Author: Rolf Herbert Page 12 of 18

This December, TeamKinetic has an early Christmas present for our customers. We will be releasing one of our largest ever update with some significant improvements and extra functionality across the board. Below are the biggest changes.

Session Names
Use of “Google places” to search and create opportunity locations
Complete re-write of the opportunity apply process
Custom Open-badge awards
Lots more customisation options
Our POD system for enterprise clients
Day schedule report available for everyone
Invite new volunteers via email (for providers and admins)
New search and download options for criminal checks
All transaction emails sent via Mandrill for improved deliverability

As well as the raft of 150 or so bug fixes, minor improvements and speed gains.

We will be sending a notification to all our customers pointing you to this blog and also to encourage you to login to the beta site (using your normal login details) and give some feedback on the new features.

Your feedback is essential. We take your feedback seriously and it helps us understand your needs and issues. You also help us spot potential bugs and operational considerations that we may not have considered for this update. We take every care to test the application before we update the code but we don’t always have a test that fully represents your exact usage, so we ask you to login to the beta site and try it out for yourself.

If you do find any issues or would like to raise some concerns, you can send feedback using any of the following ways.

Complete a support ticket in the HELP menu.
Send us an email and put in the subject line “BETA SITE”
Call us here at the office on 0161 914 5757 and press option 1 and talk to Support Team.
If you have not done it yet, join our Facebook ADMIN group and send us a message.
Send us a Tweet telling us what you think of the new features.

Named Sessions

When creating or editing opportunities you are now able to name sessions. This is great if you have an opportunity that might have sessions on at the same time, say water stations along a marathon route. Using this new feature you could have 5 sessions within the one opportunity, all at the same time but identify them as, Station 1 – at 5Km, Station 2 – at 15 Km and so on.

New and Improved Search

Many of you will have already tried out the new search at various points along its beta testing. We have been able to incorporate much of your suggestions and it should now be much easier for volunteers to find opportunities.

You can now enter a place name in the location field and not just a postcode, this lookup is powered by Google Places which have over 2 million defined areas and places. This is a great improvement as its now possible to perform a search like; show me opps within 2 miles of Liverpool, or Bristol University and so on.

There are extra filters like accessible and expenses paid and the sorting algorithm has been improved. If a search is entered the results are automatically ordered by relevance and those opportunities with the search terms appearing closest together will be at the top.

The new search also prevents empty searches resulting in hundreds of unfiltered opportunities being returned. For those of you lucky enough to have hundreds of available opportunities a user will be asked to enter at least a distance or a search string in order to limit the number of search results.

New Opportunity Applying Process

The applying process for opportunities has now been improved greatly. When an opportunity is marked as APPLYING, volunteers will be able to view the opportunity and its sessions but will not be able to join any sessions. Instead, they are asked to “apply”. At this point, any pre-requisites demanded by the opportunity are completed and then they are passed to an “New Applicant list”.

The applicants for the opportunity are visible on the opportunity management page for the admins/providers. From there you can view their details and pre-requisites and decide whether to approve or deny the application.

Approved volunteers are informed and are then able to join sessions as normal. Denied volunteers are also informed but are not able to join sessions or reapply as they remain in the applicant table as unsuccessful.

Open-badge Awards

You can now create your own badge awards to give to volunteers. These are designed around the OpenBadges system and volunteers will be able to store these badges in their own external badge backpack and use them anywhere where OpenBadges are accepted.

OpenBadges are a great way to reward volunteers in a way that enables them to build a recognisable portfolio of achievements that they can use to develop their skills everywhere.

Once a badge has been ‘baked’ into their backpack they can choose where and with whom to share that achievement.

In this first iteration, you can only award badges manually using the volunteer profile. We are looking at the possibility of creating automated awards based on a number of criteria; hours, opportunities, length of service etc. We would love to hear your ideas about the kind of badges you might like to have?

You can get some help designing badges with the great online tool badge.design.

Extend The Customisation Of Your Site

We have opened up more of the system for much greater customisation by the super admins.

Using the super admin menu you are now able to customise all “registration form labels”, “help titles” and “help content” right from the SETTINGS menu.

Fancy a new front page look? Then check out the new LOOK & FEEL menu and enter your own HTML code for the front page and get a quick preview before saving and making live.

For power users, there is a CSS section where you can change the entire site style if you want. You can target home page elements, links, containers and change margins, colours and anything else you want. The custom CSS file is loaded after all defaults so you can override any existing settings.

