Category: Application Features and Tutorials Page 3 of 5

Why You Should Be Customising Your Volunteer Registration Emails

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On 24th April 2020

In Application Features and Tutorials, TeamKinetic Features, Volunteer Management

Did you know that you can customise your TeamKinetic system’s volunteer registration emails? Changing the first email your volunteers receive can be a big step in improving your volunteer management. 

How do I change the registration email?

Go to the Admin Settings Cog → Customise Emails

Find the ‘volunteer registration’ email and click ‘Edit’. 

You can now edit the default text and style it accordingly. When you click on the blue buttons on the right, a placeholder will be added to your text, and when sent, that placeholder will be replaced with the appropriate text; in this case you can use placeholders for your organisation name, organisation contact number, the volunteers email address, and a login link for the volunteer to follow.

What changes should I make?

  • That first email after registration should layout the next steps you want the volunteer to take. For example, this might be to upload a photo and a piece of ID. You could also direct them to the Resources & Help, where all the documents in your document hub are available, if your volunteers require extra information after registering.

 

You can alter options regarding volunteer photo/ID uploads via the Admin Settings Cog → TeamKinetic Options → Everything Else.

Volunteers can easily access these things through the left-hand-side menu on their dashboard.

They should go to the underlined tabs to upload a picture, ID, and view the document hub (in that order).

 

  • You can also add links to various areas of the system for easy access and attach files to the email. For example, you could share the link to take them straight to a search for COVID-19 related opportunities. This will help highlight ways volunteers can help their local communities.
    You can find your shareable link to all COVID-19 opportunities on your admin homepage: 
  • If necessary, make sure to tell new volunteer about inductions, DBS and ID checks when they first join to allow them to get started with you as soon as possible.  As an admin, you can keep track of DBS checks via Volunteer Management → Criminal Checks as well as visiting a volunteer’s profile directly via Volunteer Management → Search Volunteers. 

  • You could also customise the ‘joined opp’ email that is sent when a volunteer joins their first opportunity to let them know what you want them to do next. Perhaps explaining the keywords used on the site, such as sessions, the different opportunity types, and how to log hours. 

What else can I do to get volunteers started?

  • Switching on text messages is another great way to keep in contact with your volunteers. Text messaging can be switched on by going to the Admin Settings Cog → TeamKinetic Options → Notifications → Switch on Text Messaging. 
  • Building your Document Hub can also be highly beneficial to your volunteers. You can add documents, links and text for your volunteers and providers, e.g. a code of conduct or training manual for new volunteers.
    To access the document hub, go to the Admin Settings Cog → Document Hub 

Want more TeamKinetic tips?

Subscribe to our blog for more like this as well as other pieces relevant to volunteering and volunteer management. You can also follow us on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn.

You can visit our YouTube channel to find further help navigating your system or call us on 0161 914 5757, we’re always happy to help you out!

How to effectively promote COVID-19 volunteering

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On 19th March 2020

In Application Features and Tutorials, News & Views, Policy and Operations, Press Releases

TeamKinetic have added an entirely new set of roles and functions we call COMMUNITY TASKS to help our customers get volunteers to those people that need it most in the community. There is also an associated app for mobile!

https://teamkinetic.co.uk/blog/2020/04/08/faq-new-covid-features/

Communities across the country are already starting to rally in support of each other during this pandemic.

We’ve put together a video and step-by-step instructions below showing how to promote your COVID-19 related opportunities.

1 – Add tags and descriptions to your COVID-19 related opportunities.

In order for volunteers to find COVID-19 related opportunities you will need to have a way of identifying those opportunities in the system. You can do this by either making sure the opportunity title includes a key words like; covid, virus, corona, or pandemic, or add the words as TAGS to the opportunity. 

Either of these solutions will allow the system and volunteers to be able to search and find the related opportunities via the normal search bar.

When you login you’ll find your custom search link in the COVID-19 notification bar. You can distribute this link via email and on your social media posts and when clicked will go straight to the COVID-19 search results.

