Option to make an Initiative a single day and associated needs have to be on that day
Nina Rogers
Thanks for your feedback and the suggestion, Rachael! When designing initiatives, we definitely considered the possibility of making them specific to a particular date or date range. We decided against it for several reasons, a couple of which I've outlined below. We can consider this as an enhancement, but I think the items below will provide some insight into the barriers we saw to this in the first place, and ones we would face if we were to make initiatives date-specific.
- Duration Options - For need duration, the AEM only allows "happens on" needs; it does not offer the ongoing, runs-until, custom-shift, or recurring-shift options. This AEM setup makes it easy to force agency managers to select a specified date (or a date within a specified date range) for a need. Regular needs, as you know, offer all five duration options; only one of those ("happens on") can consistently be "forced" into a particular date or date range. To allow date-specific initiatives, we would need to redesign regular needs to "ignore" all but the "happens on" duration (or disallow shifts past a certain date) if a particular initiative is selected. To program this would be a very large project requiring more complex code and a great deal of testing--something we would need to consider and plan carefully, should we take that route.
- Ability to Switch Events - One shortcoming of the AEM is that a need, once in an advanced event, cannot be easily moved to another one. Another is that an existing regular need cannot be easily moved to an advanced event. With initiatives, you can reassign a need to a different event with the click of a button, and you can add existing needs to initiatives easily. If initiatives have time constraints, the freedom to move and add needs (particularly needs with multiple shifts) in this way would be limited.
While I think we have good reasons for not making initiatives date-specific, I can definitely see the argument for giving site managers the option of associating an initiative with a date. I will add this to our list of customer suggestions to be discussed at an upcoming enhancements meeting. Thanks!
Rachael Murray
It would be great if we could make an initiative have a date associated with it if we want. For example, for our day of caring we only want people to post needs that are on our day of caring date - September 15th. So if I made an initiative and associated a date to it, agencies posting within that initiative can only choose that date – similar to how advanced events works. It is great that initiatives can have needs that are ongoing or have time shifts, and things like that but it would be great if we could also have the option to make it a one day thing and agencies are forced to choose that one day when they are posting their needs within the imitative.