If you would like your site to be updated but don’t have the skillset to do it, in-house, drop us a line and one of the team will get in touch to talk through your ideas and potential costs.

POD System

Enterprise clients can now choose a new type of application structure that we call PODs. This enables you to split up the administration of providers and opportunities into PODs and assign administrators to those PODs.

POD administrators only have access to the providers in their POD and the opportunities they have created.

Each POD also has an editable mini homepage that the POD admins can create to advertise their own opportunities.

It’s a great way to enable separate departments within a larger organisation some autonomy whilst keeping all your opportunities in one place for your volunteers. If you think the POD might be something you and your organisation would like to know about then get in touch with our sales team on 0161 914 5757 and they can talk you through the options.

Day Schedule Report

The day schedule report is available from the REPORTS menu and offers a quick insight into the activity on any day across all opportunities and events.

Simply pick your time period and the report will return all sessions that are happening within that period, including the volunteers on each session and stats about that session. You can also check in volunteers right from this screen which will log their hours for that session.

Its a super easy way to keep track of what’s going on over the days and weeks ahead.

Invite Volunteers via Email

Invite your existing volunteers via their email address. Just paste a list of comma separated emails or upload a CSV to send out an invite email with a link to reigster on your system. Maintains a list of all invited volunteers and lets you know if they have registered yet. Providers can also upload their own separate lists and if volunteers join via the Linking address in the email, they will automatically be linked to the provider sending the invite.

For administrators you can find it in the SETUP section of the settings menu. For providers it is in the VOLUNTEER menu.

Search and Download Expiring Criminal Checklists

Search for volunteers with expiring criminal checks and also for those criminal check applications that are overdue and download the results.

An enforced maximum validity for a criminal check has been added to your application options screen. Whenever a criminal check is added this date represents the maximum allowable time before the check expires. If an expiry date is entered which is beyond this date it will be reduced to the maximum allowable period.

This ensures that all criminal checks on the system have an expiry date and the new search page makes it easy to find expiring checks and get prepared.

All Transaction Emails Sent via Mandrill

All our transaction emails, that is emails that are sent automatically in response to an action like joining an opportunity, are now sent via Mandrill. Mandrill is one of the largest transactional email platforms, sending billions of messages a month.

This move will aid deliverability and reduce false spam alerts.

That’s the big stuff

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, so please don’t be a stranger and get in touch.

Facebook Live interactive sessions are coming soon on all these new features and more, join our ADMIN’S Group now and don’t miss out.

5 Reasons why we think volunteers are great people!

By Rolf Herbert

On 6th November 2018

In News & Views

Looking for inspiration? For many of us, it’s a big part of modern life and everyone searches for that feeling in different ways. There’s a special group of people who are often described as inspirational! People that give up their time to do better by the world, to try and make a difference where they can: volunteers.

We call these people “volunteers”. Their motivations are varied, but often selfless or at least for a goal greater than their own satisfaction and here we will discuss the 5 reasons why we think volunteers are great.

“Volunteers don’t get paid not because their acts are worthless but because they are priceless.”

As crazy as this sounds volunteers are not paid! This in itself makes them special, but it’s not because they do it for free it’s what they actually do that sets them apart. They change the lives of people because they want to and not because they are employed to. Here at TeamKinetic, we have been able to witness hundreds of thousands of logged hours from thousands of volunteers, it’s simply wonderful to see and we hope for many many more wonderful people engaging with fantastic causes.

“One of the greatest gifts you can give is your time.”

How do you value people’s time? Is it a cost replacement? Or is it more subtle than that, is it their very presence and the joy or comfort they can bring? This is not even considering the value the volunteer places on their own time. Valuing your volunteers is very difficult and fraught with pitfalls, but one thing we can all agree on without those people who give their time many services and people would be worse off.

“Don’t live for what you get, live for what you give.”

It is often quoted that real happiness comes from a sense of fulfilment. We would suggest that aspiring to freely give your time may be a way to achieve that fulfilment, to feel part of something greater than yourself is a particular human trait. Not to focus on what you get, or what you have but on what you can do for others. Volunteers epitomise this way of life, this is the reason many volunteers give so much. Don’t believe us about this? Read this and see what the research says about volunteers being happier and healthier.

“Wherever there is a human being there is an opportunity for kindness.”

