12-Aug-2026 — rights-of-way volunteer management with a group-neutral import ref #355

build 823 — commit 566b3ec

A complete rights-of-way volunteer capability in NGX: a workspace for parishes, volunteers, contacts, reports and correspondence, an editable coverage map, and a group-neutral import that sets an area's data up from two documented Excel files, joined to live ONS parish boundaries by official parish code. Nothing about any one area, and no bespoke database format, is baked into the product.

This capability is modelled on an established rights-of-way volunteer database that has been built and refined over many years. Its parish, role and assignment model, its reports and much of its workflow follow that design closely.

Full write-up, with diagrams and the file layouts: 2026-08-10-rights-of-way-volunteer-import-model

How the system works

Three layers, joined only by the official ONS parish code:

• The map polygons come live from the ONS public boundary service. They are never imported or stored, and have nothing to do with the volunteer data.
• The people (volunteers and council contacts) live in the supporter feed, keyed on email. NGX pulls them in as members through the normal supporter sync.
• The parishes, role assignments and contacts are the volunteer domain, imported from a standard Excel workbook and matched to the members by email.

Everything a volunteer operation needs is one sentence, filled in with real names and places: a person takes on a role (Local Footpath Officer, Parish Footpath Observer or Coordinator) for a parish, which sits in a rights-of-way group, an authority and a sector, and has a council you write to.

How to use it, step by step

1. Prepare two standard Excel files (an area with a legacy system converts it into these files outside the product; the product never reads a bespoke format): a People file with one row per person (Member Ref, Contact Id, First/Last name, Email, Group Code, Team Status, Volunteer Roles); and a Structure workbook of three sheets - Parishes (by ONS code), Assignments (linked to people by email) and Contacts.
2. Load the People file into the supporter feed. Uploading is additive by default, so you can build the dataset up rather than replacing it each time.
3. Sync supporters into NGX members (Member Bulk Load -> Ramblers Team Emails -> Sync supporters now).
4. Import the Structure workbook from the volunteer workspace Import tab: upload, check with a dry run and a review queue, then apply. Repeating an import updates the same records rather than duplicating them.

What's in the workspace

• Parishes, Volunteers, Contacts, Map, Reports, Email and Import tabs, all URL-backed, with search, composable filters, sortable columns and mobile card layouts.
• Role-aware assignments with effective dates, permanent or temporary cover, retained history, conflict warnings for overlapping permanent cover, and bulk actions with a preview, confirmation and audit record. Any number of Parish Footpath Observers per parish; a warning only where a role is genuinely single-holder.
• Ten reports (vacancies, cover type, coverage by authority, group and sector, role holders, volunteers without assignments, data-quality exceptions, an assignment directory with chooseable contact columns, and a GIS-friendly parish-code export), all downloadable and audited.
• Email Composer audiences generated from selected volunteers, parishes, authorities, sectors and contacts, with appointment and authority letter templates, volunteer merge fields including an assigned-parishes and a counterpart-officers table, and previous correspondence with follow-up.
• The coverage map colours and filters parishes by coverage, group, authority and sector, and an administrator can open the workspace for a parish straight from its popup.

Parity with the legacy rights-of-way system

We went through every screen of the legacy application and checked it against this workspace. NGX already covered its parish, volunteer, group, role and cover model, its vacancy, role-holder, coverage and mapping reports, its mailing audiences, its bulk reassign and its appointment letter, and in most of these it goes further (effective dates, an audit trail, an idempotent dry-run import, a data-quality report, conflict and capacity warnings, an interactive map and a real email send). This release closes the last few gaps so that nothing the legacy application does is missing:

• A Statistics tab that reproduces his Analysis and Statistics screens in one place: role coverage as permanent, temporary and vacant per role across eligible parishes; distinct role-holder counts including people holding both roles; and coverage broken down by sector and by rights-of-way group. Each table can be copied to the clipboard.
• Parishes now carry a type (parish, non-parished area or ward), editable in the parish editor, carried through the import as an optional Type column, and included in the mapping export.
• The vacancies report can count temporary cover as a vacancy, matching how the legacy web-vacancy list treated a temporary holder, and offers a one-click Copy for website that lays the vacancies out grouped under their rights-of-way group.
• Every report has a Copy button that puts the whole table on the clipboard, matching the Copy Table the legacy screens offered throughout.
• Beyond his application, a member who holds a rights-of-way assignment now gets a read-only "My volunteer information" page, reached from their profile, showing only their own parishes, roles, the officers alongside them and the council contacts.

Also in this release

• The coverage map is now standard, editable page content. An administrator sets its provider, style, height, opacity, groups, legend and position in site edit and saves them, and can open it full screen. The full-screen control is shared with the walk view, so both maps behave the same.
• Full screen now zooms automatically to the coverage on show, and site edit gains an Auto-fit to content button, so the map is always sized to its own area rather than a wide default.
• The map colours are chosen from a swatch palette rather than by dragging through raw colour values, and the same picker is used for walking-route line colours, so colour choice is consistent everywhere.
• Clicking a parish on the coverage map is now accurate and responsive, and the parish popup has been redesigned into a cleaner, more legible card.
• Adjusting the map's colours and opacity in site edit now updates the map in place rather than rebuilding it, so there is no flicker while you tune the styling.
• Editing a volunteer, parish or contact now fills the full height of the panel, with the search toolbar and list hidden while you edit, instead of a cramped scrolling box.
• Member admin now tells apart people who share a display name, showing a second line (a meaningful alias, a distinct display name, or membership number and postcode) only where the name is genuinely duplicated in the current results, alongside a new Last Updated column and a grouped, searchable filter in place of the old dropdown.
• A new Deleted members audit under Members keeps a searchable record of every removed member - who deleted them and when, with membership number, name, contact details and the external references - so a deletion can be traced.
• The Email Composer preview now fills volunteer merge fields whenever the message body uses them, so writing to a single rights-of-way contact shows the assigned-parishes and counterpart-officers tables in full rather than raw placeholders.