The Requirement

Post date: Jul 21, 2014 12:13:33 PM

From: "The Minstrel" <Minstrel@FolkProject.org>

To: "George Otto" <georgeotto@mac.com>, volunteers@folkproject.org

Sent: Saturday, July 19, 2014 11:41:01 AM

Subject: Volunteer Schedule

George

As Chairman of the "How To Use Advanced Technology To Our Advantage" Committee (Or whatever the heck it's really called.) I have an area where we might improve upon our current practice.

The schedule of volunteers is kept in a makeshift combination of two programs. The master record of the calendar and what jobs are available is kept in a Filemaker file I created that lives on Amy's and Jean's personal computers. Then there is a Yahoo Group Calendar that is a legacy of Sandie Reilly's administration of the Volunteer Chair. I'm not sure what its function is, but Amy uses it, and would be better able to explain it.

The Filemaker file is a pretty nice application I wrote up, but not really suitable for being administered by two people. The only way they can share the latest information is to email the file to each other. And it's not accessable by the volunteers themselves, so they can see the open positions for shows in the future. The Yahoo Group is accessable by the volunteers, but it's clumsy. And I don't have (or want) a Yahoo account, so I can't see that data.

I'm thinking that if the Filemaker file could reside in Dropbox or something like that, both Amy and Jean could administer and edit the same copy of the file. But I'm not really clear on how Dropbox works, and how editing priveleges could be restricted to authorized personnel. And that file has a very nice layout showing all the upcoming shows, and who is signed up for each slot. If that layout could be made accessable to the volunteers with read-only access, then they could see the available open positions, and request them in advance. It would be essentially an online equivalent of the old "Volunteer Book". And it would be accessable via a tablet from the Minstrel, so people could perhaps put in volunteer offerings at the Minstrel itself, as with the old Volunteer Book.

Another enhancement with that technique is how the data on new shows might be added to the file. How it's done now is that periodically, I send Amy a tab-delineated text document of all future shows with data on the date, feature act, and opening act, and Amy runs a script on the file that incorporates that data into the file. If I had access to the file on Dropbox, I could add data on each show as it is booked on an ongoing basis.

My guess is that this procedure would be relatively simple to implement, and make the access and editing of that file much simpler for all concerned.

Mike Agranoff

Program Chair

The Minstrel Acoustic Concert Series

Morristown, NJ 07960, USA

www.Minstrel.FolkProject.org