We all have choices when it comes to how we choose to live our lives. We can choose to be kind, and fulfil the potential every single one of us has. I’m not suggesting every volunteer is a saint – far from it. But those who volunteer are choosing to try and be kind, to try and improve their community or cause. We salute those who make that choice.

“You may not have saved a lot of money in your life, but if you have saved a lot of heartaches for other folks, you are a pretty rich person.”

The value a volunteer provides and also extracts from their experience is difficult to quantify. The idea that saving the hearts of others is worth way more to people that any amount of money sounds crazy. But if a volunteer can help change a person outlook, improve their quality of life, share their time, wisdom and experience for the good of others, develop friendships, reduce loneliness, create opportunities for those that otherwise might not have them. These are potentially life-changing events for the person the volunteer might help.

So we say volunteers are special, and we at TeamKinetic take this time to say thank you, volunteers, for your time, your commitment and for believing that you can make a difference. We think you’re great.

Find out how TeamKinetic can work with you to recruit, manage, and retain your student volunteers.

You can find TeamKinetic on social media and listen to our podcast:

Twitter Facebook LinkedIn YouTube Instagram Podcast

Have you enjoyed using TeamKinetic? If you could leave us a review on Capterra, we’d really appreciate it! We’ll even send you a little thank you.

TeamKinetic’s 4th annual volunteer conference Day 2 – A success!

By Rolf Herbert

On 18th September 2018

In Events and Conferences, News & Views

#TKvol

On the 12th September 2018, TeamKinetic hosted their 4th annual sports volunteering conference at the Manchester metropolitan university. The aim of the second day of the conference was to make people aware of what TeamKinetic offered as a brand and what the world of volunteering has in store for the future, as well as what issues we are facing today. To give an overall better experience for the volunteer.

The attendees on the day were from a wide range of sectors which we feel helped when debating. We had the likes of the Liverpool football club foundation and Sport England from the sports industry as well as MMU and the University of Manchester from the education sector. Finally, we as also had many charities/Volunteer centres in attendance such as the Youth hostel association and The volunteers association Wales.

The day had a clear structure in terms of what was going to be to be involved. This included: Breakout sessions, Panel talks with both volunteers and industry leaders and also a lunch break which gave TeamKinetic a great chance to interview attendees and get some personal feedback on their experiences.

OPENING TALKS

After being welcomed by the TeamKinetic receptionist’s all guests were given an introduction speech and welcomed by our sales director Chris Martin who explained who was talking and what was going to happen over the course of the conference in order for the day to run smoothly.

The first speaker of the day was BBC unsung hero Denise Larrad who gave her talk on what volunteering meant to her and her good and bad volunteering experiences. Denise also very kindly brought along her award which many guests had the privilege of getting their pictures taken with.

Another ‘Big name’ for the day was Kirsten Stephenson who is head of volunteering at Sport England a national organisation with a good reputation for governing sports all over the country. She gave a very insightful talk about how cross-sector collaboration can unlock the potential of volunteering in sport and physical activity. You could sense within the audience that everything she said was getting high levels of engagement. We saw this through how much interaction we were getting through twitter whilst her session was on.

BREAKOUT SESSIONS

We then led all attendees to different breakout sessions in which they got the option of which ones they wanted to attend. The three sessions available were hosted by Chantel Scherer who spoke about using behavioural sciences to retain volunteers more effectively. This particular talk proved to be very successful as it drew the biggest crowds on the day. Claire Jones, Head of volunteering at St.Helens volunteering centre also spoke during this breakout session regarding the benefits of good support to volunteers. Again this was another one of the sessions that made for good social media traffic as many people were interested in what she had to say.

A further speaker was Mike Howlett who touched on the importance of diversifying volunteers in order to engage the wider community. I attended this session myself and all in the room were very impressed with both Mike’s industry knowledge and the points he was raising. People from the industry said after his talk: “I am definitely now more well informed about the voluntary sector than I was before”. This was very promising to hear from a TeamKinetic point of view as it is exactly what we wanted to get out of the conference.

LUNCH AND NETWORKING

Lunch followed the first breakout session of the day. It was provided by the catering staff of MMU and everyone seemed to enjoy it. During this interval, it gave people the chance to network with each other which also proved to be a good part of the day as many people from the different sectors were able to merge their ideas together and discuss the issues they faced every day to see if others could possibly have the solution.

