VSys One: Volunteer Management Software

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Limiting the Number of Applications Submitted

VSys Live applications support limiting how many applications of a specific type can be submitted, automatically disabling the application when that limit is reached. This can be done with very simple rules or get more complex as needed.

Example 1: No more than fifty applications.

In your application's properties, check Limit how many applications of this type can be submitted and set Limit to 50. If you don't add any VSys Live max count rules, VSys Live will count all applications ever submitted of this type which have a Status of Approved or Pending. When that count hits fifty, no more applications will be accepted (see "continuing access" below), and anyone loading that application via VSys Live will see the message you set under Too many applications.

Since we haven't set any max count rules, applications that have been Rejected, Ignored or marked as Duplicate don't count at all towards our limit.

Example 2: Rolling counts

You want to onboard 250 volunteers this season, and you know that you accept - on average - 50% of those that apply. If we set a limit of 250 applications, VSys Live would stop at 250 and when you accept/reject these applications, you'll be left with an average of 125 volunteers, so that's not going to work. Not only that, next year when you re-use the same application, VSys Live won't accept any new applicants since the limit was already reached. To make this work we're going to define two max count rules.

Rule 1: Approved applications

Here we're looking at only Approved applications, and only for the current season. Note that Weight is 1.

Rule 2: Pending applications

Now we're looking at applications during the same time period, but only those with a status of Pending. More importantly, we've set the Weight to 0.5, meaning that these applications count as 1/2 of an Approved application.

To see how this works, let's look at a few possibilities:

You may want to tweak the math as you accept applications each year: you know that statistically you accept 50%, but if this year's applicants are all very strong and you're taking 65% of them, change the Weight for Pending applications to 0.65.

Additional Options

There are a lot of filters and options available here - probably more than you'll reasonably use - but they provide flexibility in those cases where it's needed. In each rule, the number of applications that meet the criteria is multiplied by the Weight.

Minimum date, Maximum date

The earliest and latest dates of applications to look at when calculating how many have been submitted. You can use relative dates here.

New/existing people

Filter whether this rule applies only to new people (ones created in VSys by this application), existing people, or (no filter).

Statuses

Statuses of the applications themselves. Keep in mind that when you change an application's Status it changes how (or if) it counts in these rules.

Approval statuses, Requested departments, Requested sites, Application handlers

(normal usage)

Weight

Determines how much applications meeting these rules count toward the total. A Weight of 0 causes these applications to not count at all.

Overlapping rules - where a single application could fall into two or more rules - will lead to individual applications being counted more than once.

As an exercise you could use these filters to deal with a situation where:

(Or, faced with these situations, you can always give our tech support team a call!)

Continuing Access

Any volunteer who loaded the application page in VSys Live before the limit has been reached can continue to complete and submit their application even if the limit is reached or exceeded during the time they're completing that application: they're given a special "cookie" that permits a temporary bypass to the limit with certain exceptions. These are intended so that, for example, if 50 applications are permitted and 49 already submitted, all three of the people who have started but not yet completed the application aren't throwing away their work or rushing to submit the application.

These rules are only applicable to VSys Live applications with a Usage of New applicants only, Existing people only or Both existing and new people. They don't make sense for - and aren't available for - any other type of applications.

See Also

Applications Forms Setup

Application Layout Properties

Dynamic vs. Fixed Layout Applications

Data Fields vs. User Fields

Dynamic Layout Applications

Fixed Layout Applications

Attached Files

Multiple Certifications of the Same Type on an Application Form

VSys Web Application Notes

VSys Live Application Notes

Special Field Types

Requested Department

Requested Site

Notification Contact

Application Handler

Application Approval Statuses (Application Workflow)

Application Processing Rules

Application Field Visibility Rules