Category: Technical Updates Page 6 of 7

All information on new features and technical updates to TeamKinetic can be found here. We aim to update the system regularly based on user feedback and the latest technological developments in the sector.

VolunteerKinetic – Version 6.2

By Rolf Herbert

On 8th July 2015

In News & Views, Technical Updates

Version 6.2 is an interim release adding some sought after features and all the usual small fixes and improvements. It went live at the start of July, some of the new features include the following:

Provider Profile Page

EDIT profile page

Providers can now create their own web page which can be viewed by users even if they are not registered on the system. All they have to do is goto PROFILE > YOUR PUBLIC PROFILE from their menu bar. Here they can upload their own profile images and descriptions, and preview what it will look like before they save it.

We have also added the ability for opportunity providers to set a custom website address making it much easier to promote (see right).

The providers custom web address looks like http://demo.volunteerkinetic.com/profile/custom-name-here

The biggest change was adding the ability to automatically link new volunteer registrations to an opportunity provider via the providers profile page. This is great for situations where an opportunity provider may need to communicate with a particular group of newly registered volunteers, even before they have joined any of their opportunities.

This is being used right now for schools, whereby each school directs their pupils to their profile page, when the pupils register by clicking the REGISTER TO ACCESS THESE OPPORTUNITIES button (see below) they automatically become LINKED to the school. The school can then contact all their signed up pupils and direct them to their new opportunities or add them manually, they can also track which pupils have signed up and how many hours they have logged on the schools opportunities.

Note: Providers can view all volunteers who have previously joined one of their opportunities via the MANAGE VOLUNTEERS > YOUR VOLUNTEERS screen, they can also view volunteers who have been LINKED to them either by the administrator or by registering via a providers profile page, by going to the MANAGE VOLUNTEERS > YOUR LINKED VOLUNTEERS screen.

PREVIEW profile page

Dont worry, all volunteer information and logged hours are recorded on your system in the normal way, the only difference is the volunteers are automatically linked to the provider. This new approach encourages providers to promote their profile page, which will in turn promote your system and increase your volunteer workforce.

Geographical Grouping Of Volunteers

Finding and grouping volunteers is especially important for our national customers. There is now the ability to search for voluntees in a pre-defined geographical areas. All you have to do is upload a custom area file that matches postcodes to your functional areas, be it counties, cities or something more abstract like north, south, east and west. You can also use this search criteria to send group emails to specific volunteers.

Other new features;

maximum age for an opportunity as well as minimum
its now impossible to remove (delete) an opportunity that has recorded hours
Search for volunteers depending on whether they have opted in or out of weekly emails

Keep an eye out for the V7 article which covers the major changes coming with the next version of VolunteerKinetic where it will morph into TeamKinetic, our new integrated solution.

VolunteerKinetic is a volunteer management web solution that makes it quick and easy to manage thousands of volunteers from one integrated dashboard.

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:

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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:

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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:

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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:

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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 – Age Restricted Registration

By Rolf Herbert

On 4th 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 we have built in to version 6 of our volunteer management software TeamKinetic.

Although we have always provided the ability to block access to opportunities based on age, there was never any restriction on registering; a new volunteer could be any age.

We wanted to maintain easy access to the opportunities for younger volunteers but also give the administrators some control over what happens to younger volunteers and how they are registered.

In TeamKinetic Version 6, administrators can set the age at which registrations must be verified. If a volunteer registers who is equal to or younger than this age then they will be taken to the age verification screen. Here they are asked to provide the email address of their parent or guardian.

The parent or guardian will receive an email asking them to follow a link to confirm that they give permission for the young person to join the site and access all suitable opportunities.

Until the volunteer has been verified they will not be able to join any opportunities, though they will still be able to search and browse the current opportunities and hopefully be enthused enough to ensure their parent or guardian verifies them as soon as possible!

If you have questions or issues around age verification please feel free to get in touch.

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

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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 – Session Calendar and Schedule

By Rolf Herbert

On 3rd 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.

In TeamKinetic Version 6 there is a volunteer calendar that is available to both the volunteer and the admin. This shows all the volunteer’s sessions in blue and all available sessions in grey. This is a great way of quickly checking out what sessions you have coming up and also deciding if you can attend sessions on other opportunities.

In addition, there is a printable list of the volunteer’s sessions underneath the calendar which can be ordered by date or opportunity.

We’ve found that the calendar feature is especially helpful for those volunteers who are attending multiple roles at an event. These volunteers can plan their day more effectively with a visual representation of when and where their sessions are.