TeamKinetic also used the break to optimise what we got out of the day. Marketing coordinator Ash interviewed many of the guests to get their thoughts on the volunteer management service that we provide and also volunteering in general. This will be good for us from a marketing perspective so we can get a greater understanding of our customers.

Speaker on the day Nick Lowden from Greater Sport said that “One thing I liked was the networking at lunch, it was good to have time to speak to other people in the industry”. Comments such as this are very positive as it also gives us things to build on for the next conference.

Potentially the most insightful part of the day was the Panel session which was led by Chris Martin with panellists; Fiona Liddell, Kristen Stephenson, Nick Lowden and Denise Larrad.

During this particular session, we allowed the floor of industry members to ask about the current pressing issues of the day and what the future holds for the volunteering. Once again the social media engagement for this part of the day was brilliant with many people using the #TKvol. Despite this perhaps the best part of the panel session was the number of questions that were being asked by the floor, it was very promising to see so many people taking a genuine interest in the answers of the panellists.

CLOSING SESSIONS

The day ended with one final breakout session, again split between three speakers; Fiona Liddell, Laura Hamilton and Chris Martin. The attendees got the choice of what session they wanted to go to and it was nice to see a good number spread out evenly across all of the sessions which just highlighted the calibre of speakers on the day. We hope that at least one of the speakers

Overall the 4th annual volunteering conference by TeamKinetic will go down as a success. We would like to thank everyone that contributed to the day as everyone played a role and we look for to seeing more people next year!

If you would like to know more about volunteer management software please do not hesitate to visit the TeamKinetic website https://teamkinetic.co.uk/

Why attend TeamKinetic’s volunteering 4th annual volunteering conference?

By Rolf Herbert

On 6th September 2018

In Events and Conferences

On the 12th September 2018, TeamKinetic will be hosting our fourth annual volunteer management conference at the Manchester Metropolitan University.

There will be a host of exciting speakers, from award-winning volunteers to key members of the sector. After three successful previous events we hope to welcome back many of our delegates, but if you have not been before, why should now?

Let us help you make the right choice.

1. NETWORKING

There will be people from right across the volunteering community at the event, meaning this is the perfect opportunity for you to break out the old business cards and get networking. The knowledge and experience available from the delegates in the room will be second to none and building that network of volunteer managers will only provide you with more help and support.

2. BE INSPIRED

We are lucky to work in a job that is never short of amazing and inspiring stories and anecdotes, and this event will bring some of these stories to life. Our speakers all have stories to share and insight to impart. Our opening speaker, Dennise Larrad the BBC Sports Personality of the Year Unsung Hero Volunteer of the year for 2017, is going to open the event sharing some of her experiences as well as what it’s like to share a stage with Tom Daley.

3. LEARN (About TeamKinetic amongst other things)

Whether you have 10, 100 or 1000 volunteers, there will be learning and opportunity to exchange ideas. Our speakers have a wealth of experience and the format of the day leaves lost of opportunity for you to question them and to dig deep into their knowledge. We also invite you to come and chat with us at TeamKinetics stand, our volunteer management software can cater to your volunteer management needs and is available at a price that might just surprise you.

4. GET A GREAT DAY OUT OF THE OFFICE!

We will fill your day with interesting people, great knowledge and insight and some thoughts for you to take back to your organisation to think about. On top of that we will put on a good buffet, so at worst you don’t go home hungry.

It would be fantastic if you could come along to this event and if you are interested you can purchase your tickets here

Jerome Pannell – Marketing Cordinator

3 Reasons why you must have volunteer management software

By Rolf Herbert

On 3rd September 2018

In News & Views

Expensive, confusing and unnecessary. These are all words that can come to mind when thinking about volunteer management software. However, what people don’t think about is the benefits that volunteer management software can bring them. Here are 3 reasons as to why these systems will actually improve your work as opposed to hinder it.

1. It makes opportunities viral

By purchasing volunteer management software it enables you to make your opportunities viral for your volunteers. The reason this is so important is that your opportunities will get far more traffic the more people you share it with. By sharing it with multiple groups of people you are also able to give yourself a wider scope of volunteers. This is one of the major benefits to volunteer management software. The more people you can get to on your opportunities, the better reputation you will have as a provider.

