Event Helpers & Task Allocation

Overview

Most club events only run because members pitch in on the day — someone works the gate, someone scribes for the judge, someone runs the BBQ, and someone stays back to pack up. The Helpers feature turns that shuffle of favours into an organised list.

You build one reusable list of helper jobs for your club, choose which jobs each event needs (and how many people for each), and riders pick the jobs they're happy to do while they enter.

Once your running order is published, the roster gets clever. Horsify knows exactly when each ring runs, so it can split a long job into shifts against the real hours, fill the open slots for you, warn you when someone is rostered over — or too close to — their own ride, and then publish the finished roster so every helper is emailed their own jobs.

Who this is for: Event organisers and committee members who coordinate on-the-day volunteers.

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Key Features

• 📋 Reusable job list — set up your club's helper jobs once and reuse them at every event
• ✅ Per-event control — pick which jobs each event needs and how many helpers for each
• 🙋 Sign-ups at entry — riders choose jobs they can help with as they enter, or say they can't help this time
• ⏱️ Shifts with real durations — split a long job into blocks so nobody is on the gate for six hours, with each person's hours spelled out
• 🎯 Shifts built from the running order — pin a job to a ring and Horsify slices that ring's actual hours for you
• ⚠️ Conflict detection that understands riding — flags people rostered over a ride, and people rostered too close to one to tack up, warm up or cool down
• 🤖 Auto-fill — fills the open slots in one click, honouring who volunteered, avoiding clashes, and spreading the load
• 📣 Publish the roster — send every helper their own jobs by email, and give them a page to check
• 🔀 Three ask modes — don't ask, ask optionally, or require an answer before entry can be completed

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How the Helpers Feature Fits Together

There are four stages:

1. Your club's job list — the master list of helper jobs, edited once and reused (found under Organiser → People → Helper Tasks).
2. Per-event setup — for a specific event, you choose which jobs you need, how many of each, and whether to ask riders (found on the event's Helpers page).
3. Rostering — once the running order is published, split jobs into shifts and fill them, by hand or automatically.
4. Publishing — send the finished roster to the people on it.

The rest of this guide walks through each stage.

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Stage 1: Your Club's Job List (Helper Tasks)

How to find it

1. Log in and make sure you're acting as an organiser.
2. Open the Organiser menu in the top navigation.
3. Choose People → Helper Tasks.
4. Or go directly to /organiser/helper-tasks.

What you'll see

Your club's reusable list of on-the-day helper jobs. Horsify starts you off with a set of common equestrian jobs — Gate steward, Pencil / scribe, Timer, Gear check, Canteen / BBQ, Poo patrol, and more — so you rarely start from scratch.

If you manage more than one organisation, pick the club you're editing from the Organisation dropdown at the top.

💡 Pro Tip: This list is shared across every event your club runs. Get it right once and you'll never have to retype "Gate steward" again.

How to add a job to the list

1. Scroll to the Add a helper task section at the bottom of the page.
2. Type the job Name (for example, First aid officer).
3. Optionally enter a Default length in minutes — a rough idea of how long the job takes. This is used later to help spot clashes.
4. Click Add task.

How to edit or remove a job

Each job in the list has three controls on the right:

• Active / Inactive — click to toggle whether the job is available to events. Making a job inactive hides it from new event setup without deleting it.
• Edit — open the job to change its name, add a description, or set a default length.
• Delete — remove the job from your list entirely.

⚠️ Important: If a job is already being used by one of your events, Horsify won't let you delete it from the master list — remove it from the event first.

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Stage 2: Setting Up Helpers for an Event

How to find it

1. Open the event you're working on and go to its Scheduling page (/organiser/events/{event}/scheduling).
2. In the header, click the Helpers button.

This opens the event's Helpers page, which has two tabs: Jobs & sign-ups and Roster & publish.

