> ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.helmkit.com/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # Guide Assignments > Learn how to assign guides to runs, track assignment status, and manage guide communication throughout the tour lifecycle ## What Are Guide Assignments? Guide assignments connect your independent guides to specific runs. When you assign a guide to a run, you're letting them know about an upcoming tour and giving them the information they need to prepare. By default, the guide receives a notification, reviews the details, and decides whether to accept or decline based on their availability. This system recognizes that guides are independent contractors who work with multiple agencies. You don't control their schedule—instead, you make requests, and guides respond based on their own availability and preferences. Guides can also choose to auto-accept invitations from specific agencies they trust, but that setting is always guide-controlled and only applies to that one agency. Assignments apply at the run level, meaning one guide assignment covers all the events (customer bookings) within that departure. Once a guide confirms an assignment—either by accepting it manually or by enabling auto-accept for your agency—they gain access to all the run details they need: passenger information, pickup locations, special requests, and any operational notes you've added. The assignment also syncs to their personal calendar so they can see the tour alongside their other commitments. ## How Guide Assignment Works The assignment workflow follows a natural progression from initial request through tour completion. Select a guide from your roster and create the assignment. The guide receives an immediate notification with tour details: experience type, date, location, passenger count, and any special notes you included. If the guide has turned on auto-accept for your agency, Helm confirms the assignment immediately. If not, the guide receives the normal accept or decline flow. The guide receives the notification and reviews the tour details. They see who made the assignment and can access a direct link to view full run information based on your privacy settings. In the normal flow, the guide accepts or declines the request. If auto-accept is enabled for your agency, Helm skips the pending step and marks the guide as confirmed immediately. The system automatically updates the assignment status based on the guide's response. You see the current state in your dashboard and can take any necessary next steps. When a guide accepts, or when an assignment is auto-accepted, the tour is automatically added to their synced calendar. They gain full access to run details and receive preparation reminders as the date approaches. After the tour happens and is marked complete, the assignment status updates automatically. This creates a record of the guide's work and closes out the assignment lifecycle. ## Creating Assignments To assign a guide to a run, select from your active roster. You can filter guides by location, skills, languages, and availability to find the right match for each tour. When you make an assignment, you can include operational notes that will be visible to the guide. Use this space to communicate special requests, accessibility needs, dietary restrictions, or other details the guide should know before accepting. These notes appear in the assignment notification and remain accessible throughout the run. You can assign multiple guides to the same run if your tours require more than one guide. Each guide receives their own assignment and notification, and they are confirmed independently based on that guide's own settings and response. The system prevents duplicate assignments—you can't assign the same guide to the same run more than once. If you need to reassign a guide after removing them, use the reinvite workflow instead. ## Auto-Accept for Trusted Agencies Guides can turn on **Auto-accept invitations** for a specific agency from the roster. This is useful when they work with that agency regularly and don't want to review every assignment one by one. When auto-accept is enabled for your agency: * New assignments skip the **Pending** state and go straight to **Accepted** * The guide still receives a notification, but it is informational rather than actionable * The assignment is added to the guide's calendar immediately * Your team sees the guide as confirmed right away * Activity history makes it clear that the assignment was auto-accepted by guide preference Auto-accept is always scoped to a single agency. Turning it on for one agency does not affect invitations from any other agency. Agencies can also request this permission from the **My Guides** roster view. The guide receives a request, can approve or deny it, and can turn the setting off again later. Auto-accept only affects future assignments and reinvites from that agency. It does not retroactively confirm older pending invitations. ## Understanding Assignment Status Assignment status tells you where each guide stands in the assignment lifecycle and what action to take next. The guide has been notified but hasn't responded yet. Pending assignments remain active until the guide accepts, declines, or you remove the assignment manually. **What happens next:** Wait for the guide to respond, or remove and reassign if time is critical. The guide has committed to leading the tour. The tour is added to their calendar, they have full access to run details, and they'll receive preparation reminders. **What happens next:** The guide prepares for the tour and shows up on the scheduled date. If the guide enabled auto-accept for your agency, the UI may label this as **Confirmed automatically** to show that the guide's setting accepted it instantly. The guide declined the assignment. They no longer receive notifications about the run and are removed from the active assignment list. **What happens next:** Find another guide for that run or try reassigning. You manually removed the guide assignment. This happens when you assigned the wrong guide, the tour is