2. Your time will become more productive

If you are using volunteer management software within your job of managing people you will not have to worry about anyone because of the software. This will now give you more time to think about and do the other jobs that are associated with your occupation rather than worrying about what people are where and if they’re doing the correct thing. Good volunteer management software will allow you to see what everyone has done and how long they have done it for, it will also allow both volunteers and providers to leave reviews on opportunities. This will help ensure that you do not send good volunteers to bad places but also that you don’t send bad volunteers to good places as they will no longer want volunteers from you.

3. Build relationships

By using volunteer management software you could essentially turn it into or even replace a CRM system. If you are able to keep track of what opportunities people are interested in then you will be able who is best suited to what opportunities, by doing this you’ll get more enthusiastic employees because they will be passionate about what they’re doing meaning they are more likely to put in maximum effort into the opportunity. This will give you as a volunteer manager/organisation a good reputation as your volunteers will become more desirable than others.

Overall volunteer management software will make your job more efficient and manageable as well as allowing you to gain a good reputation within the industry.

If you are looking to get volunteer management software then look no further than TeamKinetic. We offer volunteer management software that works. Give us a call on 0161 914 5757, or drop us an email at info@teamkinetic.co.uk.

Top 5 Ways to conquer volunteer management

By Rolf Herbert

On 28th August 2018

In News & Views, Volunteer Management

One of the hardest things many people encounter when running events of a large scale is volunteer management. How many people do you need? What time will they have to be there? What will they all be doing? These are all questions that will stress the mind of both event organisers and volunteer managers. By having efficient volunteer management this can mean that other jobs that are involved in everyday work can be focused on rather than worrying about what people will be doing on the day. Whether you’re a volunteer manager, event organiser or even a volunteer there is most certainly something in this blog that could be of interest to you.

BE IMFORMATIVE

It is vitally important that as a volunteer manager you make it your utmost priority to ensure that all volunteers are fully aware of what they are doing and when they have to be doing it. This will minimize the number of times you’re asked questions such as the ones seen above, it will also mean that the volunteers will be more knowledgeable about what they’re doing meaning they will be more likely to do a better job which in turn will make your event better! From a personal perspective of the volunteer managers, they will now be able to focus on other key aspects of their jobs because they will have less to worry about, meaning less stress! Which, of course, is an aim of any job.

MOTIVATE THEM

In most cases, the volunteers are the first thing that people will see. If these people are smiling and happy this will give out positive energy across the day and will lead to those vital positive reviews that will make future events more successful which overall is what you want from in the volunteer management industry. In reference to volunteer motivation, there is a host of ways that this can be achieved, for example, although many volunteers are happy to give up their time for nothing a way to even further motivate them would be to offer some form of incentive e.g: free lunch. Furthermore, in the lead up to an event you could maybe send them messages like “can’t wait to see you” or “hope you’re looking forward to it”.

MAKE THEM FEEL IMPORTANT

Again, from a reputation standpoint, volunteers are the people that can massively help with word of mouth marketing (which is very cost effective because it’s totally free!) The way to make them feel important will heavily vary depending on what type of event you’re running, the amount of volunteers you have and also demographics of the volunteers. The reason for this being is that different people are interested in different things and respond to being spoken to in different ways. For example, if a team of volunteers were to be older people (50+) they are way more likely to feel important about having their name mentioned in a speech rather than a LinkedIn endorsement which would be more appealing to younger adults.

VOLUNTEER MANAGEMENT SOFTWARE

In today’s world, almost everything can be made more simple with the help of technology. Volunteer management is no exception. A volunteer management system can help you work out who is volunteering for you as well as what they did at what time and how long for. By using volunteer management systems you will be better equipt to work out who you can match to particular opportunities with the use of the database as by using this you will be able to see what certain volunteers enjoy. By using volunteer management software this should alleviate stress for you as a volunteer manager because of how much more efficient it will make your work. In relation to where to get a volunteer management system look no further than TeamKinetic who provide a software that WORKS.

MASTER THE ART OF RECRUITMENT

There is one thing that is a simply must have for volunteer managers and this is volunteers! Often what volunteer managers have trouble with is how to get these volunteers to sign up for opportunities, however, this issue is not the volunteer’s willingness to participate but it is reaching out to volunteers and recruiting new ones. The potential way around this is possibly to look for volunteers in areas that the opportunity is centred around. For example, if an event is associated with a charity then you are most likely to find quality volunteers in places such as hospices as they will already have some sort of emotional attachment to the cause.

