Category: TeamKinetic Features Page 8 of 10

I have been concentrating on accessibility improvements and changes for the upcoming 1.3 release of TeamKinetic and I thought I would give a little background into what accessibility means for websites and what TeamKinetic have been doing to solve some of the issues in a non-technical post.

It’s a long post but here’s a quick check list of what the focus has been for this release;

Clear focus effects so a keyboard users knows where they are at all times
Keyboard accessible menu and sub menu
Keyboard accessible help tips, activated by the return key and closed by switching focus
Proper use of ARIA tags for all content that is initially invisible (such as help tips, pop up windows etc) so that screen readers will correctly read out the revealed text at the correct time
Correctly labelled form elements so that screen readers can always associate an input (such as a text element) with its description
Grouping together of associated form elements using fieldsets and legends. For instance, a collection of checkboxs for a yes, no, maybe, definitely answer. using a fieldset ensures that a screen reader user knows what question the answers belong to.
Keyboard accessible skip to content links that enable keyboard users and screen reader users to skip the menu and header portion of a webpage and get straight to the important stuff. Can you imagine how tedious it is to have to listen or tab through every navigation element on a webpage before you can read its content!
Correct description tags (alt tags) for all images
Improvements to link and button text by providing additional screen reader only text to give context to the link or button.
Making sure all password fields are marked as ‘new’, ‘existing’ or ‘repeat’ as they are often just labelled password.
Ensuring all webpages are accurately and uniquely titled and described.

Accessibility is often low on developers priority list, its understandable, the number of customers using assistive technologies is likely low compared to the numbers that do not. However the impact on those user that do, is enormous and by ignoring accessibility issues you are effectively blocking those users from accessing your content.

Although being able to access your website is a right for assistive technology users, and it is illegal to discriminate against such users, its also a positive process and a way to learn new skills, engage with a new audience and improve the intrinsic worth and value of your product.

Keyboard Accessibility

Keyboard navigation is perhaps the most important aspect of accessibility for websites. Navigating via a keyboard or something similar is employed by many users with mobility issues that cannot hold, move or control a mouse and also by many visually impaired users.

Keyboard users navigate through a website using primarily the tab key which focuses on item to item in the web page in the order it is served or in a specific order set by the website itself. Whilst focused on any element they can use keys such as the return key to activate the actions of that element, say a button to submit a form or to follow a link.

TeamKinetic enables keyboard navigation and all elements are focusable by the keyboard. There is a clear visual clue to which element is currently focused by the keyboard.

Menus

Its almost entirely universal that a website or application has a menu to quickly access different parts of a system. Its also very normal for the menu to have sub menus that are revealed when the mouse is moved over the heading (this is called a HOVER). As you can see below on the TeamKinetic menu the mouse pointer has been hovered over the menu heading and the sub menu is revealed.

But when a keyboard is used to navigate to the menu item the event is called FOCUS, not hover. If the website does not include the specific code for what happens when a menu element is focused by a keyboard event the user will not see the sub menu or any change in colour/appearance to indicate where in the menu they are.

TeamKinetic’s menus are now fully accessible by the keyboard with visual indicators of where the current focus is. When the focus is on an element with a sub-menu available there is a clear colour change and by pressing return the menu can be toggled on and off. Importantly, if the menu is not activated with the return key the user does not have to navigate through all the items of the sub-menu in order to reach the next item in the current menu.

Skip Links

Skip links are a very important and hugely convenient addition for accessibility. They are hidden links or buttons that a screen reader or keyboard user will expose that enable them to skip past all the header and navigation elements that are the same on every page.

The skip to content link only appears when using the tab key to navigate or when using a screen reader

Help ToolTips

Tooltips are little bubbles that pop up to give the user more information or context about a feature or action. Traditionally these have activated when the mouse is hovered over the target and the tooltip disappears when the mouse is moved away from the target.

