Can I manually approve substitute requests?

When an adorer requests a substitute, the Substitute Finder automatically starts sending substitute invitations as the adoration date approaches.

However, there are situations where you might want to manually approve substitute requests before the Substitute Finder starts:

• If your adoration schedule is generally full (having two adorers for every hour) and you want to manually approve only those substitute requests where an adorer is truly needed.
• If you want to bypass the Substitute Finder entirely so that your adorers are not sent substitute invitations, and instead, you send a weekly digest notification listing all of the urgent substitute requests.

Enabling the Approval Workflow

Enable this feature with the Enable substitute request approval workflow setting at Admin » Settings » Substitutes.

When enabled:

• New substitute requests remain in a queued state, except for generic substitute requests, which are started automatically based on a threshold (see below).
• As usual, Administrators and Captains will be notified if they have the Substitute is requested admin notification enabled.
• No substitute invitations are sent for queued substitute requests unless they are manually started (see below).
• Outstanding substitute requests (including queued ones) are displayed on the Dashboard page and can be claimed there.

Note: If the site is in Onboarding Mode, new substitute requests remain in a queued state until started manually for testing purposes, regardless of this setting.

Auto-Start Threshold

Substitute requests that are started automatically will wait until the adoration date is close enough that an adorer can quickly respond YES or NO. This helps prevent overwhelming substitutes with invitations for dates in the distant future.

Customize this time frame with the Threshold to auto-start substitute requests field at Admin » Settings » Substitutes.

Manually Starting a Queued Substitute Request

You can view the list of queued substitute requests at Admin » Substitutes, where you can manually start them if desired.