We are gearing up for our Q2 release of TeamKinetic, our flagship volunteer management software, and it’s quite a biggie for an interim.
- The addition of regionally located opportunities
- Opportunities you can do at home
- A completely revamped weekly email
- The availability of our companion app on Android and iOS,
- the new function that allows volunteers to “Follow” the providers they like.
We will be sending a notification to all our customers pointing you to this blog and also to encourage you to logon to the beta site and give some feedback on the new features.
Create a volunteer from the admin menu
Admins can now register volunteers directly from their admin menu by going to VOLUNTEER MANAGEMENT > CREATE VOLUNTEER.
Create a volunteer without an email address
The admins ‘Create Volunteer’ registration page differs from the standard registration page as it allows you to create a volunteer without an email address or password. The volunteer cannot log in, so the administrator would be responsible for joining and logging hours for the volunteers account, but this negates the need to make up dummy email addresses and passwords.
If a volunteer does not have an email address, then this is shown on all pages where you can send an email to the volunteer, so you know which volunteers you will need to telephone, rather than email.
Special Requirements Status
Admins and providers can now see very easily if a volunteer requires additional support on an opportunity by the new Special Requirements icons. This helps notify the provider that they need to look at the volunteer’s details and make sure they can accommodate their individual needs.
Custom Volunteer Profile Fields
Are you fed up of using the admin notes section to record information on volunteers? Well, admins can now add custom fields to volunteers that DO NOT appear in the registration page.
This means that you can capture any information on a volunteer including:
- If they have attended an internal course
- Any additional information you capture during an induction
- If they have completed a particular process
- If they have attended an induction meeting
These custom fields are displayed in the volunteer’s profile, and you can stipulate who can see the information (volunteer, provider or just administrators)
Volunteer photos on Find Volunteers page
You can now see the volunteers photo next to their names by going to VOLUNTEER MANAGEMENT > FIND VOLUNTEERS and clicking the SEARCH button.
TeamLeaders
There is often a trusty volunteer who is on the ground and is in a much better position than the provider to help volunteers and to know which volunteers have turned up. These users can now be marked as “TeamLeaders” giving them the ability to mark whether other volunteers have attended the opportunity, which also logs the provider hours on the opportunity. You can specify the number of TeamLeaders you want per session which is independent of the number you set for volunteers.
TeamLeaders have no effect on Flexible opportunities as the checking in process is not relevant.
TeamLeaders are not currently supported on the iOS and Android apps, if you have TeamLeaders enabled users will not be prompted to try the app till TeamLeaeder functionality is included.
Following and Favourites
We have added the ability for volunteers to follow providers and opportunity categories that they like or are particularly interested in.
Once followed, whenever a new opportunity is added by their favourite providers or in their favourite categories they will receive an email with the details so they can jump in quick.
Weekly Email
The weekly email volunteers receive that summarises what’s going on in the following week has been radically overhauled. It is now far nicer to look at and includes details of any events that are going on that week, any new opportunities that have been added since the last email, and any opportunities that have sessions in the coming week. Additionally, any sessions the volunteer has joined for the upcoming week are listed.
This email goes out every Friday evening at 6:30 pm(GMT) to all those volunteers that have opted in to receiving emails and also to all those volunteers that have sessions in the coming week.
Below is an example from Queen Elizabeth Park, each email will carry the colours and branding of your site and contain your most relevant content.
You can switch the weekly email off from your super admin settings page at SETTINGS > APPLICATION OPTIONS > EVERYTHING ELSE
As always we love your feedback on these types of changes, so let us know what you think by emailing us here
Session Calendar
The session calendar now excludes sessions where the maximum number of volunteers has already been reached. In addition, any sessions in the past, that have not already been joined, do not have an active link.
This gives us a faster calendar and we prioritise sessions that are still available to join leading to a less frustrating experience for the user.
Volunteer Session Display
We’ve added a handy session view to the volunteer details page. Previously you could see the opportunities a volunteer was on and then drill down to the sessions, which was fine for most of our users.
Some users are however much more focused on sessions rather than opportunities and it was a drag having to find the opp and then the sessions. This new view available from the sessions tab on the volunteer info page lists all sessions from 6 months ago (we will be adding new searching and filtering in future releases). Any that are in the past can be quickly checked in and the hours logged. Its a great way to spot sessions where the provider has yet to log the volunteers hours.
