Dienstplan vs Volunteer Sign Up Sheets

Dienstplan turns your WordPress site into a shift and duty roster that runs without a full-time coordinator. It is built for teams that rely on volunteers — fire departments, emergency medical services, first-responder and crisis-response groups, sports clubs and associations. Members open a calendar page and sign up for open shifts themselves. Coordinators see at a glance which shifts are still open, who already volunteered, and who has not yet contributed this period. Every change is recorded, so “who removed me from Saturday?” always has an answer. Everything runs on your own WordPress install. Member data, schedules and assignments stay in your database — no SaaS account, no recurring fee for the free version. Optional outbound connections (public-holiday lookup via openholidaysapi.org, product notices from wp-dienstplan.de) are documented under External services; the holiday lookup is disabled by default. What you can do Define shift types (early/late/night, driver/paramedic — whatever your team uses) and build week or month rosters Drop the roster onto any page with the [dienstplan] shortcode Show public aggregate statistics (completed shifts, hours, active helpers) with [dienstplan_statistik] — no login required, names never exposed Let members sign up for shifts and remove themselves again — coordinators see every change live, no email ping-pong Plan events like training nights, fundraisers or on-call duties with categories (per-event signup lists come with Basis) Show each member their own upcoming shifts in a dashboard widget Let members download their shifts as an ICS calendar file Why WordPress Most volunteer organisations already run a WordPress site for news and member communication. Adding the roster there means members use the account they already have, your data stays in your own database, and there is no external SaaS to vet for data protection. Free, Basis and Pro The version on WordPress.org is Free and stays free forever: one shift schedule, unlimited members, shift types and events — no artificial caps. Two optional add-ons extend the same plugin in place, with your data carrying over automatically: Basis — multiple rosters, recurring events, per-event signups and tasks, shift trading, group and weekday restrictions, automated email notifications, and a community feedback channel. For established teams that need self-service workflows. Pro — everything in Basis plus attendance statistics, a tamper-evident audit log and waiting-list promotion on full events. For organisations with reporting or audit obligations. Pricing and the full comparison are at wp-dienstplan.de. Languages Ships with English, German, Spanish, French and Italian. Source strings are English; further languages can be added via standard .po/.mo files in languages/. External services Product notices (wp-dienstplan.de) In the WordPress admin, on Dienstplan’s own screens only, the plugin may request https://www.wp-dienstplan.de/plugin/notices.json to show time-limited product information (for example a promotion). The request is a plain HTTP GET with no query parameters and no cookies from your site; no personal data, member data, license keys or site-identifying payload is transmitted. The response is cached locally (WordPress transient) for up to 12 hours. Notices are dismissible per administrator and never appear on other admin pages. This call is part of the free plugin distributed via WordPress.org. Public holidays (openholidaysapi.org) This plugin connects to the public OpenHolidays API (https://openholidaysapi.org) to retrieve official public-holiday dates for the country and (optional) region configured under Dienstplan → Settings → Holidays. The dates are stored in your own WordPress options and shown as background highlights on the calendar so members can see at a glance which days are public holidays. The feature is fully optional — clearing the holiday country in settings disables every outbound call to that API. It sends a request to https://openholidaysapi.org in three situations: GET /Countries — once, when the admin opens the holiday-settings page and the country list has not been cached yet. No payload, only an HTTP request. GET /Subdivisions?countryIsoCode=XX — once per country, when the admin selects a country in the settings UI to populate the region dropdown. The configured country code is transmitted as a query parameter. GET /PublicHolidays?countryIsoCode=XX&languageIsoCode=YY&validFrom=YYYY-01-01&validTo=YYYY-12-31[&subdivisionCode=ZZZZ] — once per year via WordPress cron, plus on demand when the admin triggers a manual refresh from the settings page. The configured country code, region code (if any), language code and requested year are sent as query parameters. In every case, only configuration values entered by the administrator are transmitted (country / region / language / year). No member names, email addresses, shift data or audit-log entries are sent. This service is provided by STÜBER SYSTEMS GmbH as an Open Data project: terms of use, privacy policy. Project documentation and the data-source overview are available at https://www.openholidaysapi.org. Privacy Dienstplan is built so that all member-related data — names, email addresses (from the WordPress user account), shift assignments, signup history, audit-log entries — stays exclusively in your own WordPress database. The free plugin’s only outbound HTTP requests are the calls documented in External services above (product notices from wp-dienstplan.de and, if enabled, OpenHolidays). Neither call transmits member or personal data. If you use the optional Basis or Pro add-on The commercial add-on contacts a separate license server at lizenz.wp-dienstplan.de for license activation and a daily license-status check. The data transmitted is limited to the license key, your site URL, and a status flag — no member data, no shift data and no email addresses are sent. License-server activity is logged with industry-standard webserver logs (IP, timestamp, user agent) for fraud prevention; the privacy policy at wp-dienstplan.de documents this in detail. The license server is not active in the free plugin distributed via WordPress.org. Cookies and trackers Dienstplan sets no cookies of its own and uses no third-party trackers. The plugin relies on WordPress’s standard authentication cookies for member login and on localStorage for remembering the last selected roster on multi-roster pages.

