August 2016 Release Notes
This August our first international customer is piloting our new HOC 3.0 public site and volunteer portal and its multi-lingual capabilities. This paves the way for exciting new functionality that will be available to all customers in the coming months. Our August release also has a number of bug fixes and improvements.
The release will be deployed to all HOC clients between August 1 and August 5.
Improvement: Proposing a schedule for Individually Scheduled Opportunities no longer requires leading '0". (ISOs) - HOC573
On the public site, a volunteer Expressing interest in one or more connections for an ISO has to enter the start time and end time they'd like to volunteer. Previously, if you entered a time like 1:00 PM you would get a validation message saying that the time had to be in the format 01:00 PM (with a leading 0). This created a lot of unexpected, albeit minor, error messages for users requiring them to add the leading 0. The interface has been improved and streamlined and will now accept time entries like 1:00 PM or 9:00 AM and not ask for the leading 0. Thanks to Hostelling Int'l for suggesting this minor but welcome improvement.
Improvement: Behavior of Connections in Connection Grid and Attendance Due tab (HOC-595)
If a volunteer self-reported attendance, that took place on the same day they reported it, the connection was not showing up in the attendance grid.
Why was this happening? Because they didn't meet the criteria for 'scheduled volunteers" as the connection took place in the past (earlier that same day), and they didn't meet the criteria for "Attendance Due" - because the Attendance Due tab didn't show connections until the day after a connection took place.
Connections will now appear in the "Attendance Due" tab as soon as the Start Date and Time for the connection is in the past. So, for all connections, as soon as you are able to report attendance, the connection will be found in the Attendance Due" tab (including all self-reported connections, even if they are reported minutes after they took place that day!) (This will make it possible for partners to immediately verify attendance for volunteers who are using self-reporting as a way of 'checking out' as a volunteer).
(In the screenshot below - this self-reported connection was created on August 1 at 10:36 am and immediately shows up in the Attendance Due tab!
Thanks to Volunteer Center for Howard County for reporting this issue with freshly reported self-reported connections!
Improvements to Basic Portal sharing model (HOC-602)
There have been issues related to records not being shared appropriately for Volunteer Leaders using the Basic Portal. Improvements have been made to the sharing model to ensure sharing works more reliably and Volunteer Leaders are able to see the appropriate volunteer opportunities, occurrences and connections.
Fixed: Add to Calendar for ISO Connections (HOC-570)
The Add to Calendar functionality returned an error message when trying to add a confirmed connections of Individually Scheduled Opportunities (ISOs). The Add To Calendar functionality for ISOs has been cleaned up so once ISO connections are confirmed, a volunteer can add them to their personal calendar from the "My Upcoming Opportunities" section of their Account Overview.
Fixed: Inappropriate error message when editing start time and end time for TBS connections in connection grid (HOC-617).
Some users were experiencing error messages when editing the start time and/or end time of TBS connections in the connection grid. The following error message was presented, even when it wasn't appropriate. This turned out to be related to improper handling of connections with a start time between 12:00 am and 12:59 am (the default that is found in TBS connections until you actually properly confirm and schedule a TBS occurrence.) This issue turned out to be related to recent changes to make HOC support Internalization, and has been corrected. Users should no longer see this error message inappropriately when editing start time and end time for TBS connections.
Fixed: Registration Cutoff Defaults not populating from Volunteer Opportunity to new Occurrences (HOC-577)
The default value for new volunteer opportunities for "Registration cutoff (hours)" is 1. This value can be edited at any time if you wish to cutoff signup earlier. It was reported however that when creating new occurrences, all new occurrences were created with cutoff hours = 1 even if the value in the volunteer opportunity was something else. That made it necessary to edit this field for every new occurrence if you didn't want it to be a value of 1. This issue has been fixed, and now, when creating new occurrences, the default value of registration cutoff from the volunteer opportunity, will be automatically populated when you save the newly created occurrence. (Note: You can still override this value in the occurrence if you wish by placing any other value in that field).
Fixed: Mobile Phone Validation Message (HOC-613)
As part of the upcoming AddOn Store option of adding text messaging (SMS) as a notification system for volunteers, we've added more robust phone number validation to the Registration form. Some users reported that this validation was creating occasional errors when entering mobile phone numbers on the volunteer registration form and/or personal information page. This issue has been fixed.
Fixed: Issue in Firefox where volunteers had difficulty signing up with a team (HOC-641)
Some Firefox users reported that drop down picklists did not function properly when signing up for a volunteer opportunity with a team. This has been fixed.
Fixed: Guest Volunteer Hours not calculating for TBS Opportunities when reporting attendance in connections grid
Some HOC users still making use of TBS opportunties have observed a recent regression in behavior when reporting attendance. If Guest Volunteers were added to a TBS connection and attendance was reported, the Guest Hours were not properly calculated. The guest hours remained 0. This has been fixed and now guest hours will be properly updated.
Users aware of this have been manually updating the guest hours in the connection record itself, but this will no longer be necessary. The proper behavior in the connection grid has been restored.
How to update previously incorrect data if you've experienced this problem:
If you or your partners use TBS connections, add guest volunteers and report attendance, you may want to check to see if you have any connections where guest hours = 0 (This should only have occurred in the last few months since this change in behavior started happening)
To check if this is the case, create a view or report and look for any TBS connections where Guest Volunteer > 1, Attendance is Verified, and yet Guest Hours = 0. If you have connections in this state, you can run a script that will update these connections. Here's how:
From the 'name' menu at the top of the page-- select Developer Console
In the popup window - click on Debug > Open Execute Anonymous Window
In the window that pops up "Enter Apex Code" paste the following code without changes, and click the execute button
String query = 'select Id from HOC__Connection__c where HOC__Guest_Volunteers__c>0 AND (HOC__Status__c=\'Confirmed\' OR HOC__Status__c=\'Self-Reported\') AND HOC__Attendance_Status__c=\'Attended (and Hours Verified)\' AND (HOC__Number_Guest_Hours_Served__c=null OR HOC__Number_Guest_Hours_Served__c<=0)';
String field = 'updateOnly';
String Value = 'true';
String valueType = 'Decimal';
ID batchprocessid = Database.executeBatch(new HOC.cls_batchUpdateObject(query,field,value,valueType));
A request will be sent and any connections that have have attended connections, with guest hours = 0 will be updated to the correct values.
You'll only need to do this once to update past records. Going forward, guest hours will be properly updated!
Under the hood improvements: (HOC-582)
Improved code that was causing unexpected problems in the registration sign-up process when one or more email templates were unexpectedly missing from the system. (Note: As always - we urge all system admins to avoid deleting anything in the system.Sometimes deleting something as seemingly inconsequential as an unused email template may cause conflicts with the HOC code!) In any case -- the code has been updated so this particular missing email template won't cause problems should this happen in the future!
jovita
Is text messaging volunteers an active feature?
Larry Deckel
Text messaging is available as a paid add-on to HandsOn Connect. In addition to paying for this feature in HOC, you'll have to establish an account with a text message provider (we have partnerships with a few alternatives), and then pay their established per-text rate for the sending of texts. If you want pricing and more details about texting options, open a ticket at https://support.handsonconnect.org