How Search is Updated after you publish or edit a volunteer opportunity

The Search Engine in HandsOn Connect is updated every time a HOC client publishes or updates a volunteer opportunity or occurrence.  Typically search results on your search page and calendar will reflect your updates within 10-15 minutes.

At times however, depending on the load on the server, as well as the nature of the change you've made, you may not see the updated listing until the next morning.  (Overnight the search server refreshes every search iin every instance as part of its nightly update)

Changing values in a related record, such as the Organization Name or Volunteer Event Name, while updated in Salesforce, do not update the Last Modified Date of the associated Volunteer Opportunities and Occurrences.  The change in the Last Modified Date is what triggers the new information to be updated.  So if you have edited the Name of the Managing Organization or Organization Served in their related Organization record or the edited the name of the Volunteer Event, please also edit the related occurrences (it can be as simple as Approving/activating the occurrence or editing the Registration cutoff (hours) field) so that the change is sent and updated in the search results.

In any case - the search database is completely updated overnight each night - so you should always see current results the following morning if they haven't appeared previously.

Is it possible to see the opportunity detail page as it will appear - before I can find it in search?

Yes. There is a field available in the page layout for occurrences, and which can be added (or is already present) in the Occurrences related list in the Volunteer Opportunity Record, that is the direct link to the opportunity detail page. The field name is Occurrence URL. If you need to make this volunteer opportunity detail page available to volunteers immediately - you can publish or email this URL to volunteers.  You can put a link to it on your home page or anywhere in the CMS.  Clicking on the link will find the opportunity detail page immediately - even before its available in the search engine.

If this field isn't already present in your related list, or in the occurrence record -- your system administrator can add this to your page layout(s).  

What does the keyword field in search actually search against?

Keyword searches will look for matches in the following fields of the volunteer opportunity record:

  • Opportunity Name
  • Description
  • Managing Organization
  • Organization Served
  • Skill Categories
  • Impact Area
  • Program Area (local)
  • Impact Area (local)

All your volunteer opportunities and occurrences are automatically syndicated to AllForGood.org

Any searches done through AllForGood.org or any of the search engines that are powered by this aggregator, will find any of your 'active' volunteer opportunities.  Clicking on a link to these opportunities will bring them back to your instance of HandsOn Connect for more information and to sign up or express interest.

Administrative and/or Invitation Code Required opportunities will not be found via All For Good or in your public site search results (except when entering an invitation code as a search parameter on your public site.)

AllforGood.org also offers its feeds to other national search engines -- so your opportunities may be found in a number of searches across the web. Wherever they are found - the actual signup will take place on your public site and be added to your data in HandsOn Connect!

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