IMPORTANT!! This wordpress.org version is NO LONGER SUPPORTED! The wordpress.org SVN repo was corrupted in February 2025, and I was locked out from releasing updates for more than 6 months. I have moved the plugin, which remains free, to my own server, as well as making it publicly available on GitHub, and am using my own updater system for automatic updates. It’s much easier to maintain and update on my own server using GitHub than it is with the wordpress.org SVN system. Please visit the following link for more info and to download the latest stable version. https://stephensherrardplugins.com/plugins/pta-volunteer-sign-up-sheets/ PLEASE DO NOT USE THE SUPPORT FORUM FOR FEATURE REQUESTS!! You may submit new features here: https://stephensherrardplugins.com/support/forum/feature-requests/pta-volunteer-sign-up-sheet-feature-requests/ PLEASE READ THE DOCUMENTATION BEFORE POSTING SUPPORT REQUESTS Read the documentation here: https://stephensherrardplugins.com/docs/pta-volunteer-sign-up-sheets-documentation/ An alternative to sites like Signup Genius for your events, this plugin lets you keep your signup sheets on your own site. Easily create and manage sign up sheets for your school, organization, business, or anything else where people need to sign up. Features: Version 5.0 add a new Validation option to validate signups via an email code, and to validate a user so that they can view and clear their signups without having to login to a WordPress user account. A validation form is also provided to allow validation at any time. See the documentation for more information. Version 4.6 adds HTML format emails, as well as per sheet options for recipients of signup confirmation and clear emails, along with a mobile CSS option to collapse the tables to a single column format for smaller screens, and many other new features and settings. Version 3.6 adds the ability to Reschedule a sheet to new date and times, copy a sheet with new dates and times, or create multiple copies of a sheet at specified day intervals. These new functions allow optionally copying the signups, and have a new email template to notify those signups of the new dates and times. User Signups List block, or [pta_user_signups] shortcode, allows you to show a list of the current validated/logged-in user’s signups on any page (with clear links, if allowed). Integrates with the GDPR privacy functions of WordPress 4.9.6. Extensive hooks and filters that make it easy to extend or modify functionality Supports the calendar display extension: https://stephensherrardplugins.com/plugins/pta-volunteer-sign-up-sheets-calendar-display/ Create custom fields that can be used for sheets, tasks, or signup forms, with the Custom Fields extension: https://stephensherrardplugins.com/plugins/pta-volunteer-sign-up-sheets-custom-fields/ Customize public side text and layout options with the Customizer extension: https://stephensherrardplugins.com/plugins/pta-volunteer-sign-up-sheets-customizer/ Group, or categorize, sheets/events with the Groups extension, which can also import groups from the WP Groups and BuddyPress plugins: https://stephensherrardplugins.com/plugins/pta-volunteer-sign-up-sheet-groups/ Specify any type of sheet as a “No Signup Event”. This allows you to create non-volunteer events for display only (no signup links or available spots will be shown). You can still create tasks/items with dates, start and end times for these sheets, which could be useful for showing the schedule/agenda for an event, but you won’t be able to specify quantity or other normal task options. This is useful for a combination volunteer sign-up and event calendar type of list/display, especially when used with the Calendar Display extension. Signups are shown on the Admin side using jQuery DataTables for easy sorting/filtering/searching, showing/hiding columns, and organizing your signup data for quick and easy export to Excel, CSV, PDF, or Print. You can optionally enter a description for each task (in addition to the main content area for the whole sheet) that will be shown above the task signup table for each task (when not empty) The ability to allow duplicate signups on a per task basis, changing the label for the item details form field on a per task/item basis, as well as allowing volunteers to specify quantities on a per task/item basis. Easily create volunteer sign-up sheets with multiple tasks/items for each Supports Single, Recurring, Ongoing, or Multi-Day Events All Sheets can be hidden from the public (visible only to logged in users) No volunteer contact info is shown to the public (emails and phone are always hidden). Default public view shows only first name and last name for filled spots, but you can optionally show the full name, and there is also an option to simply show “Filled” for filled spots. Hidden spambot field helps prevent automatic spambot form submissions Up to 2 automatic