This is problematic for keyboard users that never fire the hover event, only the focus event (see above) that will never see the tooltip and also for users with reduced motor control. We have converted all our volunteer help tooltips into an accessible form that will fire when the question mark is clicked or when it is focused by a keyboard user. To dismiss the tooltip you move the focus either by pressing the tab key or clicking the mouse anywhere that is not the question mark icon.

importantly the new help tooltips are also labelled carefully with the appropriate ARIA tags so that screen readers are alerted to the presence of new information and are aware when they reach the question mark icon that this will reveal new information when activated and can map the

Improved form labelling

For screen reader users it is important that the context and purpose of all form elements, like text boxes, checkboxes and buttons is clear from the element itself. It is easy for a visual user to tell which question a form element belongs to as it will be group visually, or perhaps via certain colours, on the screen, but will not be apparent to a screen reader user.

Example form showing the correctly marked up labels for the form elements

We have redesigned all the volunteer forms to make sure that the extra context required for screen reader users is included. We achieve this through judicious use of the LABEL tag for describing form elements, by grouping associated elements in a fieldset with a legend and by improving the quality of link and button text by included hidden text that only screen readers see.

Extra Screen Reader Context

Using special styles, it is possible to hide text from visual users but expose it to screen reader users. This is great for adding additional context to buttons and actions that make sense visually but are indistinguishable for screen reader users.

Imagine a long list of say opportunities, each with a button/link that says ‘More Details’ that you might encounter on the search page. It’s easy for a visual user to match the same identical button or link with the context of the opportunity you are currently looking at but not for a screen reader that will just list a long set of identical buttons.

Identical buttons that are easy to associate with the opportunity visually, but not so for a screen reader

The addition of the contextual text means a screen reader user knows, in this case, which opportunity is linked to which button.

The appearance to a screen reader of the repeated buttons without and with added contextual text

What Next ?

Most of the work for this release has been focused on the volunteer’s portal, with some global changes, like the accessible menu applied across the application.

We will be auditing all the provider pages to perform the same changes as above and finally onto the administrator pages.

We envisage that we will be constantly improving accessibility as best practise evolves and we discover new areas that are not optimised for assistive technology users. If you are such a user we would love to hear your experiences and suggestions.

TeamKinetic v1.3 March 2019 Release

By Rolf Herbert

On 23rd March 2019

In Application Features and Tutorials, TeamKinetic Features, Technical Updates

Hi there and welcome to the 1.3 release of TeamKinetic. We’ve got some great new time saving features this time round, the normal raft of small fixes and tweaks and a large dollop of accessibility improvement as we journey towards a fully accessible system for all users.

Headline Updates

Full screen layout for administrators and providers. We’ve removed the logo header bar to give more room for what matters
Brand new dashboard for administrators and providers
Universal search across volunteers, opportunities and providers is available right from the top menu on all pages
New mapping library which produces we think, better looking maps
Trusted status for providers
Upload your own custom areas for reporting and searching
Contextual help bar available anytime from the top menu
Keyboard accessible menus
Accessible forms
Accessible help tooltips
Accessibility layout improvements
Front page slider image controls improved
New application options
New POD functionality
Pause or end participation in a flexible opportunity without leaving the opportunity and losing hours.

New Dashboard

We’ve completely redesigned the dashboard for administrators and providers and it is now very much focused around helping you to get the tasks you need to do, done!

Authorisations, latest chatter messages, logged hours since your last visit and lots more are displayed right there everytime you login. We’ve added some insight into your programme, like who is logging hours, which opportunities or providers are performing badly and suggested tasks to keep on top.

We think this new dashboard will be a real time saver.

Universal Search

From the top menu bar you now have access to a number of new areas including the universal search. It’s a stripped down lookup service that will find matching volunteers, opportunities and providers.

Its obviously not as fully featured as the specific search pages for volunteers, opportunities and providers, but its fantastic for navigating quickly between different things. It also gives you a little visual clue as to the status of each entity, red for access denied when a volunteer, unauthorised when a provider and closed when an opportunity and green for access granted, authorised and open respectively.

