Tag: TeamKinetic update

TeamKinetic Update – 2.5.1 Release

Hi all and welcome to another stuffed full of goodness, TeamKinetic update.

We’ve got some big changes in the pipeline regarding customising workflows. These are going to take some time to realise properly, so we wanted to get some of the smaller things done and dusted so you don’t have to wait.

Catch the full summary of changes made in this TeamKinetic update via this video, or tuck into all the details in full below.

Data Retention Options and Rules

In this TeamKinetic update, there are two new options that work well with the auto-delete options to handle your data retention needs.

You can now select the level of data you wish to retain when any volunteer is removed, by an admin, by themselves or via the auto-deletion of inactive volunteers.

The first level only saves the volunteer’s hours, anonymously in the deleted hours total that you see in reports. This has been the only available level of data retention to this point.

The second level adds the volunteer’s essential profile information; name, email address etc. to the data that is retained.

Level three adds the volunteer’s opportunity and session history, so you can trace what sessions they were on and where.

Level four adds their email log.

All this information is searchable and viewable in your dashboard and you’ll have the option to expunge data or to extend the retention period, anytime you wish.

The second option sets a data retention period. Once any retained data is older than this it will be automatically expunged.

File Upload Custom Registration Question

A super useful new field type that you can add to the volunteer registration page. Great if there are documents you need from the volunteer as part of their registration.

The uploaded files are stored in the volunteer’s ID section of their document storage. The files are given the label short name you define when creating the custom question and locked to prevent deletion by the volunteer.

File upload questions only appear on the registration page and are not editable from the volunteer’s dashboard.

Text Only Custom Registration Question

If you want to provide more information about any step in the registration process you can now add a text-only section.

The text displayed will be the label you define when setting up the question.

Just like the registration questions these only appear on the actual registration page.

Character Limits on Single and Multiline Text Entry Custom Questions

Add a maximum number of characters that volunteers and providers can enter in these fields.

The limit will prevent users from entering any characters beyond the limit. On average an English word has 4.7 characters, so divide the character count by 5 to get a rough estimate of word count.

The limit defaults to 2500 or 500 words.

User Controllable Cookie Consent

Remember all those annoying cookie consent pop-ups; they’re back!

We were hopeful that these might disappear with our exit from the EU but they haven’t gone anywhere yet.

It is now a requirement to allow users to opt out of various sorts of cookies, like the Google Analytics cookies, as well as the required non-tracking ones for logins etc.

We’ll be adding our pop-up to all our customer sites throughout this release. Your users should only see this annoyance once and then their preferences are set on that machine.

It’s a necessary evil I’m afraid 😞

Easier to Complete Address Lookup

We’ve had persistent issues with users entering their UK postcode but not hitting the search button to select their full address. This stops them from being able to complete the registration but it was not clear to the user why.

Now the search box is triggered immediately that the postcode box is left, so even if they miss this entirely, when they come to hit the registration button it will be clear which fields need to be completed.

Weekly Email Changes

If you have opps that have longer than seven days between being added and being authorised, there is a chance that they will never appear in the weekly email as we used the creation date to choose which opps to show but they still had to be authorised.

If an opp was created on 01/01/2024 but was not authorised till 10/01/2024 it would not be valid for the weekly email till it was authorised on the 10th, but by then its created date was already more than seven days past so it wouldn’t appear.

We now ignore the creation date when selecting the opps for the weekly email which avoids this issue.


Thanks for reading, we hope you enjoy this latest TeamKinetic update.

As always, remember you can shape our future updates by submitting feature requests.
Just go to Help & Support → Support Tickets → Open New Ticket → Ticket Type: New Feature Request

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!

TeamKinetic 2.5.1 Minor Release

The TeamKinetic 2.5.1 Minor Release is complete and some of you will have already spotted the new stuff!

Reporting Page Speed Improvements

The reporting page is grabbing ever more data for more reports over longer periods. We’d already noticed some slowdowns and some customers had opened support tickets to report load time of 10 plus seconds. We needed to fix that!