Mobile App Prompt
We will now be giving users the chance to download our mobile companion apps from the login screen. If a volunteer accesses the login screen using an iOS or Android device they will be prompted to open the app store and download the app.
Please note that TeamLeaders are not yet supported in the mobile app.
Custom Provider Profile Questions
As for volunteers, you can now also add your own custom questions to a provider profile to store specific information you might require against each provider.
You can add these from the same place as registration custom questions in SETTINGS > CUSTOM QUESTIONS from the super admin menu.
These questions are private and not viewable or editable by the providers.
Email History
Providers can now view their email history from ACCOUNT DETAILS > EMAIL LOG. This includes emails they have sent and those they have received from the system, like opportunity joining notifications.
Admins can also see any providers email log via the providers profile page. The volunteer email log has been available since the last update.
Opportunities
More Opportunity Location Types
When creating opportunities you can now specify if the opportunity ‘covers an area’ (e.g. posting leaflets or visiting the elderly). This shows as a large circle on the map and also allows you to describe the area (e.g. North San Francisco)
You can also mark an opportunity location as ‘volunteer from home’.
Both types of new opportunity locations are available as filters, which brings us to…
New Search Filter
Volunteers can instantly filter their search results in a more user-friendly way with the addition of filters along the left side of the search results. Here you can limit the search to a particular category, opportunity type or tag etc.
Better Search Matching
We have included the ability to search for names and words with apostrophes that will match whether the apostrophe is there or not, so St David’s will match St David’s and St Davids.
Conflict Checking
Volunteers will no longer be able to join sessions that overlap in time. If they try, they will receive an alert letting them know they can’t join the session because it conflicts with an existing one.
Route Calculation
Volunteers can now calculate a route from their home location to the opportunity by car, public transport or cycle. This is accessible from the opportunity details page before they join an opportunity and from the opportunity management page location tab, if they have already joined.
Session Confirmation
Previously we only sent the session confirmation email, which consists of a summary of the sessions joined for the opportunity, the first time a user joins an opportunity per user session. This method was used to reduce the number of emails a volunteer receives immediately after joining multiple sessions. This however proved to confuse the users who were suspicious of what the screen was showing them if they did not receive a confirmation email.
The confirmation email is now sent every time they join a session regardless. We would be interested to hear your thoughts on how you think this may impact the volunteer and if you have any feedback we would love to hear it.
Reports
Day Schedule report
Have you ever come in on a Monday morning and wondered what volunteering activity is happening that week. The latest update includes a report which shows you exactly what opportunity sessions are happening that day, week, or on an opportunity or event.
The new ‘Day Schedule’ report allows you to view a list of all sessions that are taking place on a particular day (or range of days) by going to REPORTING > REPORTS & ANALYSIS then click on the OPPORTUNITIES tab and scroll to the bottom of the page.
These also contain the list of TeamLeaders currently on the session and it also allows you to flip a volunteer from a regular to TeamLeader roles.
Opportunity Tags report
You can now see how many opportunities are tagged with a specific word, and how many hours have been logged against it. To access this report go to: Reporting > Reports & Analysis > Opportunities from side menu then scroll down the page.
Orbit Summary Reports
For those of you in an Orbit network, you can now search across the entire Orbit for volunteers, providers and opportunities. You can quickly find out what Orbit member a resource belongs to, and some useful information about each resource.
This is available from its own menu entry ORBIT SUMMARY. This will only be visible for administrators of Orbit systems.
References
Complete references yourself
If you like all your volunteers to have a reference before they join any opportunities, then this update will certainly be of interest.
Admins can now complete references themselves, or they can manually send a reference form to a referee. This allows you to hold references against volunteers before they have even joined an opportunity.
We have also added the ability to re-submit a reference to the original referee.
This update contains a lot of improvements to TeamKinetic, we encourage you to try out the beta site for yourself.
We welcome your thoughts and your feedback on these changes if you wish to share them with us just drop me a quick email.
We would love to see you all at our conference this year, where we can talk about the future developments in TeamKinetic in much greater detail. If you have not claimed your free ticket yet, then head to your application or call us in the office on 0161 914 5757 and we will get you booked on.
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