Pretty much on time, we are now entering the beta release phase for our next major release, bumping the version number up to 2.2.
So what’s coming in this release, read on to find out.
New Opportunity Creation System
We’ve been aware for a while of just how long and intimidating the opportunity creation forms were, especially for new users. There was also the issue of the ‘Quick’ opportunity type mixing together an opportunity that was quick to enter, with an opportunity that was only being used to advertise an opportunity for providers that have their own volunteer management systems.
So we have created a new system for creating opportunities that splits everything into smaller chunks, offers people an easier way to add new images, less complex location entry, and is a lot simpler to use.
For those providers that are managing their own volunteers, there is a very clear option selection card that explains what will happen. These types of opportunities will also have a much simplified management page that lets the provider know how many people have viewed the opp, clicked the more info buttons, and who those volunteers are if we know.
Better Sharing Options
If you share your opportunities via LinkWide or into the national Scottish system MILO, then you’ll notice some improvements.
Firstly you can now belong to multiple LinkWide groups, and have individual sharing settings for each group; so you can share into one group but only accept shares from another group for instance.
If you are sharing to MILO you can now add existing opportunities to MILO, previously you could only share at the point of opp creation. When an opp is shared you’ll also see all the details you need to find it in MILO
New Date Custom Question Type
We’ve added date as a custom question type for volunteers and providers, and updated the custom question search filters to match.
This opens the door for some very useful reporting and recording methods for volunteer or provider details that are not covered by our regular registration or profile details. By recording dates against volunteers and providers, you can use the filters to find out which people have dates that have expired or that are due soon by using the equals, before, after, and between date filters.
You can imagine the potential for recording and managing things like yearly training, qualifications, driving licenses and insurance etc.
Schedule Bulk Emails
Create an email and schedule it to be sent at specific times. This is a super useful addition and is great for running campaigns or for sending emails over the weekend when you don’t want to be working!
Reporting Improvements
We’ve added applicants for opportunities to the reporting page so you can see at a glance how many applicants are in each status.
We’ve audited all the reports and aligned provider, admin and summary reports so you see the same numbers everywhere!
We’ve added a new download report which has all volunteer opportunity data that can be aggregated by opportunity or session, including custom fields.
The day schedule report is now available for providers as well, of course, limited to just their opportunities.
The mapping features have been added for providers so they can locate all their opportunities and volunteers.
You can now filter and search providers based on their custom fields and also filter volunteers on their qualification names and lapse dates.
Any downloads from the volunteer or provider search page now include their custom field responses.
Opportunity Custom Badges in Search Page
If you’ve added custom badges to opportunities (and if not, why not!), your volunteers will now be able to see those badges in the search page and also filter on those badges.
Useful Hints and Tips
You’ll see when you log in that a small hints and tips area appears at the top of the page giving you some quick info about a feature. We’ll be adding to these tips continually as new features come online and you can choose to switch them off completely or hide them for 30 days if they are starting to bore you!
We hope this will introduce our customers to new features or techniques they might not be aware of.
Manage Your Account
We’ve added a new icon to the top right which allows you to manage your account, it also tells you who you are logged in as if you have multiple accounts.
From here you can also switch the hints and tips back on if you have changed your mind! There are a few other settings to help personalise your experience and we’ll be adding more, so suggestions are welcome.
New Automated Emails
We’ll now remind providers when their opportunities are close to finishing, along with a link to update the opportunity.
Volunteers will get a message wishing them all the best on their birthdays and thanking them for volunteering.
We have also added a reminder email for volunteers to log their hours for past opportunities and complete post-opp surveys and uploads if they are required.
Volunteer Inbox
A brand new message inbox for volunteers that shows all the emails and messages they have received and lets them reply directly to the sender. This should help volunteer questions about specific opportunities get through to the provider rather than using the general purpose contact us page.
Talking of the general purpose Get in Touch page; if the volunteer is logged in it will redirect them to the new inbox area above and they can select from the TO field either the organisation or any of the providers they are currently engaged with. This will reduce those misdirected messages even more.
Dashboard Improvements
We’ve added a panel for ‘Things happening today’ that shows sessions and meetings and things like that that are happening today.
Panels that are empty or not needed. For instance, if you auto-approve providers, are now hidden.
More and more tables throughout the app are now sortable in place using the icons at the top of the columns, with no page refresh required.
Improvements to Max Slot Numbers for Sessions
You can now alter the global maximum slot number per session from the sessions tab, rather than having to go to the restrictions tab.
For flexible opportunities it looks like this;
And for sessional opps, there is a little button to reveal the options, it could be quite a destructive process so we want to make sure, and it looks like this;
There are also over 120 smaller bug fixes and improvements in this release many as a direct result of support tickets and feature requests so keep them coming.
Steve also went through the new release in a few online sessions. If you missed them, you can catch up by clicking here.
Thanks everyone.
You can find TeamKinetic on social media and listen to our podcast:
3 Pingbacks