New Mapping Service

We are switching to Open Streetmap for our mapping service. This is a fantastic open sourced effort to map the world without the propriety nature and vagaries of being in the Google ecosystem. It also has we think more natural looking maps.

Contextual Help

We have built a foundation for us to enable contextual help on every page. This will be accessible from the help icon in the top menu and will reveal all the help topics and tutorials for the page you are currently using. Both administrators and providers have access and we hope it will help new providers especially, get the most from TeamKinetic, and of course ask you less questions!

The slide out help menu available on every page

We are working hard to get help for as many pages as possible on launch but we’ll be adding them progressively and in response to questions that regularly arise. Let us know if there are any topics you’d like to see in the help menus to aid your users.

Accessibility

I’ve already blogged about the accessibility improvements we have coming in this release. This has been a really rewarding process and I’m looking forward to some feedback for how we can keep improving in this area. Most of the effort has been concentrated in the volunteer’s portal but there have been improvements throughout.

New Administrator Controls

Include the volunteer stats in the weekly email. We had some reports that volunteers that were interested in volunteering but hadn’t yet taken the plunge, we’re getting discouraged seeing zero stats every week!
Overlapping session booking option. Using this you can control if volunteers can join sessions which overlap or conflict. We are working on providing a further control to determine how close the sessions need to be in order to initiate the conflict. Volunteers are informed if they attempt to join sessions which overlap, on either the same or different opportunities. By default volunteers are not allowed to join overlapping sessions.
Require volunteers to upload a photo before they can join any opportunities.
Display nationally shared opportunities on your version of the native mobile applications. When enabled users will also be able to view and join nationally shared opportunities direct from their applications.

Ending Flexible Opportunity Attendance

For very long running flexible opportunities its useful to know if volunteers are finished. Previously this was only really possible by asking the volunteer to leave the opportunity but that meant there was now a hole in the audit trail and information for that opportunity.

Volunteers can now click a button when logging hours to say they won’t be logging any more hours and have effectively left the opportunity.

Volunteers can now say they have finished with a flexible opportunity

The same functionality is also available for administrators from the volunteer list on the opportunity management page. Just click the pause icon to flip the volunteer to the finished state and the play icon to flip the back. The volunteers that have finished are separated from the still active ones so you can easily keep track of your flexible volunteers.

Admin display separating finished and active volunteers on flexible opportunities

Launch Date

We’ve processed close to 200 issues for this release and there are many small improvements and bug fixes throughout the application and we are excited to be releasing 1.3 on March 31st.

Don’t forget you can test out all these features on the beta site using your regular administrator login. We’d love you feedback or review at Trustpilot.

Volunteer management software UK, Volunteering, Retention, Incentives, Volunteer system

Volunteer management software can better impact your volunteer retention rates.

By Steve Hall

On 19th March 2019

In News & Views, TeamKinetic Features

The economic value of volunteering is at least worth £50 Billion to the British economy and has the scope to grow but that’s impossible if retention rates are low.

Volunteer retention rates are on a halt and that calls for strategic changes within organisations. Investment in technology is necessary if you want the same investment back from your volunteers. According to the National Council for Voluntary Organisations (NCVO) data shows that rates of volunteering have not changed. 38% of people reported they had formally volunteered at least once a year in 2017-18 a 1% increase from 2016-17.

The figures may seem minuscule, but how can we measure volunteer activity if things stay fixed and static across the country. However, you’ll be happy to know that technology is allowing nonprofits the ability to maximise efforts in volunteer retention solutions.

Volunteer Management Software

Volunteer Management Software can provide the right tools for organisations to manage, recruit and retain valued volunteers. Nonprofits that devote time and money to a volunteer system are often astonished by the impact technology can have on their volunteer program.

Here are 4 ways that volunteer management software can aid organisations in volunteer retention.