2 – Add An Event Called COVID-19

An event is just a group of opportunities which have something in common.  By adding a specific event name, that event will show at the top of the volunteers search results.

To use this method you will need to create an event called ‘COVID-19’ and EDIT your opportunities and mark them as PART OF A LARGER EVENT

3 – Email all volunteers about COVID-19 related opportunities

We have added a button at the top the dashboard when you login as admin:

This button will automatically email your volunteers a list of all virus related opportunities (email shown below).

If you would like to only email specific volunteers then you can email the special link shown when you login as administrator.

When clicked this link will go to the COVID-19 search results.

Further help

If you have trouble setting any of this up, please open a support ticket and we’ll try to help.

Stay safe.

What is Single Sign-On (SSO)?

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On 6th February 2020

In Application Features and Tutorials

SSO is a way of leveraging existing accounts from trusted sources to make logging in more secure, quicker and easier. It mostly utilises Oauth 2 to create a connection between us and the trusted source we are trying to authenticate with.

We have added Facebook, Google, and LinkedIn (admin and providers only) to our login on TeamKinetic.

Why?

As we interact online we are frequently asked to create accounts, along with a password and most usually our email address. We can forget passwords for sites we don’t use often or can get irritated having to login time and again.

Using SSO we can ask a trusted source, such as Facebook, to authenticate your email address. If you are already logged into Facebook with a matching email address you’ll get logged in immediately simply by clicking the login with Facebook button. You won’t need to enter your email address or password at all! You don’t need to remember another password and you don’t need to type in your email address and password over and over.

Do I share my personal data?

When we connect with Oauth we have to tell the source we are using what information we want back. In the case of SSO its just your email address. When you first sign in using Oauth you will notice that you have to say yes to sharing that information. That is the only information that we will be able to obtain.

What will it look like on the TeamKinetic?

We are starting to roll out this feature to all users and it will look like this. Keep an eye out for it appearing for you before Friday 7th February.

Login

TeamKinetic 1.4.1 Release Notes

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On 4th February 2020

In Application Features and Tutorials, TeamKinetic Features, Technical Updates

We have been slowly pushing out our 2020 Q1 interim changes for v1.4.1 and this will be complete by 7th February 2020.

You’ll have noticed a few differences already but these are the highlights, along with many bug fixes.

Improved Accessible Universal Search

The universal search is super useful but we know some customers are having trouble with the time delay used before searching and focusing the mouse on the results box.

This was done to improve its accessibility because without that switch of focus to the results window users of assistive technology and keyboard only users, would find it difficult to access the results.

We have listened to the feedback and have completely redesigned the universal search so that it is now even more accessible without annoying mouse users by switching focus.

The same results panel will appear but it now captures keyboard inputs so that using up and down, escape and return will enable keyboard users to navigate the list without ever switching the focus from the search box.

In addition all the correct ARIA attributes have been added and an additional assertive announcement for screen readers that will let the user know how many results have been returned and how to navigate them.

Login With Social Media (Single Sign On)

You’ll see a change to all login pages shortly; admin, provider, and volunteer login pages will have additional buttons for logging in with Google, Facebook, and for providers and admins, LinkedIn.

Your registered emails will have to match of course but if they do and you are already logged in with Google, Facebook or LinkedIn, you’ll get bumped straight to your dashboard just by clicking one of the social media sign in buttons. The first time you do this you may be asked to give TeamKinetic permission to receive your email address, we have to get that in order to match your account.

New Search Behaviours

We have adjusted the way the search filters are added to make them more accessible. Previously when you selected the type of filter it would be added automatically to the search. This renders it unusable for keyboard only users as they are not able to skip through the available filters without triggering their addition. So we have added a physical button you use to add the filter and some other improvements to make the search accessible.

New Search Filters

We have added some new filters to opportunity, provider, and volunteer searches, and also rearranged some others.

The new TYPE filter now contains multiple types of opportunity you can filter by, sessional, flexible, applying, and requiring references. We will be adding more as we test them.