  • We have rewritten some of the queries that fetch the data to make them snappier
  • Delayed the fetching of some data until you open the relevant section
  • Fetched the all time and date limited stats after the page has loaded so it won’t block you looking at other reports

It looks like this when you first load the page and the stats will drop in shortly.


The page will load in less than 4 seconds now for even our largest data customers.

New Help and Info for the Custom App

For our admins that have got their own branded app in the Play and iOS stores, we have added a few areas to help them manage the new app.

In the Super Admin > Setup > Custom App section you’ll find all the information you need to explore and communicate to your users about your new all. It contains QR codes, links to the app and a large version of your app icon.

If you want to find out how many people are using the app, registering via the app and joining sessions via the app we’ve got you covered with a new section in the reporting page.

The little tooltips will let you know how each stat is calculated and what it means and the figures are limited to the dates you choose on the reporting page.

Mobile App Download Prompts

We’ve now reinstigated the screen overlay prompts for volunteers who access their dashboard on a small screen to download the mobile app.

If you have switched up to the custom branded app, then the links and QR Codes adjust accordingly.

There is also a permanent notification in the footer, reminding users they can use the native mobile app.

Improved Volunteer Password Reset

After working through the process with the Wildlife Trust (thanks Jake) that had lot of volunteers to import and on-board, we spotted a few places where the process wasn’t as clear and simple as it could be, so we’ve made these changes

  • A clear message if the reset token (from an old email) a volunteer is trying to use is expired or bad. This appears before they try to reset their password; it used to appear afterwards and so some volunteers missed it and thought they had reset their password successfully.
  • Suppose a volunteer resets multiple times in a short period and the existing token is still valid. In that case, the token is not reset and a new email is sent with the same token as included in previous emails. This stops that reset loop of doom where a volunteer uses the reset link and an email is sent, but they don’t receive the email quickly enough, or hit the reset link again by accident. This would result in multiple emails with different reset tokens only the latest of which would work.
  • If a reset token is not valid the volunteer has only the option of sending the reset email again, so if they miss the fail message they can’t try to login, which would be frustrating as it wouldn’t work yet
  • Changed the wording of some of the messaging to make it clearer

All the changes together lead to a more intuitive process and we’ve been logging the outcomes for a while and we are getting far fewer issues.

Email Notification of Deleted Volunteer

Volunteers can remove themselves from your database, an important ability to fulfil your GDPR responsibilities. Previously, although the hours were anonymised and retained, the admins would have no idea that a volunteer had removed themselves.

We’ve added an email notification to the main admin which will tell them which volunteer and email address has been removed.

This clears the path to a future update that will allow admins to pick the level of detail they wish to retain when a volunteer is removed. Keep an eye out for that update.

Volunteer Registration Form Improvements

We’ve added some new messaging and prompts to aid volunteers in completing the location section, which has been an issue for some.

Volunteers cannot proceed when entering a UK postcode until they have hit the search button and selected an address from those available.

This will help those volunteers who find they cannot proceed but don’t know why.

Session Number Filter

Added a session number filter to the volunteer search so you can filter your volunteers by the number of sessions they have joined in addition to the existing filters for number of opportunities and hours logged.

Length of Service Added to Volunteer Search

Just a little something that might help, next to the registration date for volunteers is a year and months since registration figure so you can quickly see how long they have been volunteering.

New Volunteer Search Filters

You can now filter by;

  • volunteers that have never logged in (imported but not logged in)
  • volunteers awaiting parental consent (remember you can resend the parental consent email and update the parental email from the volunteer management page)
  • Expiry date of qualifications
  • Date a volunteer last applied for an opportunity

We add filters to this area regularly so it is always worth a quick scan down the filter list occassionally.


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 might even send you a little thank you.

TeamKinetic 2.5 – Search is now turbo charged

The latest major release is now complete! Say hello to TeamKinetic 2.5.

Here are the great new features you can look forward to.