Respond to Volunteers Quickly

Organisations that inform and respond volunteers quickly have a much a higher percentage of retaining them. It is key for volunteer managers to have regular communication in order to have a successful programme.

The issue volunteer managers face is the lack of time they have to give speedy responses. Having a volunteer management software means that your communication process becomes a lot more simplified by reducing the time spent on communication. We have the case studies to prove how a volunteer system can really make a better impact on your programme!

TeamKinetic make communication fast and simple through our feedback function that allows volunteers and opportunity providers to send each other feedback as well as opportunity chat rooms for that instant response! Our volunteer software also allows you to send out automated and customised notifications (Text, Email, Social) at a click of a button.

Utilise a Volunteer Database

Having a volunteer database can inform and guide you to make better organisational decisions that benefit everyone involved. The information can allow you to understand past and present volunteers making sure volunteers are placed into roles that suit them best.

Data can increase retention rates and allows you to understand the facts and figures not just what you think is right. Organisations that still manually input data into spreadsheets are at risk of losing historical data and also risk miss understanding key data due to the lack of visualisation.

A volunteer system makes interpreting data easy. It can allow you to group volunteers based on skill sets and demographics, highlights popular opportunities, and assists volunteers that need support. These are all contributing factors to understanding your volunteers better and making retention rates higher.

Volunteer Appreciation and Recognition

All humans need to be recognised in a meaningful way for their efforts. Volunteers give up their time to help organisations they are passionate and care about. So that same intention should be displayed by the volunteer manager.

A lack of incentive and appreciation for your volunteers is sure to make them lose motivation and belief in what you do. Organisations should be developing time and effort towards the happiness of their volunteers. How hard is it to say thank you? We have found that the most effective way to show appreciation towards volunteers is by incorporating a rewards and recognition system into your program.

TeamKinetic’s volunteer management software allows organisations to create a rewards and recognition scheme that will create a better impact on achieving goals and mission accomplishments. Administrators can track and edit recognition directly from TeamKinetic’s user interface.

Build Personal Relationships

Getting to know your volunteers on a personal level is a great way of making them part of your organisation’s community. Volunteers want to know who they are volunteering for. Building meaningful relationships isn’t easy when you have time constraints and project deadlines to meet, but it is one of the most important factors to consider when evaluating volunteer retention rates.

However, Volunteer Management Software can provide you with that much needed free time. A volunteer system allows administrators to communicate with registered volunteers through a number of functions such as opportunity chatroom, opportunity feedback, social media linking. Organisations we work with have saved hours by changing from manual procedures to a digital platform that allows them to carry out their daily tasks all in one place.

So if you’re having trouble with volunteer retention and feel like theres never enough time to get your long list of tasks complete, then maybe a volunteer management software is for you?

TeamKinetic helps to build better volunteer communities by providing great tools for volunteer managers that save time, make a better impact and improve insight. Our goal is to make volunteering easy for everyone no matter what. But don’t take our word for it, why not check out our customer reviews.

For more information on our Volunteer Management Software visit our website or contact one of our team members on – 01619145747

Understanding volunteer demographics to fill empty roles!

By Alex Evans

On 12th February 2019

In News & Views, TeamKinetic Features, Volunteer Management

Many roles go unfilled… why is that? Do volunteer managers need to have a deeper understanding of volunteer demographics? Can we continue to assume that empty roles will fill up because they’re helping a good cause?

Unfilled volunteering roles

Having a good understanding of your volunteers and the roles you offer is key. Unfilled roles can have a negative impact on your volunteer management and make it difficult for tasks to be carried out.

Volunteers want to volunteer! Don’t make it difficult for them.

In many cases, unfilled roles occur when the role is just not appealing to the volunteer. This issue usually begins with how you describe the role and the commitment levels that come with it.

Roles need to be attractive to the volunteer; with a detailed description of what is required of them and positive outcomes of the role. Many organisations we work with do this well and provide quality volunteer experiences that lead to higher retention levels!