reminder emails can be set up at individually specified intervals for each sheet (e.g., 7 days and 1 day before event) Block/Widget to show upcoming events that need volunteers in page sidebars Individual sheets can be set to hidden until you are ready to have people sign up (useful for testing individual sheets) Test Mode for entire volunteer system, which displays a message of your choosing to the public while you test the system “manage_signup_sheets” capability so you can set up other users who can create and manage sign-up sheets without giving them full admin level access. Integration with the PTA Member Directory & Contact Form plugin to quickly specify contacts for each sign-up sheet, linked to the contact form with the proper recipient already selected. https://wordpress.org/plugins/pta-member-directory/ WordPress Multisite compatibility More Details: With this plugin you can define four different types of events: Single, Recurring, Multi-Day, or Ongoing events. Single events are for events that take place on just a single date. Recurring events are events that happen more than once (such as a weekly function), but have the same needs for each date. Multi-Day events are events that are spread across more than one day, but have different needs for each day. Ongoing events do not have any dates associated with them, but are for committees or helpers that are needed on an ongoing basis. For each of these types of events, you can create as many tasks or items as needed. For each of these tasks/items, you can specify how many items or people are needed, a description, a start and end time, the date (for multi-day events), and whether or not item details are needed (for example, if you want the volunteer to enter the type of dish they are bringing for a luncheon), and optionally enable quantities. The order of tasks/items can easily be sorted by drag and drop. Sheets can also be specified as a “No Sign Up” event, which can be useful for general organization events and meetings, especially when used in conjunction with the Calendar Display extension: https://stephensherrardplugins.com/plugins/pta-volunteer-sign-up-sheets-calendar-display Each sign-up sheet can be set to visible or hidden, so that you can create sign-up sheets ahead of time, but only make them visible to the public when you are ready for them to start signing up. There is also a test mode which will only show sign-up sheets on the public side to admin users or those who you give the “manage_signup_sheets” capability. Everyone else will see a message of your choosing while you are in test mode. When not in test mode, admins and users with the “manage_signup_sheets” capability can still view hidden sheets on the public side (for testing those sheets without putting the whole system into test mode). In the settings, you can choose to require that users be logged in, or validated (version 5.0), to view and/or sign-up for any volunteer sign-up sheets, and pick the message they will see if they are not logged in. Even if you keep the sheets open to the public, you can choose which personal info to show, or simply show “Filled” for filled slots. There is also a hidden spambot field to prevent signup form submission from spambots. If a user is logged in when they sign up, the system will keep track of the user ID, and on the main volunteer sign-ups page, they will also see a list of items/tasks that they have signed up for, and it will give them a link to clear each sign up if they need to cancel or reschedule. If they are not logged in when they sign up, but they use the same email as a registered user, that sign-up will be linked to that user’s account. You can also use the shortcode [pta_user_signups] to show the list of the current user’s signups on any page (along with clear links, if allowed). The Validation system added in version 5.0 now allows a way to validate signups and users via email, without forcing them to have WordPress user accounts. Validated users can view their signups, and can clear their signups (if enabled). You can also require that signups be validated first if the user signing up is not current validated or signed in to a user account. Unvalidated signups will be automatically deleted after a set amount of time that you can define. Admin users can add/edit signups from the View Signups page in the admin dashboard, or they can use the “live search” option on the front end sign up form to search for volunteers in either the plugin’s signups table, the WordPress users table, or both. If the admin then selects a volunteer, they can sign up that volunteer, and the signup will be assigned to that user’s account (if your volunteers have user accounts). Use the Sign Up Sheets block, or the [pta_sign_up_sheet] shortcode, for a main sign-up sheet page that will show a list of all active (and non-hidden) sign-up sheets, showing the number of open volunteer