Watch our masterclass on all the key new features now:


Save your favourite searches and set a default


Create your personalised smart search and save to your profile to retrieve anytime. You can set any search as your default for the volunteer, opportunity and provider search pages. So as soon as you open one of those pages you’ll get the results you need immediately.

You can set your defaults across all the search pages in one go from your profile area. (The person icon at the right of the top menu.)

New Search Filters

We’ve added some new filters to the volunteer and opportunity search pages;

  • Date volunteer last logged hours
  • Volunteers waiting for parental consent (in the type sub-filter)
  • Opportunity ID check required
  • Is opportunity accessible
  • Opportunity applicant statuses
  • Providers with open applications

It’s always worth checking the search filters as they get added and improved constantly.

Watch it in action:


Full WYSIWYG rich text editing everywhere

Anywhere you can email a volunteer or a group of volunteers, you’ll now have access to the full rich text editing features and can include images, links and files.


This includes the volunteer search page, opportunity pages, volunteer profile pages. Basically anywhere you can email, expect to see the rich text editor.

Watch it in action:


Volunteer self-reported extra volunteering

We are very excited to reveal that volunteers will now be able to create their own complete record of volunteering and capture all their opportunities and hours.

Volunteers can add a description, the organisation and any hours donated. These will be included in their own record of achievements and hour totals.


Admins are notified when a volunteer adds their own extracurricular volunteering. If they wish, they can certify it and include it as approved hours. Those certified extra volunteering activities will be converted into the regular owed hours (now all termed ‘Extra Volunteering’) type opportunities. These will be included in reports and act as regular logged hours throughout the application.

Watch it in action:


Email send reports

We all know how frustrating it is to send emails to lots of volunteers. Some of them just don’t make it for various reasons.

Now, when you view the email log for any volunteer you will notice a little link next to the subject ‘check delivery’. This small little link will reveal what happened to the email, if it was sent, if it was received, and if opened.


Perfect if you need to know if a volunteer is receiving the emails you are sending.

Watch it in action:


Mark a volunteer as finished on any opportunity type

For long-running opportunities, you can end up with lots of inactive volunteers (those with no future sessions left) clogging up the volunteer list and email lists. Previously you have only been able to remove the volunteers completely from the opportunity which has the undesired side effect of also removing their contribution to the opportunity… not ideal.

We have re-engineered the ‘finished on this opp’ feature. It was previously available on flexible opportunities only, but it has been expanded to all opportunity types.


When selecting volunteers on an opportunity you’ll have an extra function ‘Mark as Finished’ which gives you a few extra options as well as just marking as finished. You can hide the volunteer from the provider completely on the opportunity page and you can also prevent the volunteer from joining any new sessions if you wish.

Watch it in action:


Merging volunteer accounts

It doesn’t happen often, but occasionally a volunteer has unexpectedly registered twice with different email addresses.


This works similarly to the merge provider feature and will copy all the sessions and hours from the volunteer you are viewing to the selected volunteer.

Watch it in action:


Sharing private notes


The private note area has been super useful for lots of our users, and the provider equivalent lets the provider also store private notes for their use against a volunteer.

Admins can now choose to share their private note(s) with providers if they feel it would be useful. And vice-versa: providers can share their private notes with system admins.


Additionally when a provider shares a private note to the admins a notification is sent, in case its important.

Watch it in action:


There are of course many other fixes and improvements;

  • Impersonate a volunteer directly from the opportunity management page,
  • Update expense claims status in bulk,
  • New customisable emails,
  • Tooltips won’t get lost over the edge of small screens.

TeamKinetic 2.5 is scheduled to go live on May 6th. But before we go live we need your feedback! Test all this out right now on https://beta.teamkinetic.co.uk/vk/admin using your regular admin login.


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.

How the Culture Pass could revive event volunteering

How the Culture Pass could revive event volunteering

It’s no secret that volunteering numbers have taken a hit as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. The Culture Pass has been introduced into European countries to try and revive young people’s interest in the arts, but could it also kickstart a boost in event volunteering?

What is the Culture Pass?

Young people across various European countries are being offered a “culture pass”. In general, the pass is offered to people turning 18 years old.