For volunteer search we have added date FIRST and date LAST joined an opportunity along with a LINKED TO filter for finding which volunteers are linked to which providers.

Improved Reporting Text

We have updated the help tool tips on the reporting page to better explain what data is being shown. In particular around what is meant be converted, new, active, etc.

Universal Search Updates

The ordering of results has been changed so that older, less active volunteers, opportunities, and providers are less likely to appear in the top 5 results that are shown if there are many matches.

Dashboard Updates

We’ve altered the open opportunities display to remove the open/closed status (because of course they are all open!) and switched in a text category status which is also an accessibility improvement as the category is not communicated solely with colour.

 

There are lots of other smaller improvements, like adding more notifications to the top left notification area when actions are taking place, standardising button behaviour, harmonising more user interface elements and generally cleaning up!

Enjoy. 

TeamKinetic 1.4 – Post Release week two. Gifting owed hours.

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On 15th November 2019

In Application Features and Tutorials, TeamKinetic Features

Next in our on-going FaceBook Live sessions for TeamKinetic 1.4 we will be talking about gifting hours and how TeamKinetic approaches the whole idea of  hours and rewards.

Usually a volunteer attends a session or a flexible opp and logs their hours which are then also logged and approved by administrators or providers.

Occasionally however volunteers might have done extra hours, or you want to incorporate hours from historical projects that you know the volunteer deserves.

For these situations you need to gift the volunteer owed hours.

Just pop along to the volunteers management page and find the HOURS tab on the left. Within that section you’ll see an area called Add Owed Hours. Here you can add a title or reason for the owed hours, say ‘Previous work on the footpath programme’, then enter the total hours and minutes the volunteer will be credited with.

These gifted hours are treated exactly like hours earned on opportunities and will show up in your KPIs and reports.

If you mistakenly add owed hours you can remove them at anytime.

When owed hours are added the full hour total is added to the volunteer and provider, so the totals are kept in balance.

Join our Facebook live session on Tuesday 19th November to find out more about owed hours.

TeamKinetic 1.4 – Post Release week one. The document hub.

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On 11th November 2019

In Application Features and Tutorials, TeamKinetic Features

I hope you are all settling into TeamKinetic 1.4 and enjoying the new features.

We’ll be continuing our weekly Facebook Live sessions over the coming weeks till we have covered all the new functionality and questions that have come up about the new release.

This week it’s all about the Document Hub that lets you create a repository of documents, links, and text that is accessible online by your volunteers and providers.

The document hub is available from the super admin settings menu (only visible if you are logged in as a super admin). From there you can add a resource for a volunteer or provider and create one of the three types; link, download, or just a plain text information resource.

For volunteers the resource area is available straight from their dashboard.

For providers it’s available from their help and resources menu.

The document hub is a great way to communicate your policies to your volunteers and providers, as well as to provide initial help and guidance for their first few experiences.

Join our Facebook live session on Tuesday 12th November to find out more about getting the most out of the document hub.

TeamKinetic 1.4 – Release week ZERO. It’s release week!

By

On 31st October 2019

In Application Features and Tutorials, News & Views, TeamKinetic Features

This is it… the release date is upon us and on November 5th the next version of TeamKinetic will be appearing on your desktops.

This Facebook Live session will cover the excellent filtering and searching options that we have added to the volunteer, opportunity and provider search. We will also be talking a little about the release schedule and what we will be doing to try to ensure a smooth transition.

The new filtering selection allows you to add multiple filters easily without having to scroll up and down, we’ve also included custom fields where applicable.

You can add or remove filters automatically and the results will update each time.

The navigation bar allows you to scroll through the results, change the displayed number of rows, and tells you how many results in total we have found.

You can also download all the results to a CSV, this will create a file with a copy of every row, not just the ones you are viewing at the time.

If you select any of the results using the checkboxes in the first column the bulk task options will appear at the bottom of your screen.

