This upcoming TeamKinetic 2.6.0 release contains a lot of under-the-bonnet stuff that you won’t really see but will help us support our new and existing customers better. But of course, we’ve added some lovely goodness for everyone as well. We will be working hard to bring these new features to the mobile app but as always they appear first on the web version.

So, let’s take a look at what to expect in this upcoming release…

ToDo Tasks for Administrators

As well as being able to add notes and files to a volunteer’s profile you can now add ToDo tasks. These can be assigned to any administrator, and given a due date.

Administrator dashboards show their assigned tasks with all the information needed to complete them.

We’re interested in your feedback on this new feature, how you envisage using it and what might improve it.

Improved Bulk Volunteer Adding/Removal Tool

If you ever need to add lots of volunteers to lots of sessions then the bulk add tool is perfect for this. If you haven’t seen it yet, check the SESSIONS section of your opportunity management page and hit the blue BULK ADD/REMOVE VOLUNTEERS button.

It has now been improved greatly by the addition of day and time filters for the session selector. Want to add a bunch of volunteers to every session on a Monday that is between 9 and 10 o’clock? We’ve got it covered!

Session No-Show Counters

In the log hours section when managing an opportunity you can record a no-show for a volunteer.


Recording a no-show for a volunteer will now be exposed on the volunteer profile page.


You can filter/search volunteers by the number of no-shows recorded and find those volunteers who might need a little help.

Extended Session Description

Once you’ve added your opportunities you can now edit individual sessions and add longer extended descriptions to each session to help your volunteers choose the correct session.


The volunteer will be able to see the session description on both the initial opportunity advert page and in their opportunity management area.

HTML Styles and Links in Opportunity Descriptions

This a long sought-after feature you’ll be glad to hear is now available for admins and providers. Using the familiar editor you can now spice up your opportunity descriptions with extra styles, colours and features.

Improved and Extended Managed Expenses

We’ve overhauled the managed expenses feature and added some important new functions.

Administrators can now set a per-mile rate for travel claims. When a volunteer creates a claim for travel the approximate travel distance is calculated and displayed. This same distance is shown to the administrator when managing the expense.

Additionally, we’ve added vehicle types, and set expense reasons that you can use to report and organise your expense claims.


The administrator view for expenses has been updated to include the distance calculation, what the claim is for and to indicate if the claim is more than expected for the journey.

AI Assistant for Creating Opportunity Descriptions

Do you get stuck for ideas or need some inspiration when creating your opportunity descriptions? We have a new AI assistant which, with a few keywords, can create your opportunity description for you.


It’s super easy to use and you can play with the keywords to get the right tone and content. Once you hit the use button the description will be put in the regular opportunity description box (now with those extra styles and hyperlink functionality) for you to edit and polish.

Include Volunteer Names in Bulk Emails

Create bulk emails and insert the volunteer name to personalise them. Just click the *|NAME|* replacement and it will appear in your bulk email text. This will be replaced by each volunteer’s name when the email is sent.

Flexible Opportunity Availability

We know that volunteers would like some indication of when a flexible opportunity is available, so we have added a days-of-the-week matrix.


Opportunity creators can indicate which days of the week the opportunity is generally available by checking the boxes. This matrix is included in the opportunity advert for volunteers.

Session Reminder Emails

Administrators can enable an option to send volunteers a reminder email containing their sessions for the next day.

The option is in the super admin > options > email notification section. Previously only those opportunities with custom emails were included, now all volunteers on all sessions will be reminded. The email goes out at 08:30 the day before their session.

Custom Field Improvements

Administrators can add ToolTips to custom fields that have extra information about the question to help it get completed correctly.


When searching/filtering on custom date fields you will now see the familiar date interface with from, after, between etc options. Previously it was a simple text entry where you could only match exact dates.

We have added a new NOT ANSWERED entry for custom yes/no questions so you can also quickly pull up volunteers or providers who have not yet completed this custom field.

Provider Email Improvements

You can now see, edit and resend your provider bulk emails in the same way you can for volunteer emails.


Ad-hoc emails that providers send now always have the provider’s name and contact details clearly in the email. We hope that this enables more direct communication between the provider and volunteer, saving you time and effort.

Improved Layout for Volunteer Profile

There were a few optional portions of a volunteer profile that were separated out, like emergency contact details. In some cases, these were also not editable. They have all been combined into the main volunteer personal details panel now, and can all be editable.


ID and background checks have now been combined into one section, whether you are using digital ID and background checks or manual, everything is in one place now.

The summary details strip has been tidied up and the last login information is now across both desktop and mobile.


When adding a custom award badge you can now adjust the award date so you can retrospectively award badges.


The email delivery checking has been improved to handle more of the special characters that might appear in the subject that was preventing us from being able to match the sent email.

Finally…

There are of course many smaller updates and changes, bug fixes and improvements, the most important ones I’ll list below.

All the Other Stuff

  • Accessibility improvements that help assistive tech users skip repetitive sections
  • Adjust location area on self-managed opps
  • Display the friendly custom email name to make it easier to find emails
  • Added a panel to the provider’s dashboard showing outstanding applications
  • Delete and filter roles
  • Reinstated the location details box for opportunities with no specific location
  • Added custom email for expiring background checks sent to volunteers
  • Added an option to make provider feedback on volunteers optional
  • Fixed bug where only the first selected opportunity badge was added when creating opportunities
  • Trusted provider option to use managed expenses
  • Prevented a batch/bulk email send from failing if a single email was bad
  • Added a bulk email log that can be used to recover failed bulk emails
  • Provider search filter for those with empty profiles
  • Higher contrast map pointers on all maps
  • News items are shown on the provider’s dashboard
  • Download the day schedule as a list
  • Improved font sizing on smaller screens
  • Sends an email to the volunteer when a meeting booking is altered

We encourage you to take a look around the custom email and options area as there are often new emails and options added that you might be interested in. Please get in touch if you have any questions or feedback about this version and remember you can try all this stuff out immediately using your regular admin login at https://beta.teamkinetic.co.uk.

Thank you for supporting TeamKinetic.

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