*Example of an opportunity within TeamKinetic*

All volunteer managers need to prioritise roles that are crucial to the organisation because they involve tasks that drive long-term goals to be met. By prioritizing the most important roles it allows you to focus the energy and time on the areas that are most likely to have a greater impact on the organisation and its development.

Knowing your volunteer capacity and demographic

The one-size-fits-all is approach has long past its expiration date. Knowing who volunteers for you is crucial for developing relationships, providing opportunities and understanding who to target when recruiting volunteers. Volunteer trends are always changing and adapting, with volunteers being much more diverse. Here are some demographics to consider :

Age

The idea that only older people volunteer is diminishing. Today students in higher education regularly volunteer and are part of the most likely groups to volunteer. Different age groups will have a variety of skills they can utilise in their volunteer work.

Gender

The gender gap has become almost even with more men getting involved in volunteering than ever before. Women consistently volunteer in all areas, whereas men are typically more likely to volunteer in sport. It’s important to consider how your operations could be improved to create a more gender-inclusive environment for your volunteers.

Location

There are countless organisations offering ways to volunteer. This has created a great spread of opportunities contributing to better communities across the country. Within your organisation, you might consider mapping your volunteers to understand your key areas. Then you can ensure your opportunities are easily accessed by these areas.

Socio-Economic Background

However, those from lower socio-economic groups are more likely to say they have never been involved in volunteering. And those who have volunteered in the past are less likely to be in leadership or representative roles.

Studies show higher levels of austerity among communities in the north of England and the local authority spending has fallen nationally by half since 2010. The lack of resources and inequalities mean many people are excluded from taking part in certain opportunities

Research conducted by our good friends at Jump highlight that a lower proportion of volunteers come from lower SEG (42%) compared to the representation of that group in the national population (50%).

Some of the barriers faced by lower SEG to volunteer include health barriers (illness or disability), caring responsibilities, and age constraints.

More information on Jump’s work and their report on “Why is volunteering biased towards higher socio-economic groups?” can be downloaded on their website.

So how can we help you fix these problems?

TeamKinetic is centralised around providing volunteer managers with resources to create accessible, easy-to-find opportunities for their volunteers.

Our volunteer management software works to eliminate issues such as filling roles and allows for a greater understanding of your volunteer base.

Advanced Search Functionality

Volunteers can search for opportunities with our search functionality which includes searching by location, opportunity name, and categories. This allows volunteers to find the nearest opportunities available to them without searching the whole internet.

Map Volunteers & Opportunities

Volunteer managers can view the number of opportunities and volunteers through a map format. This is useful in decision-making and creating opportunities according to your volunteer demographics.

Reports and Analysis

You can gain insight into the success of your volunteer programme by evaluating your volunteer sign-ups (including those who are active and repeating), the number of opportunities you have created and other demographic information.

These functions can help with providing suitable roles and ensure opportunities are filled.

Data is only recorded if your volunteers agree to provide you with the information. GDPR frequently asked questions for TeamKinetic’s volunteer management system can also be found here.

For more information on the Volunteer Management Software visit our website or contact one of our team members on 0161 914 5747

You could also start a free 30-day trial of our system to take a look around. If it’s not for you, no problem.

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.

2018 User Survey Results

By Rolf Herbert

On 31st January 2019

In News & Views, TeamKinetic Features

TeamKinetic 2018 User Survey Results

We achieved a very reasonable 65% response rate, so thank you to everyone who took the time to complete our satisfaction survey last November, it is very much appreciated. Without your feedback we are unable to gauge our progress in making your TeamKinetic experience even better.

The take home message for us was that we need to do better in informing and providing help and context for new features as they become available.

TeamKinetic has been growing quickly over the last 18 months and we have definitely fallen behind in our goals to write tutorial and guide content for all the new stuff that has been going on in that 18 months. We now have renewed focus on this issue and will have some news soon about how we plan to present contextual information and help within TeamKinetic. We are also ramping up our online master classes and live sessions, so join our Facebook group to get early access to those resources.