The available options will alter depending on which search you are performing, but in each case, a window will pop up where you can confirm your action and provide any further details.

If there is only one action available for a row it will just be a simple text link at the end, this is also the case when searching for opportunities.

If there are multiple actions you’ll see the triple dot icon that you can click to bring up the actions, these are things like impersonate, email, manage etc.

You’ll start to see this table search and filtering pattern turning up throughout TeamKinetic, we think its a vast improvement and we hope you’ll think so too.

Join our Facebook live session on Tuesday 5th November to find out more about getting the most out of the application process.

TeamKinetic 1.4 – Pre-release week five

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On 26th October 2019

In Application Features and Tutorials, News & Views, TeamKinetic Features

In our final pre-release Facebook Live session we are going to be looking at the opportunity application process and how to get the most out of applying opportunities.

Many of our customers have specific on-boarding processes for specific opportunities or types of opportunities. These checks take place before a volunteer can join a session on an opportunity.

Unlike requirements like inductions and criminal checks, the application process is specific to the opportunity and so all volunteers are required to complete the on-boarding before being allowed to join an opportunity.

When creating an opportunity look out for the selection options and from there you can choose to create an applying opportunity and also specify some of the other pre-requisites like references.

When a volunteer finds this opportunity they will be presented with an option to apply and will be asked to complete all the pre-requisites.

They provider and volunteer will each receive an email letting them know the application has been received.

The provider or administrator can manage the applicants from the regular opportunity management page. From the applicants tab they can view all the current applicants, approve or deny applicants and download the applicant list.

Once approved the volunteer is sent an email confirmation with a link to the opportunity and can then go ahead and join sessions in the normal way.

If the opportunity is a flexible opportunity the volunteer is automatically joined to the single session that represents the length of the flexible opportunity.

It’s important to remember that when an application is received, the volunteer is not yet on the opportunity, their application must be approved AND they must choose their sessions (if the opportunity is session based).

In summary the application process looks like this;

  1. Create an APPLICATION opportunity
  2. Wait for volunteers to apply
  3. Process your applicants on the opportunity management page applicant tab
  4. Continue to manage the volunteers that have joined your opportunity after having their application approved

Join our Facebook live session on Tuesday 29th October to find out more about getting the most out of the application process.

TeamKinetic 1.4 – Pre-release week four

By

On 20th October 2019

In Application Features and Tutorials, News & Views, TeamKinetic Features

This week we will be discussing a much requested new feature, that will give you far more control than ever over the communications TeamKinetic sends to volunteers and providers; customising automated emails.

TeamKinetic keeps your volunteers and providers up to date, with notifications about opportunity activity, chat room messages, applications, registrations and many other actions and events.

We have default content for all these messages but now you can edit and customise over 30 messages.

Its dead simple to edit a message, just click the edit button to bring up a window like below.

Each message has its own set of replacements you can use which will be replaced when sent, like opportunity title, opportunity link or the volunteer name. Just click on any of the blue replacement buttons in the right column and they will appear at the current position in your custom message.

You can also now attach files to these messages!

Join our Facebook live session on Tuesday 22nd October to find out more about customising your own messages.

TeamKinetic 1.4 – Pre-release week three

By

On 10th October 2019

In Application Features and Tutorials, TeamKinetic Features, Technical Updates

For week three we will be discussing a new feature whose beginnings you may have spotted and wondered about in our last release; trusted providers.

Trusted Providers

Trusted providers have an elevated set of privileges compared to your regular providers. The could represent for instance, providers that are internal to your organisation, or those that have received extra training.

To add the trusted status just use the button in the provider management page. You can also use the new provider search pages to change the status of multiple providers in one go.

What are Trusted Providers?

Trusted providers have some extra abilities over your regular providers;

  • Their new opportunities are auto authorised
  • They can add criminal check and induction required status to their opportunities
  • They can add any volunteer to a session, not just those that have already joined one of their sessions or that is linked to them

Join our Facebook live session on Tuesday 15th October to find out more about the trusted provider features.

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