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

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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 – Applying for Opportunties

By Rolf Herbert

On 2nd 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 we have built into TeamKinetic Version 6 – a volunteer management system that will make your life easier.

As the size of the events TeamKinetic is being used for have increased, so have the complexities involved in making sure there are enough volunteers for all roles and that they are suitably qualified.

We have introduced a number of new features to aid administrators and providers in choosing their volunteers, such as:

a new experience field for each opportunity
the recording of a volunteer’s movements in and out of sessions on an opportunity.

we have also introduced an entirely new sort of opportunity.

Previously it was always assumed that when a volunteer joined a session they were accepted on that session unless they were told otherwise. For large events, this led to an over-subscription to certain sessions as volunteers could not indicate which sessions they were able to do but were joining the sessions they wanted to do. Now administrators have the ability to set an opportunity to be an application opportunity.

When a volunteer looks at an opportunity that is set to in “application” mode they are informed that they should indicate all the sessions they are able to do. Once the administrator has organised volunteers into each session they can mark that opportunity as confirmed.

At this point, all the volunteers are informed which sessions they have been allocated to. If a volunteer is unable to attend a session the administrator has the history of that session available and can quickly select a volunteer that indicated they could do that session but was not allocated to that session in the first draft.

This is a major new feature that will aid immensely in improving communication between the administrators and the volunteers and reducing the time it takes to even out the available volunteers across an entire event or opportunity.

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

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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.

Opening the lid on TeamKinetic version 6 as it enters testing phase

By Rolf Herbert

On 19th January 2015

In Technical Updates

TeamKinetic version 6 has entered its testing phase and will be ready for release shortly. We’re very excited about this release and are thinking of naming it something other than a simple number increment as its a huge release and represents something of a milestone for TeamKinetic.

We’ve now got an ever-growing user base and engaged volunteers and the number of opportunities available has expanded rapidly. The software has also been used in more varied situations and types of organisations and we have got some fantastic feedback and ideas that has sparked quite a few innovations in the new TeamKinetic. I’ll be writing a series of posts talking about specific new features but here are a few quick facts about version 6.

Upcoming Features

We’ve committed 175 changes and bug fixes, ranging from tiny typos to entirely new features and workflows.
The CSS and styling has been rewritten to be more responsive and to accommodate the larger screens that are the norm.
A brand new media management page for looking after images and files that you can attach to emails.
New inline editable system emails for things like volunteer registrations and joining opportunities.
Approximately 5500 lines of code have been changed or added.
Simple binary thumbs up or down feedback
Integration with the Mandrill email service to help increase the success rate for email delivery and open rates.
New Google analytics service developed in house to track web views and visitors.
Custom URLs for your events

There are lots more features to tell you about but you can always take a sneaky peek on our Beta site.

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

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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 5.2 Update

By Rolf Herbert

On 9th October 2014

In TeamKinetic Features, Technical Updates

You will be glad to hear that the geek squad (developers) have managed to do it again by squeezing out a final TeamKinetic Version 5.2 release before the much-anticipated Version 6 release.

TeamKinetic Version 5.2 offers a couple of very useful updates for administrators and volunteers in regards to custom fields and search functionality (see below).

The geeks have since been sent back down into the basement with a celebratory glass of diluted Vimto and a Sega Mega-drive with a simple instruction…..Complete version 6 and you will also get a game.

Version 6 Coming Soon…

Additional Custom Fields

For those of you who are now familiar with the custom fields, they allow administrators to add customised questions to the volunteer’s registration screen. This was originally limited to questions which required a TEXT, NUMERIC or YES/NO answers. This latest update allows you to also add questions that require the following types of answers: Drop down fields, Selection Fields.

Drop down fields allow the administrator to add questions which require the volunteer to select a single answer from a set list of answers. And selection fields allow the volunteer to select none, one or multiple options from a set list of answers.

Administrators can add custom fields by going to SETTINGS > CUSTOM REGISTRATION FIELDS from the menu.

All questions are editable and viewable by both volunteers and administrators, but please try to keep your custom fields to a minimum as the more fields you add, the more likely volunteers will be put off by the length of the registration form.

Volunteer Search Function Update

When volunteers search for opportunities using a keyword the system now also searches provider names.

For example if a provider called Nottingham Netball Team create an opportunity called referee, and the volunteer searches for opportunities using the word ‘Netball’. The updated function will now search opportunity name and also provider names for the word ‘Netball’.

The search function has also been optimised to speed up the return of your search results.

Version 6 Coming Soon…

That is all in terms of changes, but please let us know if you come across any issues with the functions mentioned above, and as always we will be delighted for any feedback.

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

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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.