The pass gives young people the opportunity to experience music, theatre and arts for free.

Italy

Introduced in 2016, giving 18-year-olds €500 to spend. Data shows that the majority (83%) have spent their money on books, followed by music products and concert tickets. The system will be reformed in 2024 so that vouchers are only given under certain conditions. Passes will then be given to 18-year-olds from low-income families (income below €35,000 per year) and those who achieve top grades in school.

France

Launched in 2021 to give 18-year-olds €300 to spend within two years. Their app-based pass encourages spending on art experiences, books, musical instruments, online subscriptions and more from French companies/publishers. Following success with 18-year-olds, the scheme was extended to give those aged 15 – 17 money towards cultural experiences too. Each year, 15-year-olds receive €20, while 16 and 17-year-olds receive €30 through the app.

Spain

Starting from 2022, 18-year-olds were given €400 to spend within a year.

Divided into three sections:

  • €200 can be spent on live arts.
  • €100 can be spent on physical cultural products (books, magazines, newspapers, etc.).
  • The remaining €100 to be spent on digital media/consumptions.

Cinema, video games, shows and books were the biggest areas of interest for people using the vouchers. There are calls for the voucher to offer a bigger % of the total to spend on books.

Germany

Brought in from 2023, giving 18-year-olds €200 to spend across two years. Singular purchases are limited in value to encourage a variety of experiences. The pass can only be used on experiences provided by German suppliers, e.g. online platforms such as Amazon and Spotify are not included. The scheme could be extended to 15 to 17-year-olds if successful, like in France.

How can they help?

These passes were mostly introduced to battle the negative impacts of the COVID pandemic on the sector and young people’s lives. Many people were deprived of cultural experiences as a result of lockdowns and this pass aims to introduce them to a variety of arts – especially those who may not have the financial means themselves.

It has been argued that young people making use of the passes will just stick to what they know and favour experiences such as live concerts and video games. However, it is suggested that a large percentage of purchases using the vouchers are going on books from local booksellers, creating a new generation of readers. Furthermore, this is still a valuable resource to offer, giving young people an opportunity to develop a lifelong appreciation of culture, no matter what they choose to spend it on.

If you’re not in the habit of going to see a play or a film or an exhibition in your late teens and early twenties, then you’re not likely to prise yourself away from the couch to go out to cultural events later in life.

Maureen Kennelly, director of the Arts Council

Aside from this, it is also true that the arts sector has struggled, almost coming to a standstill during the pandemic. In Spain and Germany, the cultural vouchers were specifically implemented as a way to assist the cultural/creative sectors. They experienced substantial setbacks due to reduced customer traffic and revenue during the pandemic, but these vouchers have no doubt injected life back into the sector.

But is their success something that we can replicate in the UK?


The case for a UK Culture Pass

While the UK offers universal free admission to national museums, there is no sign of a widespread ‘culture pass’ being introduced for young people. This doesn’t mean no effort is being made on a local level. In Cornwall, they’ve created a ‘Culture Card’, offered to young people (11 – 25) who have been in care at any stage in their life. This card gives free access to various cultural sites across Cornwall, such as museums, art galleries, and national trust sites.

The success of these schemes is clear across the four countries mentioned throughout this post. We have four different examples to look at, learn from, and adapt to suit the UK – it seems like a no-brainer. Of course, the financial investment from the government will be a large barrier to implementation, but the support it will provide to the sector and general economy, and the improvement to people’s wellbeing will surely balance this investment.

Boosting Event Volunteer Engagement

Giving young people a chance to not only have new cultural experiences, but to build habits around the arts, opens the door to boosting the sector in the long-term. In addition, it would provide a gateway for them to get into volunteering within the arts.

Diverse Volunteer Pool

The pass might also attract a more diverse audience to cultural institutions, which could lead to a more diverse pool of potential volunteers. A broader range of backgrounds and experiences can enrich the volunteer community. These volunteers are also likely to be more diverse as there will be no financial barriers, allowing people to get involved regardless of their socioeconomic background.