slots with links to view each individual sheet. Individual sheets have links next to each open task/item for signing up. When signing up, if the user is already validated or logged in, their name and contact info will be pre-filled in the sign-up page form if that info exists in the user’s meta data or validation cookie. View the documentation for a full list of block/shortcode parameters. There is an Upcoming Event block, and sidebar widget, to show upcoming volunteer events and how many spots still need to be filled for each, linked to each individual sign-up sheet. You can choose whether to show Ongoing type events in the widget, and if they should be at the top or bottom of the list (since they don’t have dates associated with them). Admin users can view sign-ups for each sheet, and add, edit, or clear any spots with a simple link. Each sheet can also be exported to Excel, CSV, PDF, or Print formats. Admin side signups are displayed using the jQuery DataTables plugin, which allows sorting, filtering, searching, and showing/hiding columns, so you can arrange the data anyway you want before exporting or printing. Committee/Event contact info can be entered for each sheet, or, if you are using the PTA Member Directory plugin, you can select one of the positions from the directory as the contact. When a user signs up, a confirmation email is sent to the user as well as a notification email to the contacts for that event (can be optionally disabled). Automatic Email reminders can be set for each sign-up sheet. You can specify the number of days before the event to send the reminder emails, and there can be two sets of reminders for each sheet (for example, first reminder can be sent 7 days before the event, and the second reminder can be sent the day before the event). You can set an hourly limit for reminder emails in case your hosting account limits the number of outgoing emails per hour. Simple to use custom email templates for all of the emails sent by the plugin. Admin can use an Email Volunteers form page to quickly send an email to all volunteers for a specific sheet, or to all volunteers. Sheets and tasks/signups can be shown via tables, or via table-style divs. CSS can be optionally disabled so that you can more easily style the displays the way you wish. The Customizer Extension has extensive styling options that also appear in the WordPress Customizer panel, plus it allows you to create custom layout templates that can be assigned on a per sheet basis. https://stephensherrardplugins.com/plugins/pta-volunteer-sign-up-sheets-customizer/ Custom Fields can be added to sheets, tasks, or sign-up forms (for collecting additional info from volunteers at signup, or displaying addition info for sheets/tasks, such as Location) via the Custom Fields extension: https://stephensherrardplugins.com/plugins/pta-volunteer-sign-up-sheets-custom-fields/ Text displayed on the public side, such as columns headers, can be modified, along with additional layout options, and custom layout templates, with the Customizer extension: https://stephensherrardplugins.com/plugins/pta-volunteer-sign-up-sheets-customizer/ Much more! Read the documentation for all the current features. Available Extensions: Volunteer Sign Up Sheets Waitlists – Never turn away willing volunteers again. Automatically manage waitlists when tasks fill up and automatically sign-up or notify people when spots open. Perfect for classes, events, and any sign-up sheet where demand exceeds capacity. Volunteer Sign Up Sheets Customizer – Edit all public facing text displays. Customize the styling of sheet/task list tables. Create custom Layout Templates that can be assigned on a per sheet basis, to display only the columns you want in the order that you want them. Create custom emails for any email type that can be assigned on a per sheet basis, and much more! Volunteer Sign Up Sheets Custom Fields – Create custom fields that can be used to display additional info for sheets and/or tasks, and can also be used to collect (and optionally display) additional information from users when they sign up for a task/item. Volunteer Sign Up Sheets Calendar Display – Display your events and signups in one or more custom calendars, with a variety of display options. Volunteer Sign Up Sheets Groups – Organize your sign-up sheets by Groups, or Categories. Can also import groups from BuddyPress and the WordPress Groups extension. Volunteer Sign Up Sheets Mailchimp – Connects to your Mailchimp mailing list and adds a checkbox to the sign-up form where they can opt-in/opt-out of your mailing list. Volunteer Sign Up Sheets Automated and Conditional Emails – Allows you to set up triggers and conditions to automatically send out emails to predefined lists. Can be used for things like a weekly summary of upcoming events. Can also be used to replace most of the built-in emails with custom HTML formatted emails.