We are happy to announce a new update to VolunteerMatters!

NOTE: This solution will be updated with links to additional solutions when available. 

VolunteerMatters is excited to announce a new release of VolunteerMatters scheduled for April 22, 2020.

 This release represents a significant revamping of the Project Administration area for an improved administrative experience.  This update also includes a number of smaller updates and new features that will be sure to please!

For the most part these updates while extremely helpful will not substantially change the system's interface so there's really no "training" required. We just want to make sure you know these features and updates 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:

• Project Administration Configuration Update
• Project Need Configuration Reports
• Volunteer History Report Update
• Contact Chooser List View Grouping
• Parent Contact Record Functionality
• Contact Organization Field List Option
• Additional Zapier Triggers and Fields
  
  

Details:

Project Administration Configuration Update

We are very proud to announce this update to the Project Administration area!  We hope this update will make it easier on Administrators and Organizers. Prior to this release, administrators and organizers accessed the project administration setup and assign areas from different pages.  Now they are both available on the same page!  Introducing the "Project Needs" page:



You will notice on this "Needs" page you have all the buttons you accessed from different pages before.  This enables you to manage the project need setup and assignments all from one location.  The project shifts area now includes a calendar utility to allow you to manage your shifts by month.  

Volunteer Shift Monthly Calendar Display

With the new Project Administration page, a new volunteer shift project need display is used.  It now utilizes a monthly calendar view that displays the current month's volunteer shifts and allows the administrator to scroll through the previous and upcoming months and click on specific dates or days of the week to display shifts that match their selections!

For example if you click on the Day of the Week column heading in the calendar it will display all the shifts available for that day in the list of opportunities on the right where the administrator can then use the "Assign", "Edit", or "Delete" buttons on a particular need for whatever they need completed. 

 Also, when on the initial projects page itself, there is no longer "Assign" or "Setup" buttons, but a "Needs" button to take you to the new page.

Project Need Configuration Reports

We are very proud to announce this new feature!  This will allow an administrator or organizer to view the configuration on their project needs in bulk to make sure that the settings are correct.  This can be done on a cross project or per project level.  So for example if you wanted to audit your Fall Coaching Positions to make sure they all had the proper credentials this can be done very easily now!   These reports are included in the "Reports" drop down from the main projects page and from each individual project. 

As with all reports within VolunteerMatters they are available to export.

Added Position Assignment "Manually Reported" field to the Volunteer History Reports (Cross Project and Per Project)

This release also includes a small update to the various Volunteer History Reports within the system.  These lists now include a "Manually Report" field.  This field designates whether the record in the report is from a self-reported hour or not.  This will allow an administrator or organizer to use the search box to either filter out or only include those types of hours if desired.   To utilize the search box, all they will need to do is enter:

manuallyreported=true
manuallyreported=false

This will search/filter for the value in that column and produce those assignments that meet the different criteria.

Contact Chooser List View Grouping

With this release the Contact Chooser will now display List View Groups to make it easier than ever to find your specific list view. 

For more information on managing List Views click here.

Parent Contact Record Functionality

This is a new type of field in the contact database that allows an administrator to link two related contact records together. It is not a "Parent" record in the "Mother/Father" family type, but records that are somehow related to each other. The system allows you to designate one contact record in the database as the parent record and the other as the child. A contact record can only have one parent record, but a contact record can be the parent for as many related records as you want.  Each of these records contains a link to the other and the parent record can be added to list views and used in filter criteria's.   Once a record has been added as a parent record, a new field will automatically appear on their contact record called "Related Records" showing all the contacts that have designated it as a the parent record.

View on the "Child" record:

View on the "Parent" record:

Contact Organization Field List Option

Also with this release we are very excited about added functionality for the existing Organization free-text field.   This new option for the built-in contact Organization field in VolunteerMatters, allows you choose to have a managed list of organizations for a volunteer or administrator to search and select from when populating this field. Furthermore, the field supports a write-in option. This write-in option allows the entry of a value not in the predefined list. The custom entry will be saved with the contact record but will not be added to the list of predefined choices for other volunteers and/or administrators. This is a great update as it supports large lists, search, and the ability to write-in.

For more information click here.

Additional Zapier Triggers and Fields

Lastly with this release we are pleased to announce additional triggers for the VolunteerMatters Zapier API integration. Previously there were three triggers available: Contact Created, Assignment Created, and Assignment Updated.  Now there are two more:  Contact Updated and Assignment Deletion (withdrawal). Along with these two additional triggers additional fields have been added to the Assignment triggers to provide more information to use as you see fit via your Zapier account.

For more information on Zapier API integration click here.