Enhanced Volunteer Recruitment

Cultural organizations may find it easier to recruit volunteers when more people are engaged with their activities. The pass can serve as a gateway to introduce potential volunteers to these institutions.

Generally, one of the large barriers to volunteering is a lack of free time. This barrier is likely to be lessened among young people. They also have encouragement through external ventures such as the Duke of Edinburgh Award, which requires a certain amount of time spent volunteering.


Do you think the UK should implement a culture pass? How would you structure it? And what would be included? Even without the implementation of a culture pass, it’s worth thinking about how we can make events more accessible to young people.

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

Twitter       Facebook       LinkedIn       YouTube       Instagram       Podcast

 

P.S. 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 2.4.1 Minor Release

The latest minor release is out in the wild now. Here are the big things to watch out for in the new TeamKinetic update.


Tempo Time Credit Integration

This is super exciting and we will be covering this in some other posts and communications.

If you join the Tempo Time Credit scheme, your volunteers will be able to exchange hours they log in TeamKinetic for real-world rewards in their local area. It’s a fantastic way to reward and recognise your volunteers.

The process is fully integrated and volunteers can register and exchange hours from right within the TeamKinetic app. You can find out more on the Tempo website.

Please fill out this form if you’re interested: https://forms.gle/ryvW7cs3yGJGNnV26

TeamKinetic update: screenshot showing Tempo Time Credits integration

First Advantage Digital Check Integration

Another first for volunteer management software. We have integrated the First Advantage digital and criminal check service right into the TeamKinetic app.

As an admin, all you need to do is select the volunteer whose identity you want to check or perform a criminal check on and hit a single button! The volunteer will be contacted to download an identity check app to their phone, proceed to verify their identity, and then the criminal check will be performed and the results fed straight back into TeamKinetic. We expect most checks to be completed within 48 hours.

It’s also possible to perform in-person identity checks and just use the service to complete the criminal check if you are satisfied with the documents presented.

If you’re interested in integrating your identity and criminal checks directly into your volunteer programme, please fill out this form: https://forms.gle/ryvW7cs3yGJGNnV26

TeamKinetic update: image showing the integrated criminal check process

Gender and Birth Sex

We have now successfully decoupled our gender and birth sex questions. Previously we collected the birth sex answer as part of the gender question and you might have noticed that Female/Male was always appended to your own gender list.

We used this answer to define a birth sex of female or male so that if opportunity creators restricted an opportunity by sex we could correctly identify those volunteers that matched.

We’ve been monitoring the usage of the sex-restricted opportunities and it has been going down and down so we decided it was the right time to break this a little so we can get our gender/sex position correct.

You’ll see two new options in the Super Admin Settings > Options menu under the registration section that you can use to switch on/off the Birth Sex and Gender questions. If enabled the questions will be asked at registration and also within the volunteers profile.

If your organisation has no sex-restricted opportunities then the birth sex question will be switched off. We have also retained the female/male responses in your gender lists, but they are now editable, and if you wish you could remove them and use cisgender or whatever your organisation prefers.

Screenshot showing changes to the sex/gender questions in the registration form

Disability and Support Questions

We have also split up this section into two optional registration questions so you can choose to ask if a volunteer considers themselves disabled and/or if they have any extra support issues. We know that for some organisations it is not appropriate to ask or record if a volunteer is disabled but it’s still useful to know about any support issues you can help with.

These options can be found in the REGISTRATION section of the Super Admin Settings > Options menu.

Along with the now optional sex and gender questions you can now have a really minimal registration page which we would always advocate if you don’t need the extra data.

Screenshot showing the volunteer registration form without any gender/sex questions

Auto Deletion of Volunteers

We recognise that storing old data can be an issue, both for GDPR and reporting. It has always been possible to delete volunteers based on a filter like login activity but it was manual. We have added a new feature where you can switch on auto deletion and enter the period of inactivity after which to remove the volunteers.

Matching volunteers will be marked for deletion if they have not logged in within the period you specify, which is 12 months by default. Then after 48 hours, they will be removed and their hours saved in the usual way for deleted volunteers.


