Another great value interim release for you all, and only a few weeks since the last one! This one is all software based, no hardware or infrastructure updates, which is much better for my health and sanity =)

Update Feedback from Volunteer Dashboard

Providers and admins can now update a volunteers feedback from the feedback section on the volunteer dashboard page. Just hit the update link and you can save it right there – no refresh required.

New Translation Engine

For those customers (Enterprise only) that use an alternative language to English (get in touch if you are interested) we have now brought all translations in-house to our own replacement engine.

This has a number of advantages; we can update and add new replacements fast, translator marked Super Admins can provide translations right there in the Super Admin area, and they can request new replacements to be added.

Using our own replacement and translation engine has increased the page load time for translated pages by four fold, an excellent result.

Send Custom Newsletters Whenever You Want

The bulk email system has been updated to use the same HTML wrapper as the weekly newsletter, so all your bulk emails will now look better and have more branding elements for your organisation.

When creating bulk emails you can now select any number of opportunities to be included in the email. You have the option of including the events that week and if you want to show the volunteer’s statistics across the top. These are all displayed in exactly the same way as within the newsletter so its now possible to send a newsletter type email to any of your volunteers, for any of your opportunities, whenever you like!

We have also rearrange and refactored the preview and draft buttons so you can now send a preview email to your email instantly and save a draft copy without leaving the page. We also now update the saved draft each time you hit the save draft button, rather than creating a new draft.

Expenses Module – First Phase

This is another great Enterprise only option to help you manage your expenses. You’ve been able to mark an opportunity as expenses provided for quite a few versions now. This new module closes the loop for expenses.

Volunteers can select applicable opportunities from their dashboard, upload a receipt, an explanation of what the expense is for, and the amount they are claiming.

Admins get an alert when a new claim is submitted by a volunteer and can manage them all from a simple interface.

The admin can view the receipt, adjust the claim amount, and update the claim status. A full history of changes and notes is maintained and viewable underneath the main claim.

We have also added some additional profile data points for UK bank account and sort codes which are only requested and stored if a volunteer makes an expenses claim. One day we hope to create some in app payment methods but we’ve yet to find one that has been acceptable to the majority of our customers yet…but we are still looking!

The managed expenses module is an enterprise only feature. Administrators can switch this module on and off and allow trusted providers to be able to mark an opportunity with the managed expenses flag. The managed expenses runs alongside the regular expenses flag, so anyone can still mark an opportunity as paying expenses, and this will show in the search filters and opp description, but only enterprise admins and trsuted providers will be able to add this managed aspect to those expenses.

Front page customisations

Our new front end (if you are not using it we suggest switching it on as volunteers seem to prefer it!) has some extra customisations, and now they are all also available in your chosen alternative language (enterprise only).

If you can’t find a suitable image, then it will fill the background with some of your chosen colours with a subtle animation effect so it will still look great even without an image.

Accreditation Improvements

We’ve standardised all the accreditation badge prints now so there will be zero variability between badges no matter how you print them.

We’ve also added the help and support menu to the accreditation menus so you can open support tickets straight from there without having to return the main volunteer menu.

The event access screen now accommodates the full 12 possible areas for each event and correctly displays access for each selectable zone.

There have also been quite a few small improvements and enhancements to the UI/UX as we harmonise it with the main application.

You can try out these features as normal on the beta site before the interim gets pushed out on 5th December. We’ll be notifying everyone and getting together some training videos and materials to make sure you can hit the ground running.

Closing Opportunities Added to Dashboard

Opportunities that are closing within 7 days are now shown to providers in their dashboard under the tasks panel.

These have been available on the administrators dashboard for a little while now but have now been brought across to the provider dashboard as well.

Happy Birthday Message for Volunteers

Just a little message on their dashboard when it is their birthday, wishing them the best and thanking them for volunteering.

We’ll be adding more life events to these notifications over time, like anniversaries of them registering, joining their first opportunity, logging their first hours etc.

Restore Recently Deleted Volunteers

We receive quite a few support tickets where administrators have accidentally deleted a volunteer, or deleted the wrong volunteer.

So we have implemented a restore feature that will work for 48 hours after the deletion. You can use the new DELETED filter in the volunteer search page to find all the volunteers that have been deleted in the last 48 hours. To restore a volunteer just hit the checkbox next to their name and then use the CHANGE STATUS bulk action in the bottom blue bar to restore them.

Once the 48 hour period has expired you will not be able to restore that volunteer. We can restore volunteers after this period for upto 30 days from cold storage backups but there is a charge.