canceled, or you need to reassign for any reason. **What happens next:** The guide stops receiving notifications. You can create a new assignment if needed. ## Notifications and Guide Communication Guides receive notifications at key points in the assignment lifecycle to keep them informed and help them prepare. The first notification arrives immediately when you create the assignment—typically within one minute. This notification includes everything the guide needs to make a decision: * Event name and date * Tour type and experience details * Passenger count * Who made the assignment * Any operational notes you included * Direct link to view full run details In the normal flow, guides use this information to decide whether to accept or decline based on their availability and skills. If auto-accept is enabled for your agency, this first notification becomes informational: the assignment is already confirmed and there is no accept or decline prompt. To learn more about notifications, see the [Notifications](/features/notifications) documentation. Once a guide accepts, or once an assignment is auto-accepted, they begin receiving reminders as the tour approaches. These reminders follow your organization's configured intervals—commonly 7 days, 3 days, and 1 day before the tour. Each reminder shows what the guide needs to do to prepare and includes progress indicators if you're using guide checklists. This helps guides stay on top of preparation tasks without constant manual follow-up. If you change important details about the run—like the date, time, or location—assigned guides receive immediate notifications about the changes. This keeps them informed even if the tour is still weeks away. Change alerts appear as soon as you save the run updates, ensuring guides always have current information. When you remove a guide assignment, they receive a notification letting them know they're no longer responsible for that tour. This cancels all future reminders and removes the tour from their calendar if they had accepted. This notification provides closure and prevents confusion about whether the guide is still expected to lead the tour. Assignment notifications are automatically batched via Knock. The first notification in a batch is delivered immediately so guides can respond quickly. Subsequent notifications within a 5-minute window are grouped together. The window extends when new assignments arrive, up to a maximum of 20 minutes, after which the batch is flushed as a single consolidated notification. ## Reassigning and Reinviting Guides Sometimes you need to bring a guide back after removing their assignment, or you want to try assigning the same guide again after they declined. The reinvite workflow handles these situations. To reinvite a guide, you create a new assignment for the same guide who previously had an assignment on that run. The system tracks this as a reinvite rather than a new assignment, which helps you understand the assignment history when reviewing activity logs. Reinvites work the same way as initial assignments: the guide receives a notification, reviews the details, and accepts or declines. If auto-accept is already enabled for your agency, the reinvite is confirmed immediately instead. The difference is that reinvites are marked specially in the activity history so you can see this isn't the first time you've tried to assign this guide to this run. You cannot reinvite a guide who currently has an active or pending assignment on the run. You must first remove their existing assignment, then create the reinvite. ## Removing Guide Assignments You can remove a guide assignment at any time, regardless of its current status. This might happen because you assigned the wrong guide, the guide is no longer available, the tour is canceled, or you need to reorganize your assignments. When you remove an assignment, the guide receives an immediate notification and all pending reminders are canceled. If the guide had accepted the assignment and it was synced to their calendar, the calendar event is removed from their personal calendar. The removal action is recorded in the activity history with a timestamp and your name, creating an audit trail of why and when the assignment was removed. The guide loses access to detailed run information at this point, though they may still see basic information depending on your agency's privacy settings. Removing an assignment doesn't affect other guides assigned to the same run. Each assignment is independent, so you can remove one guide while others remain assigned. ## Calendar Integration When guides connect their Google Calendar to Helm, accepted assignments automatically sync to their personal calendar. This includes assignments the guide accepted manually and assignments that were auto-accepted for a trusted agency. This keeps their Helm tours visible alongside all their other commitments. Helm creates a calendar event when a guide accepts an assignment, or immediately when auto-accept confirms it. The event includes tour name, date and time, location, and basic run details. If you change run details after acceptance—like moving the date or updating the time—the calendar event updates automatically. Calendar events created by Helm are read-only. Guides can view them but can't edit or delete them from their calendar app. Changes must be made in Helm to keep everything synchronized. Responding to Google Calendar invitations (accept/decline/maybe) doesn't affect assignment status in Helm. The calendar event is just a visual reminder. When manual confirmation is required, guides must respond to assignments in Helm directly. When you remove a guide assignment or the guide declines, Helm deletes the calendar event automatically. For setup instructions, privacy details, and troubleshooting, see the [Google Calendar integration guide](/features/integrations/google-calendar). ## Assignment Activity and Audit Trail Every action related to guide assignments is tracked in the activity history, creating a complete audit trail of who did what and when. | Action Type | Who Sees It | When It Appears | | -------------------- | -------------------------------- | ----------------------------------------------------------- | | Assignment created | All team members with run access | Immediately when you assign a guide | | Assignment reinvited | All team members with run access | When you reassign a guide who was previously assigned | | Guide accepts | All team members with run access | When the guide responds positively | | Guide auto-accepted | All team members with run access | When a guide preference confirms the assignment immediately | | Guide declines | All team members with run access | When the guide responds negatively | | Assignment canceled | All team members with run access | When you manually remove the assignment | | Status override | All team members with run access | When you or another admin manually changes the status | Helm also records sent guide-facing communications in the same timeline. That includes invitations, reminders, follow-ups, cancellations, and run update notifications once they are sent. These entries are system-authored and may appear under **Helm** rather than a teammate's name. When the same communication is delivered through multiple channels or to several guides in one batch, the timeline may collapse those deliveries into a single summary line instead of showing every outbound message as a separate row. All of this information appears in the chronological timeline on the run detail page. You can filter the activity history to the **Staffing** category if you want to focus on guide assignments and guide communications without seeing other run updates. ## Guide Permissions and Visibility What guides can see and do with their assignments depends on whether they've accepted and on your agency's privacy settings. When a guide first receives an assignment notification, they can see basic information about the run: the tour name, date and time, location, and any notes you included with the assignment. This gives them enough information to decide whether to accept without exposing sensitive customer details. Once a guide accepts an assignment, their access expands based on your privacy settings. Most agencies allow accepted guides to see passenger names, contact information, pickup locations, and any special requests or dietary restrictions. This access lets guides prepare properly and contact passengers if needed. Guides cannot modify run details or passenger information. They have read-only access to the information they need to do their job. They can add comments to communicate with your team, but they can't change tour times, passenger counts, or other operational details. Your privacy settings control whether guides can see other guides assigned to the same run. Some agencies keep this information visible so guides know who they're working with. Other agencies restrict this view, showing each guide only their own assignment. You can configure this setting from your organization preferences. If a guide declines an assignment or you remove their assignment, they lose access to detailed run information. They may still see the run in their past activity or declined assignments list, but they can no longer view passenger details or operational notes. ## Guide Visibility and Contact Sharing Agencies can control how much information guides see about runs and passengers. This is managed through visibility levels and contact sharing settings. ### Visibility levels Guide visibility determines how much schedule and run detail a guide can see. There are four levels, from most restricted to most open: * **None** — The guide sees no availability or run information beyond their own assignments * **Free/busy** — The guide can see when they're scheduled but not the details of other runs * **Enriched** — The guide sees more context about runs, including experience names and passenger counts * **Enhanced** — The guide has full visibility into run details Agencies can request a higher visibility level from a guide. The guide receives a notification and can approve or deny the request. If approved, the new visibility level takes effect immediately. If denied, the agency is notified and the current level remains unchanged. ### Contact sharing By default, guides see the main contact's **phone number and name** for their assigned runs — not their email address. This protects customer privacy while giving guides a way to reach passengers when needed (for example, at a pickup point). Your agency can adjust contact sharing to one of three levels: * **Nothing** — Guides see no contact information * **Phone and name only** — Guides see the main contact's name and phone number (default) * **Everything** — Guides see the main contact's full details including email Configure contact sharing from **Settings → Privacy**. ## Assignments When Merging Runs When you merge multiple runs into one, guide assignments from all the source runs are preserved and transferred to the target run. This ensures you don't lose assignment information when consolidating runs. If multiple guides were assigned across the runs being merged, they all become assigned to the merged run. Each guide maintains their individual assignment status—if they had accepted in the original run, they remain accepted in the merged run. Pending assignments stay pending. Guides who had accepted assignments on the merged runs receive notifications about the merge. This lets them know the run details may have changed and gives them a chance to review the updated information. The notification includes the new run details and confirms their assignment is still active. Calendar events are updated to reflect the merged run. If a guide had the tour synced to their calendar, the calendar event updates with the merged run's details. This keeps their personal schedule accurate without requiring manual updates. All assignment activity history is preserved through the merge. You can still see when each guide was originally assigned, which run they were assigned to, and how the merge affected their assignment. This maintains a complete audit trail even as run organization changes.