Recording No-Shows

For some of our customers, no-shows can be a real issue and while it has been possible to check volunteers in via the day schedule report page, and for volunteers to self-report as a no-show, we’ve not supported an admin method to record the no-show.

You can now do this for single or multiple sessions in the past from the Log Hours section of the opportunity management page. This data is being recorded and once we have some more to work with we will be reporting this data back via the reporting pages and volunteer management page.

Screenshot showing how users can record a no-show volunteer within TeamKinetic now

Volunteer Status

In the past we have had three possible statuses for a volunteer; newly registered with no access, access granted, and access revoked. We have extended this to include a retired status, a revoked due to safeguarding issues, and an under-review status. These status changes have also been added to the webhook actions so your connected applications can be notified when a volunteer’s status changes.

Screenshot showing the different volunteer access options

More Automated Notifications

We’ve added a few more email notifications to try and streamline the pre and post-session operation.

If you utilise the custom opp joining email to let your volunteers know more details about the opportunity once they have joined, then we will resend that email the day before a volunteer’s next session, just to remind them!

We have also added an editable post-opportunity period setting so that you can control how long after a volunteer’s last session on an opportunity they receive the post-opp reminder email (or you can switch it off entirely). If the opportunity has a post-opp survey or document this will be appended to the email.

Screenshot showing the TeamKinetic settings for Email Notifications

The eagle-eyed amongst you will also notice in that screenshot that you can now also choose to include or exclude events in the weekly email newsletter that is sent every Friday.


There is of course, as always, the usual bug fixes and small changes that we hope make your day-to-day interaction with TeamKinetic better and better.

Many thanks to all our customers who open support tickets and new feature requests that helped shape this TeamKinetic update…keep them coming in!


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 G2, we’d really appreciate it!

TeamKinetic 2.3.0 Minor Release

For a minor release, this one is quite major! There are no breaking changes or anything huge but some great improvements.

Match ALL or ANY on the Volunteer Search Page

On the volunteer search page, you can now select ALL or ANY as the matching criteria. This means you could search for volunteers that are a member of any of a set of groups, or that live in any of a set of postcodes for instance.

Not Checked Option When Filtering

When filtering on custom questions that are checkboxes you can now filter by these boxes not being checked. Previously as nothing is stored when a box is unchecked this was not possible.

Volunteer Action Log

A great new feature that allows admins to check what has been happening with a particular volunteer. Currently, it displays what opps they have viewed, when they have logged hours, joined sessions, and so on. We’ll be extended this with more logged actions in future releases

Create a PDF of Opportunities

Find the opportunities you want to include in the PDF, click their checkboxes and you can now print a nicely formatted PDF with an opportunity on each page.

You get a few options of what to include in the printout and a handy QR code is included so volunteers can find the opp quickly on your website.

Multiple LinkWide Group Membership

For those of you that are in a LinkWide sharing group (get in touch if this sounds like something you would be interested in), you can now join multiple groups, each with its own sharing ruleset.

Editing Existing Resources

You can now edit your existing resources…no need to delete and recreate which is a real-time saver. Additionally, you can also edit the order in which the resources appear.

Select Specific Map Location When Creating Opps

We’ve added back in the ability to move the map marker when creating opps with the new opp creation screens, jsut as you could when editing an opportunity.

Email All Providers from Opp Selection

Previous to this release, when you select a number of opportunities from the opp search page it was only possible to email all the volunteers on those opps. You can now also email all the providers who created those opps. This is great for chasing up providers who have outstanding volunteer applications for their opps for instance.

Improved Email Logging

The storage of the plain text version of sent emails has been improved so you won’t see all the HTML stuff when looking at a volunteer or provider email log anymore.

Better Upload Image Support

We can now support all modern web image formats including WEBP when you are uploading images anywhere in the app.

 

Over 50 smaller fixes and improvements have also been added which I hope will make you even more productive day to day.

As always, we are ready to take your feedback and questions in all the normal channels.

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