Administators cannot restore a volunteer that has removed themselves, for obvious reasons; however all their hours are anonymised and retained.

Anonymised Hours from Deleted Vounteers Included

You can now see your anonymised hours from deleted volunteers in the quick stats area of the reporting pages. It combines the totals and highlights the total from deleted volunteers in brackets.

The date of removal is used as the hour logged date.

We have had a busy few weeks and have rolled out another interim release packed full of useful changes and updates suggested by our users.

Additionally we have also updated our infrastructure over the last few weekends with minimal distruption. All our servers and virtual environments are now on the latest server operating system and our database has also been updated to a new version. We’ve also thrown some more hardware at the application and I hope you have noticed some snappier responses.

Custom emails for opportunities

You can now add a custom email to an opportunity that is sent when a volunteer joins INSTEAD of the universal email (the universal email remains accessible and customisable as before). So if you have a special message to give to volunteers that join certain opportunities here is your chance.

It’s super easy to use and access, quick check box to say you want to use a custom email then you will see the normal editor window where you can craft the email.

Administrators can add an attachment to these emails from the normal list of email attachments you are used to seeing in the bulk email and email customisation areas.

Remember, this email is sent INSTEAD of the universal one, so be sure to include full details.

Custom email for role applications

Just as above, now when super admins are creating or editing roles they can add a custom email that is sent when a volunteer applies for that role.

It all works identically as for custom opportunity emails, and once again is sent instead of the universal email.

Close applications for an opportunity

Admins and providers can now hit a button on the APPLICANTS tab for apply first opportunties which will close applications for the opportunity without closing the opportunity. This enables already accepted volunteers to carry on as normal, and access new sessions, without attracting any new applicants.

Opportunity image enforcement option

Super Admins can now elect to switch of the mandatory upload of images for each opportunity. This option is OFF be default.

Information about the opportunity the intial role application was for

When a volunteer first applies for a role we record which opportunity this was on. We used this to enable the auto application to the opportunity if it was required, once the role applicaiton was complete and successful.

We have now started to show this information on the role management page so you know which opportunity the volunteer was originally interested in.

The volunteer also gets this information, along with a link to the original opportunity so they don’t need to hunt around to find it.

New and fixed reports

We have added a pie chart showing the proportion if volunteers on events and opportunities that have reported as having special needs or disabilities, downloadable of course.

The pie chart showing the ethnicity of volunteers on opportunities and events was not using distinct volunteers, but all the joined sessions. This has been fixed and is now accurate and the total volunteers will match the number given in the summary for volunteers.

Improved profile editing for volunteers

The layout when editing the profile for a volunteer has been tidied up and the various layouts for external volunteers, provider editing pages have also been improved.

We have split out the location aspects of their profile from their personal details, so you can update and edit independantly. This will help where location details have not been recorded properly but you still need to update other aspects of their profile.

Feedback report is now downloadable

Added a download button to the feedback report page so you can grab a full list of all the feedback at anypoint.

New filter for searching volunteers

You can now choose in the TYPE filter, to show volunteers that will and that will not receive bulk emails. A volunteer only receives bulk emails if they have opted in, have a valid email address, and have been granted access.

Faster searching

The opportunity search page speed has been improved by excluding distance calculations where possible and also using a boundary box method of finding matching opportunities rather than calculating the distance from the volunteers location and all other opportunites.

This is not as accurate but much faster and the accuracy is perfectly acceptable for this search. This means that empty or null searches, which are by far the most performed search such as;

https://volunteering-wales.net/volunteers/search

can return the maximum 250 opportunities in less than a second.

Providers having multiple accounts is now optional

The ability for providers to create their own sub accounts for collegues to use to login is now an option. You can find it in the super admin menu > options > everything else tab.

Better ordering of completed opportunities for volunteers

When volunteers view their opportunity tab in their dashboard, completed opportunities were ordered by their start date (age). We’ve switched this around now so that the opportunities are ordered by the date of their last session on that opportunity. So the opportunity that was mostly recently completed is at the top.

In app criminal checks

We are just finishing our initial development of in app criminal checks with KnowYourPeople in the UK. This wil mean you can fill out a simple form in the app, send it off and within 24 hours or so you will have the completed criminal check details available on the volunteers profile.

They will also send the certifcate to the volunteers address and your organisation name will appear on the certificate.

We don’t have finalised prices for the each check, but we are confident they will be less than £12 per check for the enhanced version.

If you are interested in trialing this new feature please get in touch.