trusted) to be able to see and sign up for any shifts, so they can fill in gaps during our busiest times. For that reason, I vaguely lean towards the UI change, but I'm not really set on anything in particular.

I think the current behavior is fine for MAGFest - I only ran into a problem with it because I forgot it was doing this. I'm not so sure this is fine for other events in the future, but this might be a 'time will tell' thing. :)

[EliAndrewC]

I specifically want my top-level staff (all marked trusted) to be able to see and sign up for any shifts, so they can fill in gaps during our busiest times.

Well I'm definitely okay with making the shift per-department instead of just overall, since as it stands we could end up with a situation where like someone doesn't see a regdesk shift because LARP ha a restricted shift with the same start/stop time.

But we have definitely seen cases in the past where trusted people grab an unrestricted regdesk shift at the same time as a restricted one, presumably because they don't even realize that one of those is really intended for them and the other one is intended for anyone.

[kitsuta]

Not to over-engineer this, but I wonder if the solution should ultimately be the ability to:

1. Mark staff as trusted per-department and not overall
2. Order shift types by priority within a department

Then, you'd display the highest priority shifts, with "trusted" flags adding +1 to priority.

That would mean that if a shift is trusted, but low-priority, then a high-priority un-trusted shift would be displayed instead. But shifts of the same priority would favor trusted shifts if that person is trusted.

That would be in addition to showing shifts per-department.

It's probably way overkill for our purposes, as my department seems to be the most complex in terms of shift design (I don't know that for sure, though).

[thaeli]

+1 for @kitsuta 's idea above. Trusted per-department is very important! Actually I think I might want to make this even more complicated robust, as some departments (at non-Mag events) have multiple "clearance levels" for their staff.

[kitsuta]

That's actually exactly why I'm using two departments to manage registration, because I have a small group of staff who are allowed to work a different set of shifts, and that's currently the only way to do it.

I'd say this kind of thing is very low-priority for MAGFest, but depending on what AC's Staffing Ops directors want, I may end up having to implement something like this early next year.

[EliAndrewC]

Making trusted a per-department thing is indeed an idea which has been proposed and I definitely think it's a good idea.

Having it be a level of access instead of a binary thing also sounds like a good idea, though the hard part would be designing an intuitive UI for it.

[bds002]

There are multiple issues here to be resolved, none of which I think where addressed at AC, since the staffing side didn't go live for them.

1. I think the easier part of this is Restricted per department allocation of Shifts.
   I know some of out trusted staffers use unrestricted shifts in other departments as a break time (time to do something different IE @Jack in Chiptunes.
2. • Make Trusted per-department is an idea we have been kicking around for awhile now and haven't really seen any movement on. There is a different level of trust for managing staff Suite than it is to manage the Merchant tables or Dealers table with $$ being involved.