From this article, we hope that you have been informed about volunteer management and how to be successful in doing so. If you do wish to find an easier way of managing your volunteers by using software, please visit https://teamkinetic.co.uk/

How Volunteering Has Made Great Sporting Events

By Rolf Herbert

On 22nd August 2018

In News & Views, Sport

Over the years there has been a host of the world’s greatest sporting events that have only been made possible by the volunteers who give up their time to make the events what they are. Volunteering at sports events is extra special because, more often than not, events that require volunteers are of a mass scale, this adds atmosphere to the whole volunteering experience.

The first event this blog will go into is the London 2012 Olympics which involved a massive cohort of events which in total required 70,000 volunteers. There was no shortage of thanks from the stars of the games for the volunteers that helped organise the events and you could tell that they were genuinely appreciative of them and the efforts they put in. Not only the Olympians but others also were massive fans of the way the nation had volunteered. For example, the Prime Minister at the time, David Cameron stated: “To see tens of thousands of people giving up their time to support London 2012 has been truly inspiring.” Others such as Tom Daley and Sir Chris Hoy have said the sheer number of people that came to the event made it what it was.

Furthermore, the 2018 World Cup in Russia was also heavily successful not only because of the stars of the show but the number of people who were willing to give up their time to make sure the tournament ran smoothly. There were an estimated 17,000 volunteers at the tournament with roles such as car park marshall and media assistant. “The volunteers’ faces are the first thing the fans see when they arrive,” said FIFA President Gianni Infantino, hailing the significance of the Volunteer Programme. “Their smiles are what visitors pick up on”. Statements like this from such powerful people really give significance to volunteering and makes everyone aware of just how important they are.

A further event that was made successful by the volunteers of the sport was the 2015 Rugby World Cup. The tournament had a total of around 6,000 volunteers with roles that varied from meeting and greeting to transport. The Rugby World Cup staff members collectively called their volunteers ‘The Pack’ this was presumably to make them feel as though they were more a part of the games and also important.

As shown by the prestigiousness of the events above volunteers and volunteering are both vital parts of what makes these occasions successful and enjoyable to watch. This is recognised by many which include the stars of the sports to the business minded individuals who run the events.

With the 2019 Rugby world cup fast approaching they’re looking for volunteers to help make that event great once again! If you’re interested please click the link below:

https://www.rugbyworldcup.com/volunteers

Events these days require mass volunteers and a need for precise volunteer management. Here’s how TeamKinetic have helped these events run smoothly in the past with the use of our software.

TeamKinetic’s Release Protocol

By Rolf Herbert

On 17th August 2018

In Policy and Operations, Technical Updates

I thought it was time to codify our release protocol, it has changed a bit over the years but is now pretty consistent so I thought I would share it.

We have a target of two major releases a year and two more interim releases between those. We aim to have a major release point in Q1 and then a further major release point in Q3 with an interim release point in Q2 and Q4.

Interim Releases

Interim releases usually consist of non-urgent bug fixes, small interface upgrades and corrections and not new functionality. Major release points will potentially have new functionality and new UI/UX layouts, and perhaps entirely new sections and methodology.

Interim releases will have a cut-off date for new tasks approximately 4 weeks before release date. This gives us four weeks to complete all the outstanding tasks then enter the testing phase and the subsequent iterations. A week before release we will produce some communications if we think there are changes that will impact our users or alter their workflows. We will offer all our users a chance to try out the release via our beta application. We will attempt to incorporate any minor feedback before the release date, or push back the release date by a maximum of 14 days in order to address the feedback correctly. If any major issues or feedback is received we may decide to draw back from the release, work on the new changes and rollup the interim release into the next major release.

Interim Release Schedule

Weeks 0-8

During this period we will collect and collate all bug reports and new feature requests and decide which are to be included in the interim release.
Work will begin immediately on making the required changes and updates to the beta version.

Week 8

No more new bug fixes or changes are accepted for this release (emergency bugs are handled differently and fall outside the scope of planned upgrades).

Weeks 8-10

Work continues on completing tasks and testing

Week 10

Comms are sent and customers are invited to use the beta site and feedback with their experience and questions.

Week 11

Any feedback is incorporated and tested it possible

Week 12

Any tasks that have not been possible to complete are moved to the next release
Final comms are produced if necessary and the release is scheduled for the end of the 12th week.

