In HOC Skills are grouped into Skill categories as a matter of convenience for organizations with a lot of skills.   This makes it easier for volunteers to update their skill profile, and find individual skills.

However -- Volunteers searching for opportunities that used specific skills was not really possible in HOC Search.  Why?  Because the 'skills' listed in the search filter were actually the 'skill categories" and not the individual skills themselves.  

So if you had a skill category of "Languages" - and had three languages listed as skills, you couldn't search for opportunities that were associated with the skill "Spanish".   You could only search for those opportunities that had the skill category "Language".   Not as helpful.

Also:  Volunteer Opportunity Detail pages listed skill categories in the requirements section, and not the skills themselves.   And if a skill was required to sign up for an opportunity and you didn't have that skill in your skill profile - the message saying to check your skill profile and see if you had the needed skill wasn't very helpful - because you wouldn't know which skill was required  (just the general skill category :-(

We're happy to announce that with this release, HOC will provide more specific information about skills, so that the skills themselves, rather than their associated categories will be searchable via the public site, and appear in the Requirements section of the Opportunity Detail Page.

Searching for Skills:    the "Use these Skills" page will now list Skills (rather than skill categories)

Volunteer Opportunity Detail Pages:  Will now list skills, rather than skill categories -- so you know exactly what skill is associated with the opportunity.

Bug Fix:   Folks who have been using the HOC Form Builder in the CMS have noted that the order of fields sometimes shifts after you save and then reopen the form. The form builder has been improved so that fields will be saved in the order defined. (HOC3-3873)

Support for URL fields.  Its now possible to create fields of type "URL" and to map these form builder fields to Salesforce URL fields.  (HOC3-3874)

Ability to populate a form builder picklist field with the values of a picklist in Salesforce. (HOC3-3920) Now included in the form builder for fields of type Picklist, Picklist (Multiple), and Radio (Picklist) are new picklist options:  

• Load Picklist options from Salesforce Field - allows you to bring in the picklist items from a field in Salesforce and have them automatically populated in your form.  This saves you the trouble of manually inputting a picklist and eases the synching of your form builder field to the mapped SF field.

Hidden Fields - can now be mapped to any field in SF.  (HOC3-4088)

Forms with Redirection - will no longer display the form's standard Success Page.  (HOC3-4094)

Text Encrypted Field option - its now possible to create a text encrypted field when mapping to Salesforce is turned on. The encrypted text submitted in this field, will not be available via the form data export, but will only be available in Salesforce. (HOC3-4114)

Ability to pre-populate form with data from SF Record - when creating a form with the settings, update record, required login, and save to in Salesforce,  its possible to pre-populate the form with the existing data from Salesforce.  Use the toggle "Popular Fields from Salesforce" on a field where you want the current SF data displayed in the form.  (HOC3-4304)

Additionally, a number of smaller error messages have been addressed and fixed.

Page Title:   When creating a page - the field formerly known as "Page Name" is now called "Page Title".  The Page Title can be Displayed as a header to the page by checking the box "Display Page Title" in the advanced settings.

This means you no longer have to put the heading for the page in the page content itself and figure out how to style it.   This will ensure consistent looking page titles for your pages!

Home Page Image Slider - Images displayed on home page in the slider will load in a smoother manner, and not display artifacts when first rendering.