Step 1: Choose whether to ask riders

Under Ask entrants to help, pick one of three modes:

• Don't ask — riders won't see a helpers step for this event.
• Ask (optional) — riders see the helpers step but can skip it.
• Require an answer — riders must either pick a job or say they can't help before they can finish their entry.

💡 Pro Tip: "Ask (optional)" is a friendly default — it invites help without turning anyone away. Use "Require an answer" for events that genuinely can't run without volunteers.

Step 2: Add the jobs this event needs

In Jobs needed for this event:

1. Under Add a job, choose a job from your club's list, or choose ＋ Something else… to add a one-off job just for this event.
2. If you chose "Something else", type the Job name.
3. Set # needed — how many people you need for that job.
4. Click Add job.

Each job you add appears in the list with its count (for example, 3 × Gate steward). Riders will pick from these when they enter.

Step 3 (optional): Add days and time windows

Click Edit on any job to give it more detail:

• # needed — change how many helpers you need.
• Day — which day of a multi-day event the job falls on.
• From / To — the start and finish time for the job.
• Notes — anything helpers should know.
• Show to riders at entry — untick to keep a job hidden while you plan it.

💡 Pro Tip: You don't have to fill in times here. Once the running order is published, Split into shifts on the Roster & publish tab does it for you from the real ring hours — and gives you shift-by-shift blocks rather than one long window. Setting a time here is still worth it for jobs that aren't tied to a ring (a 15:00–17:00 pack-up, say), because a job with no time can't be checked against anyone's rides.

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What Riders See at Entry

When an event asks for helpers, riders see a Helpers panel as they enter (in the cart, alongside their class selections). They can:

• Tick any jobs they're happy to help with, each showing its day and time window.
• Say they can't help this time with a single checkbox.
• Add a note — for example, only available after my ride.

Their choices flow straight through to your allocation board.

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Stage 3: Building the Roster

Once your running order is published, open the event's Helpers page and switch to the Roster & publish tab.

The status bar

Along the top you'll see, at a glance:

• Slots filled — how many of the roster's slots have someone on them.
• Can't do it — people rostered over one of their own rides. These stop the roster being published.
• Tight turnaround — people rostered so close to a ride that they won't realistically make it. These don't stop publishing.
• Roster — whether it's still a Draft, Published, or Published · changes pending (you've moved things since you last sent it out).

Underneath is the buffer setting: how many minutes a rider needs either side of a ride before they can be doing a job. The default is 45 minutes, which covers tacking up, warming up, cooling down and getting between the ring and the job. Lower it for a small one-ring event, raise it if your grounds are spread out.

Splitting a job into shifts

A six-hour gate-steward job asking for "3 people" used to mean three people signed up for six hours each. Now you split it.

Click Split into shifts on any job, then choose:

• Cover — pick a ring from the list (Horsify offers each ring's real running hours from the published schedule, plus 30 minutes either side for set-up and pack-down), or Set the times myself….
• Shift length — one, one and a half, two, three or four hours, or a single shift for the whole window.
• People per shift — how many bodies each block needs.

Horsify slices the window into contiguous shifts. A leftover tail that's too short to be a real shift is folded into the one before it, so nobody gets rostered for the last 11 minutes of the day.

Each shift then appears as its own row with its window, its length, its own filled/needed count, and its own list of people. Everyone on the roster can now see exactly how long they're on for.

⚠️ Splitting replaces any existing shifts on that job and clears everyone currently rostered to it. Split first, then fill.

Filling the slots

Use the + Add helper… dropdown on any shift. Everyone who entered the event is listed, with people who volunteered for that specific job first and marked with a ⭐, then everyone else ordered by how few jobs they already have. Each name shows how many jobs and how many rides they have, so you can spread the work sensibly.

To fill everything at once, click Auto-fill. It shows you a preview before it writes anything. The rules it follows:

• People who volunteered for a job get that job first.
• Nobody who said "I can't help this time" is used.
• Nobody is rostered over one of their own rides, or onto two jobs at the same time.
• The hardest-to-fill slots go first, so the flexible helpers don't get used up on the easy ones.
• Work is spread — someone already down for two jobs won't be picked over someone with none.