We asked five questions concerning some of the most useful functions and terminology that we suspected were being under used or misunderstood;

I am aware of sharing opportunities outside of my website
I am aware that you can add volunteers to existing opportunities
I am aware that i can limit opportunities to groups and linked volunteers
I am aware of activity tags and how they are used in search
I am aware of flexible, repeating, non-repeating opportunities

I am aware of sharing opportunities outside of my website

Some 57% of respondents were not aware that there is potential to share opportunities outside of their application in order to extend the reach of their opportunities and gain more volunteer interest.

We can share your opportunities to Do-It, the largest volunteer opportunity signposting app in the UK, our own, more modest, national TryVolunteering site and via the API to SalesForce or other external systems such as Volunteer Scotland and Volunteer-wales.net.

This is a great feature that is clearly not being utilised enough. We will be dedicating one of our masterclasses and video tutorials to this topic soon.

I am aware that you can add volunteers to existing opportunities

Nearly 50% of respondents were not aware that administrators and providers can add volunteers directly to sessions, and the volunteer will receive an email notification so they can check their availability.

TeamKinetic is a self service application for volunteers, we do not demand that administrators and providers micro manage all aspects of the recruitment process. This saves valuable time for the managers and allows the volunteers to pick and choose the sessions that suit them without the sometimes long exchanges between managers and volunteers as they try to allocate volunteers to sessions.

However we fully understand that it maybe necessary to manage a particular opportunity that carefully and you want full control, or partial control over what volunteers join what sessions.

This is a useful and important set of features and we will definitely be adding some tutorials about this to the help guide and the masterclass sessions.

I am aware that I can limit opportunities to groups and linked volunteers

A third of our respondents did not know about the various restrictions you can place on opportunities, either when creating the opportunities or editing them at a later date.

Volunteer grouping is a very powerful feature that allows you to segment your volunteers. Groups are fully customisable and providers can have separate groups to administrators. Volunteers can be members of no, one or multiple groups and can be moved around at anytime.

As well as being able to restrict opportunities you can message particular groups, quickly update volunteer information and statuses for group members and create registration links so that people are automatically placed in the correct group when registering without any admin input required.

I am aware of activity tags and how they are used in search

We had a pretty even 50/50 split about this question. Its a little esoteric but important even so.

Most importantly tags are used during search as a way for volunteers to narrow down their search. Any text entered in a search is compared to tags and all opportunity tags for the matching opportunities are offered to the volunteer as filters so they can further refine their search.

Its super important to understand how they are used so you can get the best out of tag based searching so please take a look at our video tutorial on tags and super charge your opportunity tags.

I am aware of flexible, repeating, non-repeating opportunities

At TeamKinetic we discuss, alot, about what we should call these opportunity types and how they should be presented when creating opportunities. I’ll let you into a little secret, there is NO difference between repeating and non-repeating opportunities, you just get a different layout when adding your sessions.

The difference between flexible opportunities and the others is important and does have ramifications for the joining and logging process.

Fortunately we had a very positive 75% of respondents who were aware of the three types (unfortunately we didn’t think to add a follow up question asking if they were also aware of the reasons for choosing different types).

We are still discussing how we can adapt the opportunity creation page to make it clearer why you would choose one over the other and once we have that dialled in we will release a video explaining it all.

Thanks again to everyone that took time out to respond, it is invaluable. Please reach out with any questions or feedback and don’t forget, join our Facebook user group to get the latest help and to share your knowledge and expertise with other users.

TeamKinetic Academy: TeamKinetic Chatter, Online Chat Rooms for Opportunities

By Rolf Herbert

On 10th April 2018

In TeamKinetic Features

TeamKinetic is pleased to announce that the latest version of TeamKinetic Volunteer Management Software has arrived, bringing with it many new tools and features.

