We are happy to announce a new update to VolunteerMatters!

VolunteerMatters is excited to announce a new release of VolunteerMatters scheduled for Wednesday, July 3rd. This release is smaller in number of items but represents a significant return with some highly requested features.

These updates while extremely helpful will not substantially change the system's interface so there's no "training" required. We just want to make sure you know these features are now available to you. There is nothing you need to do to receive these improvements and they are all included.

The update includes the following highlights:

• Allow Organizers to View Contact List
• Project Admin List - Filter on Publish End Date
• Allow Contact record to be deleted
• Volunteer My Profile: Change Account Recovery Email
• Add Assignment "Created Date" and "Need End Date" to Credential Conflict lists (Cross Project and Per Project)

Details:

Allow Organizers to View Contact List

We are very proud to announce this new feature! Organizer users will now be able to see the contact directory - sometimes referred to as the volunteer database. Previous to this release, organizers could only see the volunteer information presented in reports and the invitation/assignment chooser.

What’s the difference between Administrators and Organizers?

Of course, we have configured the system so that the contact database an Organizer can see is more limited than what an Administrator can see. For example, organizers see a small subset of the data an administrator can see, they cannot edit contact and biographical information, they cannot edit a contact’s credentials, and they cannot manage their access to the volunteer portal.

For more information, please see the following demo video: https://vimeo.com/343324447/ab5e28c58d

The contact directory for Organizers will, by default, be limited to view the following fields:

• Name
• Email
• Mobile Telephone
• Emergency Contact Name
• Emergency Contact Telephone
• Emergency Contact Relationship
• Skills
• Interests
• Availability

If you would like to add fields or remove them from an organizer’s view you may either contact support for assistance (prior or after the 7/3/2019 launch) or mange your configuration settings (after the 7/3/2019 launch).

Project Admin List - Filter on Publish End Date

Also with this release we are very excited about this added functionality. There is now a project end date filter on the main project list.  So when you land on the project list, by default it will only show your current and future projects based on today's date. Past projects will not be included in that initial view but can easily be accessed by removing or modifying the date filter.  This will definitely help those administrators and organizers with large amounts of projects in their VolunteerMatters systems.

Allow Contact record to be deleted

This is also a much requested feature.  In the past we had not provided the ability to delete contacts with assignments and/or credentials on their record.  While you could remove assignments you couldn't remove credentials.  This was done to protect the organization as well as the volunteer.  However after some extensive review we have added the ability for administrators to delete contact records that have credentials on them.  We discovered many of the records that administrators wanted removed from the system were test accounts, duplicate records, etc.. With this release the administrators will now be able to remove those records. Assignments will have to be removed but once they are the administrator will now be able to remove those contacts desired whether or not there are credentials. You will use the same delete button as before. Please note, once a contact is deleted it can not be recovered easily and recovery processes can incur additional fees.

Volunteer My Profile: Change Account Recovery Email

With this release the volunteer can now modify their Account Recovery email.  This email is the initial email that the volunteer used during registration and all password resets are sent to.  Previously a volunteer or the administrator could only change the email on their contact record but not the account email. With this update the volunteer can now modify that email without support assistance from the 'Site Access' box on their My Profile page.

Add Assignment "Assigned" Date and "Need End" Date to Credential Conflict lists (Cross Project and Per Project)

This release also includes a small update to the various Credential Conflict lists within the system.  The assignment that the credential conflict is generated from will now have it's "Need End" date and the "Assigned" date in the available information onscreen and via export.  The "Need End" date will be beneficial for positions to give the administrator/organizer more information about the need itself.  While the "Assigned" date will be the assignment's "Created" date from the assignment view. This is the date the volunteer signed themselves up or were assigned to the need manually by an administrator or organizer.  This update to the credential conflict list will give the administrators/organizers a little more information on possibly how long the conflict has existed for. Now a credential may expire after an assignment is created so it's not always an exact display of how long a conflict has existed but will give you a great starting point to viewing and dealing with older conflicts with your team.