Major Releases

Major releases are similar but the cut off date for new functionality is quicker as it will take longer to design, build and test fully. The cut off date is increased from 4 weeks before release to 8 weeks before release. This to allow for a longer period of testing by ourselves and the customers in order to enable us to capture and act on more feedback on potentially large changes.

Major Release Schedule

Weeks 0-8

During this period we will collect and collate all bug reports and new feature requests and decide which are to be included in this release. This will usually entail at least one major change.

Week 8

No more new bug fixes or changes are accepted for this release (emergency bugs are handled differently and fall outside the scope of planned upgrades).

Weeks 8-16

Work continues on completing tasks and testing

Week 16

Comms are sent and customers are invited to use the beta site and feedback with their experience and questions.

Weeks 16-20

Any feedback is incorporated and tested it possible

Weeks 20-24

Any tasks that have not been possible to complete are moved to the next release
Final comms and support material is completed and distributed and the release is scheduled for the end of the 24th week.

Normally we would expect to add a higher volume of small changes to the interim releases and less, but more impactful changes to the major release.

This schedule can not always be followed and it may be necessary to only have one major release in a year and on occassion there are only interim releases as no major new functionality has been added.

Releases are numbered using the regular convention;
1.2.3
^ ^ ^
| | |————— Minor revisions, spelling corrections etc
| |—————– Minor function changes or additions etc
|——————- Major function changes, UX/UI changes etc

An interim release would increment the last or second digit, a major release would increment the second or first digit. At the time of writing we were on TK v1.0.1 (after a major change from our old releases it was decided to reset the version numbers to 1.0.0). Our next release is scheduled for August and will be v1.1.0.

TeamKinetic v1.1.0 Release Notes

By Rolf Herbert

On 2nd August 2018

In Application Features and Tutorials, Technical Updates

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.

Introducing TeamKinetic: Jerome Pannell – Ready for the challenge!

By Rolf Herbert

On 27th July 2018

In News & Views

Over the past few years, I have found myself volunteering for a number of things for lots of different reasons. Whether it be for my own professional development in my future career, for my passions outside of my academic life or even just for a new challenge I am always prepared to embark on new experiences.

The first time I volunteered was in 2013 for my local golf club as a youth golf coach. With golf being my main passion and playing to county level myself I always felt that I would never have got to the standard I did without my own youth golf coach. Over the years I saw youth participation in golf go downhill with only a fraction of juniors wanting to play due to the game being ‘boring’. From this, I decided to more than just coach the game but also give talks and tours around my local golf club to people of all ages in order show them that there’s much more to golf than just the sport itself.

Two years later I took on another voluntary role, becoming junior captain of South beds golf club. In this role, I regularly took part in committee meetings where discussions took place as to how it was best to create awareness for the club. I came up with a host of ideas such as; presenting at assembly’s, regular deals for new members and traditional word of mouth marketing.

Moreover, in 2015, I joined the organisation original volunteers. From this I went out to Morocco to help underprivileged children in orphanages across the capital or Marrakech, this was a very fulfilling experience that I would recommend to anyone who is looking to do something good for the world in a less conventional way.

In relation to my professional career over the last two years have consisted of two main voluntary projects/jobs that I have been working on. For instance, in the summer of 2017, I took on an unpaid role in a television production company where I was a TV researcher. I worked alongside the paid TV researchers and operations manager to help find new leads for the business which would have the aim of making them into a profit after successful meetings. I came along way personally from this experience as I was able to develop my telephone skills as well as my e-mail literacy which I view to be vital for a role in marketing and in many other professions.

Lastly, I realised very quickly from learning on my degree that marketing never stands still and trends are always changing. One form of marketing that I saw to be growing rapidly was that of social media. Therefore, I decided to set up my own Instagram page (@witb_golf) which is now closing in on 1,000 followers. I was able to learn about the tools of Instagram and what is vital in order to attract engagement.

In order to take my professional skills to the next level I decided to undertake a work placement in my penultimate year of university to enhance my employability. The opportunity arose to join TeamKinetic after a successful interview with Chris, Steve and James. I believe that from joining TeamKinetic my skills can only be enhanced as I strive to do the best possible job I can for the business which will, in turn, allow them to continue in growth. I am very eagar and excited to get started as a member of TeamKinetic as I work with their large catalogue of clients to provide them with a service that will benefit myself as much as them.

Thank you for reading.

Jerome Pannell – Marketing Co-ordinator

Jerome@teamkinetic.co.uk