Now available is TeamKinetic Chatter that provides isolated chat rooms for opportunities that volunteers, providers and admins can use. It is a secure platform for volunteers and opportunity providers to communicate without the use of external instant messaging services.

TeamKinetic understands the importance of being able to have a communal area for volunteer and opportunity providers to be able to share their thoughts and comments on an opportunity. It enables those essential messages to be communicated to all volunteers without the formalities of an email or the cost of a SMS text.

In developing this functionality, the option to develop an API that connects Whatsapp or Facebook Messenger was considered. However, this feature would be limited as not all volunteers have the same access or use technology to the same extent as others. Factor in the inadequate control over how the data is shared following the acceptance of terms and conditions for using an external application and developing an internal function became more appealing. To help achieve GDPR compliance, it is in the best interest of TeamKinetic and our clients to reduce any opportunity for data to be shared unnecessarily.

TeamKinetic felt that by using our own chat engine it enables the opportunity providers and administrators to control the room’s tone, message and comments using the profanity filter and comment approval and deletion features.

TeamKinetic hopes that this new feature will continue to help develop the community aspect we want all of our voluntary organisations to share with its volunteers.

We look forward to showing how to use more of our functionality in the future.
TeamKinetic’s data policy can be found here

To try out TeamKinetic Chatter please follow the instructions below:

For volunteers,
Step 1 join an opportunity

Step 2 – using the left-hand navigation bar, click onto ‘chat room’

Step 3 – enter any comments into the type area and click ‘add’

For opportunity providers,
Step 1 Using the navigation bar, hover over ‘opportunities & provider’ and on the drop-down menu, click ‘Opportunities’.

Step 2 Find the opportunity you wish to add a comment to

Step 3 Using the left-hand navigation bar, click on the ‘chat room’ button

Step 4 Enter any comments into the type area and click ‘add’

If you have any further questions or would like to share your thoughts, please get in touch with our team.

TeamKinetic Version 6 – New Events and Provider Layout

By Rolf Herbert

On 8th March 2015

In TeamKinetic Features, Technical Updates

This is one in a series of posts where I will be discussing the new features and changes we have built into version 6 of our volunteer management software TeamKinetic.

We often get asked how providers can tell volunteers a little about themselves and promote their organisation to the volunteers. Previously the provider profile has been limited to a few words and a logo.

In TeamKinetic Version 6 we have improved the look and feel of the provider profile immensely. Providers can now add a large background header image, overlayed with their logo and organisation name. There is also a WYSIWYG* text editor where they can complete their profile text, choosing their own colour scheme and font sizes.

You take a look at First Choice Sports‘ profile on our demo site.

We have also added a similar layout for the events pages which advertise and promote an event and the opportunities and roles available within that event. In addition, the events home page lets you add documents for the volunteers to download.

We think these changes will greatly enhance the visual experience for the volunteer and hopefully lead to more volunteer signups for events.

*What you see is what you get – A text editor that allows you to see exactly how your text will appear to the end user.

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 Version 6 – Accreditation

By Rolf Herbert

On 7th March 2015

In TeamKinetic Features, Technical Updates

This is one in a series of posts where I will be discussing the new features and changes we have built into version 6 of our volunteer management software TeamKinetic.

Some of our larger customers regularly run very large national events that may involve hundreds of volunteers across many roles. We already provide useful downloads listing all the volunteers on events and which sessions they are signed up for. What we didn’t have was any sort of accreditation service.

TeamKinetic Version 6 sees the release of our first stage in our accreditation process, the creation and printing of volunteer identification badges. This allows you to specify the text of the badge title, a general information section and an access area box. The badge comes complete with the volunteer’s profile picture, their unique ID and your organisation logo.

Once you are happy with your text, you simply select the opportunity or event you wish to create badges for and a PDF document will be automatically generated containing a single volunteer on each A6-sized page. This document is ready for printing in-house or sending out to your preferred print shop.