You can cap max jobs per person, and untick Allow tight turnarounds to make it refuse anyone who'd be cutting it fine around a ride. Review the preview, then Apply. Anything it couldn't fill is listed with the reason.

Conflict warnings

Names on the roster are colour-coded:

• Red with a triangle — they can't do it. Either the job runs over one of their rides, or they're already on another job at the same time. The detail underneath spells out which.
• Amber with a clock — a tight turnaround. For example, "Only 20 min before their ride at 12:20 in ring 1 — needs 45".
• Plain — no problem found.

Horsify works out ride times properly: it takes the actual interval the running order was built with, and merges back-to-back rides into a single block. Five 8-minute rides in a row is a 40-minute commitment, and the roster treats it as one.

You can still make an assignment that's flagged — the warnings guide you, they don't block you. To remove someone, click the × next to their name.

⚠️ Important: If no running order has been published yet, clashes can't be checked and jobs can't be pinned to a ring's real hours. Publish the running order first for the full picture.

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Stage 4: Publishing the Roster

When you're happy, click Publish roster.

Horsify checks it first. It won't publish if:

• Anyone is rostered over their own ride, or
• Any slot is still unfilled.

It warns but publishes if there are tight turnarounds, or jobs with no day/time set (those helpers won't be told when to turn up). If you genuinely want to go ahead anyway, the button becomes Publish anyway.

Publishing does three things:

1. Marks every proposed assignment as confirmed.
2. Emails each helper their own jobs only — job name, day, time, how long, and which ring.
3. Opens their personal page at My helper jobs, linked from the email, so they can check it any time.

Anyone who's already declined a job is left alone and isn't re-confirmed.

If you change the roster afterwards, the status bar shows Published · changes pending. Hit Re-publish to send the updated jobs out again.

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Best Practices

✅ Build your job list first. Set up your club's reusable Helper Tasks once, before you configure any events. Every event then becomes a few clicks.

✅ Publish the running order before you roster. Everything good happens after that: real ring hours to split against, real ride times to check against, and a roster you can trust.

✅ Split long jobs into shifts. Two-hour blocks are the sweet spot for most club events. People volunteer far more readily for "9–11" than for "the day".

✅ Run Auto-fill first, then adjust. It gets the bulk right in one click and shows you what it couldn't do. Hand-fixing twenty slots is a waste of your evening.

✅ Check the buffer suits your grounds. 45 minutes is right for most venues. If the canteen is a two-minute walk from the arena, drop it; if helpers are parking a paddock away, raise it.

✅ Fix the red flags before publishing. Amber is a judgement call; red means that person physically cannot be in two places at once.

✅ Use "Require an answer" sparingly. It's powerful for volunteer-dependent events, but for most events "Ask (optional)" keeps entry friendly.

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Troubleshooting Common Issues

Issue: Riders aren't seeing a helpers step

Problem: Entrants complete their entry without ever being asked to help.

Possible Causes:

• The event's mode is set to Don't ask.
• No jobs have been added, or every job is hidden (Show to riders at entry unticked).

Solutions:

1. Open the event's Helpers page and set the mode to Ask (optional) or Require an answer.
2. Make sure at least one job is added and visible to riders.

Issue: No clash warnings are appearing

Problem: You can assign anyone to any job and nothing is ever flagged.

Possible Causes:

• The jobs don't have a day and time, so there's nothing to compare. The status bar and a banner will say how many slots are affected.
• The running order is still a draft. Horsify deliberately ignores draft schedules — rostering against times that aren't live yet gives false confidence.

Solutions:

1. Use Split into shifts on those jobs to pin them to a ring's real hours, or edit the job and add a Day and From / To time.
2. Publish the event's running order (not just save it), then reopen the Roster & publish tab.

