July 2016 Release Notes

The July release brings additional bug fixes and a new feature you'll see in your email later this month.   Behind the scenes, as announced and shared with those who attended the Points of Light Conference in Detroit, we have nearly finished the new public site and volunteer portal which will initially be made available to new customers and those who enrolled in the custom themes pilot.  

The new public site and volunteer portal beta contains a new CMS system, supports multi-lingual content and internationalization, and higher levels of customization are possible.  We'll be sharing more details in the near future on the new public site, including options and timelines for converting existing customers over to it.

Here's what's coming to existing customers this month as part of the July release:

New Feature: Monthly Metrics Report via Email

Here's a surprise new feature rolling out later this month!  We'll be starting monthly email delivery of a report of key metrics about your instance of HandsOn Connect.  This will be sent to your organization's primary contact.  Included in the report will be statistics giving valuable insight into what's been going on during the previous month.  Among the data points that will be initially reported are:

  • Number of active volunteers  (This month vs last month)
  • Number of active projects (This month vs last month)
  • Number of searches, clicks and connections on your site (and % difference from previous month)
  • Your five most active opportunities!
  • Which day had the most connections last month.

More stats will be coming as we continue to refine this tool.  If there are additional stats you'd like to see each month, please let us know. Need custom metrics around your custom fields?  Open a zendesk ticket and we'll discuss how we can help you gain deeper, customized analytics.

New Feature: Monthly Metrics Report via Email

Update:  Social Login is now out of Beta (HOCAVV-526)

Update:  Social Login is now out of Beta (HOCAVV-526)

The social login feature introduced in the Winter '2015 release has proved stable and reliable for those using it for simplified login via Facebook. As a result, we're removing the 'beta status' that was shown on the page "Social Login" (  /HandsOn_Connect_SSO )  where people associate their facebook account.

Page Enhancement:  Opportunity Detail Page for TBS opportunities - volunteer limit and slots remaining removed (HOC-424)

Page Enhancement:  Opportunity Detail Page for TBS opportunities - volunteer limit and slots remaining removed (HOC-424)

Customers have long-reported that the default value for To Be Expressed Interest opportunities, which is 500, makes no sense to display on the public site.  (The limit is set so that a large number of connections can be associated with an express interest opportunity since its ongoing).

Effective with this release, the volunteer limit and spots remaining for TBS opportunities will no longer be displayed on the public site.  (This is consistent with our not showing limits for Individually Scheduled Opportunities - our other type of 'ongoing' volunteer opportunity.

Volunteer Limit and Spots Remaining will be displayed only for Date and Time Specific Opportunities in which the maximum number of volunteers is relevant to each occurrence.

Bug Fix:  Updating the date and time of Date and Time Specific Occurrences now updates waitlisted connections as well! (HOC-426)

Bug Fix:  Updating the date and time of Date and Time Specific Occurrences now updates waitlisted connections as well! (HOC-426)

In Spring '2016 we removed the need for the 'update all connections' field - and automated the process by which all connections would be updated for Date and Time Specific occurrences, and would not be updated for TBS or ISO occurrences.  Works great!

However, an old bug that's been around for a while shows one more issue we needed to address.

If a Date and Time Specific Occurrence is updated,  it is not updating waitlisted connections.  (Only those that are confirmed).   Waitlisted connections should be updated as well  (with the new date and time) — since if space opens up, and the volunteer signs up - the waitlisted connection is reused and turned into a confirmed connection (but still had the old dates and times).

Now, if you change the date and time of a date and time specific occurrence - waitlisted connections will be updated as well!

Bug Fix: Posting Status was not always updating as expected.  (HOC-537)

Bug Fix: Posting Status was not always updating as expected.  (HOC-537)

Improvements had been made to the accuracy of the field "Posting Status" in Volunteer Opportunities and Occurrences in the Spring 2016 release.

However, some customers reported certain circumstances in which the posting status of opportunities were reported as "This is not published. There are no upcoming, active occurrences." when this was not the case.

The factors that contributed to this problem have been identified, and posting status should once again be accurately updated each evening and other factors will not cause this field to become misrepresentative.

Please let us know if you encounter a volunteer opportunity or occurrence where the posting status is not accurate at any given time (within 24 hours accuracy), so we ensure that this field can be accurately relied upon.

Image Search and Insert improved (HOC-439, HOC-525)

In the new version of the WYSWYG editor, images uploaded to the image library were displayed with only 5 images per page when clicking on the 'browser server" button.

This has been improved and now you can view 100 images at a time

Image Search and Insert improved (HOC-439, HOC-525)

Also - performance has been improved when you upload an image to the server. To upload and insert an image:

  1. Click on the 'Image' icon in the editor.
  2. Click on the "Upload" tab
  3. Click on 'Choose File" and pick a file off your hard drive (make sure its an optimized image!)
  4. Click on "Upload to Server"
  5. Click on OK
  6. The image will be inserted with no further prompts or error messages and no need to browse images to find it!

Note: You can further edit the image if you desire, by clicking on the image in the editor, once again clicking the 'image' icon, and then you can edit its width, height, alignment, etc.

Basic Portal Bug Fix:  Unable to search for volunteers with apostrophe in their name (HOCAVV-551)

In the Manage Volunteers navigation in the basic portal, searching for volunteers with an apostrophe in their name (like O'Connor) resulted in errors. This has been corrected.

Bug Fix:  Login Errors occurring when external geolocation services are down (HOC-556)

HandsOn Connect uses an external service to geo-locate volunteers so that the default zipcode of searches is close to their logged in location.  However, on those occasions when the external service was temporarily unavailable - users could experience difficulty in logging in and would be taken to the white "Authorization Required" page instead of the home page.  This has been corrected.

Some wordpress blogs were using URL schemes that could cause the homepage to not render correctly when publishing a wordpress blog feed on the home page.  We've identified the cause and updated code so that this sort of wordpress blog posts would not negatively impact anyone's home page.

Bug Identified and resolution found:  Problems editing styles in opportunity descriptions (HOC-529)

Some users experience issues when editing volunteer opportunity descriptions and adding styles to the CMS content.  If this becomes a problem for you, please open a ticket in Zendesk and ask that the HOC-529 Volunteer Opportunity Wizard update be applied for you. This is a small change in the code we can apply, that will make it easier if you are using styles in your volunteer opportunity descriptions.  It has to be done manually by us, and is not of concern to most customers...   but if you frequently edit your opportunity descriptions and use styles - then let us know and we'll apply the fix for you!

Bug Identified and resolution found:  Problems editing styles in opportunity descriptions (HOC-529)

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