We think this will be a great time saver, and even if you do not need a specific ID card for your event or opportunity it’s a good method of giving your volunteers a sense of belonging and building that team mentality.

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 Version 6 – Fairer Rating System

By Rolf Herbert

On 6th March 2015

In TeamKinetic Features, Technical Updates

This is one in a series of posts where I will be discussing the new features and changes we have built into version 6 of our volunteer management software TeamKinetic.

From version 2 we have included a feedback system for both volunteers and providers, where they can leave a star rating out of 5 and some comments of their experiences.

TeamKinetic Version 5 saw the arrival of an admin approval system where, if they choose to, the administrator would approve each feedback before either the provider or volunteer could see it.

Volunteers could see their average feedback rating, how they were doing compared to the rest of the volunteers and the individual comments that providers had left.

We never wanted to demotivate the volunteers but our and other’s research showed us that by ranking the volunteers we risked just that. The star rating also skewed the data as providers when faced with very many volunteers to rate and comment on would often just leave the rating at the default value.

TeamKinetic Version 6 introduces a whole new rating system based on thumbs up or thumbs down. This binary system is much simpler and clearer to both the volunteers and providers. Volunteers will only ever see their thumbs-up comments, the very rare thumbs-down comments will be directed to the administrator so they can try to resolve any issues and action accordingly.

We have also removed the overall ranking from the volunteer’s homepage, just giving them their total thumbs-ups so far. We think this will help to keep the volunteer motivated and their overall feedback will not be susceptible to skewing by a rogue single-star rating that was usually a mistake or by lots of default 3-star ratings.

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 Version 6 – More Email Customisation

By Rolf Herbert

On 5th March 2015

In News & Views, TeamKinetic Features, Technical Updates

This is one in a series of posts where I will be discussing the new features and changes built into version 6 of our volunteer management software TeamKinetic.

It’s always important the Volunteers get the right information at the right time. Whilst version 5 enabled administrators to customise some emails, such as the new registration emails, TeamKinetic Version 6 extends this ability to more email types and improves the structure of the emails allowing key information to always be merged into the emails whilst still allowing the administrators to customise the main portion of the email.

We achieve this by splitting the email into fixed prefix and suffix areas with a customisable content section.

For instance, the session signup email that is sent to a volunteer when they initially join an opportunity will contain helpful information regarding the opportunity they have signed up for in the prefix and the session list they are currently signed up for in the suffix, which obviously changes every time the email is sent.

The main content section is then editable by the admin via a WYSIWYG* text editor and can contain any combination of font sizes and colours they wish.

*what you see is what you get – This means how you lay out the text on the screen is how it will look to the end user.

We believe you will find this is a big improvement over the previous system where if you choose to customise the email you would lose the specific tags that were replaced when the email was actually created.

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.

Category: TeamKinetic Features Page 8 of 10

Keyboard Accessibility

Menus

Skip Links

Help ToolTips

Improved form labelling

Extra Screen Reader Context

What Next ?

Headline Updates

New Dashboard

Universal Search

New Mapping Service

Contextual Help

Accessibility

New Administrator Controls

Ending Flexible Opportunity Attendance

Launch Date

Volunteer Management Software

Respond to Volunteers Quickly

Utilise a Volunteer Database

Volunteer Appreciation and Recognition

Build Personal Relationships

Unfilled volunteering roles

Knowing your volunteer capacity and demographic

Age

Gender

Location

Socio-Economic Background

So how can we help you fix these problems?

Advanced Search Functionality

Map Volunteers & Opportunities

Reports and Analysis

TeamKinetic 2018 User Survey Results

I am aware of sharing opportunities outside of my website

I am aware that you can add volunteers to existing opportunities

I am aware that I can limit opportunities to groups and linked volunteers

I am aware of activity tags and how they are used in search

I am aware of flexible, repeating, non-repeating opportunities

Search

Subscribe to our blog

Contact Details