Issue: The roster won't publish

Problem: You click Publish and it comes back with a list of blockers.

Possible Causes:

• Someone is rostered over one of their own rides.
• Slots are still unfilled.

Solutions:

1. Clear the red flags — move those people to a different shift, or swap them with someone free.
2. Run Auto-fill to close the gaps, or drop the slot count on shifts you can run short-handed.
3. If you accept the situation as-is, use Publish anyway.

Issue: A helper says they didn't get their jobs

Problem: Someone on the roster never received the email.

Possible Causes:

• The roster was published with Email everyone their jobs unticked.
• Their entry has no email address on it.
• They were added after the roster was published.

Solutions:

1. Check the status bar — if it says Published · changes pending, hit Re-publish.
2. Send them the direct link to their My helper jobs page for the event.

Issue: A job won't delete from the club list

Problem: Deleting a helper task from your master list is blocked.

Solution: The job is in use by one of your events. Remove it from that event's Jobs needed list first, then delete it from the club list. You can also just mark it Inactive to hide it from future events without deleting it.

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Frequently Asked Questions

General Questions

Q: Do I have to use my club's job list, or can I add a one-off job? A: Both. Pick from your reusable list for the usual jobs, or choose ＋ Something else… on the event to add a job that only applies to that event.

Q: Can riders help with more than one job? A: Yes. At entry they can tick as many jobs as they're happy to do, and you can assign them to more than one on the board.

Q: What happens if a rider says they can't help? A: They appear in the Can't help this time list on the allocation board, so you know not to chase them for this event.

Q: Does assigning a helper notify the rider? A: Not while you're building the roster — that's deliberate, so you can move people around freely. Nobody is told anything until you click Publish roster, at which point every helper is emailed their own jobs.

Rostering Questions

Q: Can I still roster someone even though they have a clash? A: Yes. The warnings are advice, not a block — sometimes a rider is happy to help around their ride. But a red flag will stop the roster publishing until you either fix it or choose Publish anyway.

Q: The board says clashes can't be checked. Why? A: There's no published running order yet. A saved draft doesn't count — Horsify won't check a roster against times that aren't live. Publish the running order and reopen the tab.

Q: How does Horsify know a job clashes with a ride? A: It reads the published running order to work out when each rider is actually in the ring — using the real interval the schedule was built with, and merging back-to-back rides into one block. It then compares that against the shift's window, plus the buffer either side, and flags anything that overlaps or is too tight.

Q: What's the difference between a red flag and an amber one? A: Red means they can't do it — the job runs over one of their rides, or they're already on another job at that time. Amber means they could, but it's tight: there's less than the buffer between the job and a ride.

Q: Can one person do two shifts of the same job? A: Yes, as long as the shifts don't overlap. They can't be added to the same shift twice.

Q: What happens to the people already rostered if I split a job into shifts? A: They're cleared, because the slots they were on no longer exist. Split first, then fill — or use Auto-fill afterwards to put everyone back in one click.

Q: Does Auto-fill only use people who volunteered? A: No. It prefers them strongly, but it will draft anyone who entered and didn't opt out — otherwise a half-empty roster stays half-empty. Volunteers are always picked before non-volunteers for the same slot.

Q: Where do helpers see their jobs? A: In the email they get when you publish, and on their own My helper jobs page for the event, which stays up to date if you re-publish.

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Related Features

• Event Workflow Guide — where scheduling and the running order fit in the event lifecycle that powers helper clash detection.
• Entry Form Templates — collect other custom information from riders at entry.
• Committee Management — manage the people who help run your club.

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Support

Need a hand setting up helpers for your event? We're here to help.

• In-app help: Click the Help link in the top navigation.
• Email: support@horsify.com.au

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Helpers turns "who's on the gate?" into a plan. Set up your list once, ask riders as they enter, and allocate with confidence.\n\n---\n\nSource: wiki/features/EVENT_HELPERS.md \nLast synced: 2026-09-07 11:50:00 UTC