The functionality listed below is generally available to all users and deployed with little if any admin action needed.

The opportunity detail page now displays the upcoming occurrences for an opportunity with a maximum of 58 Upcoming Occurrences.  The occurrence selected either from the search or the opportunity calendar will be the one expanded by default, but volunteers can expand any of the dates available to sign up.

If the Volunteer is using an old Occurrence Link, it will take them to the Opportunity Detail Page and display the upcoming occurrences that are now available instead of the past occurrence.

Since all upcoming occurrences are now shown on the page, the "To see Other Dates and Times Click Here" link has been removed from the Sign Up/ Express Interest box.  Volunteers can still access the list of available occurrences from the Search Opportunities grid using the ## More link in the Freq column.

If a volunteer clicks on the Sign Up or Express Interest button and isn't logged in a new pop-up window appears giving them the option to Login or Register.

If they select Login, then they will be able to log in using the pop-up window and remain on the Opportunity Detail Page.

If they select Register, then they will be taken to the Volunteer Registration Form and have the option to return to the Opportunity Detail page once completed.

If there are no Volunteer Opportunity Questions then when the volunteer clicks on the Sign Up or Express Interest button they will be taken directly to the Success page.

With this release System Admins are given the ability to customize the Volunteer Registration Form and Personal Information Page.

System Admins can define which fields are visibile and required on for each page independently.  System Admins can also edit the names of the various section headers on the Registration form. The new control panel also houses the Disaster and Disability Questions previously found on the Site Configuration page and integrates the ability to create new Registration Questions directly from the Vol Registration Configuration Control Panel. With regard to the Disability and Disaster Questions, when this release is deployed your existing setting from the Site Configuration page will be brought over to the new Vol Registration Configuration page.

The new Vol Registration Config page can be found under the Control Panel tab.

The following fields are always visible and required and cannot be edited:

• First Name
• Last Name
• Date of Birth
• Email
• Password (Only on Registration Page)
• Reset Password (Only on Personal Information Page)
• Opt Out of Communications from HandsOn Network/ Points of Light

In addition to the fields listed above, HandsOn Network Affiliates also have these additional fields as always visible and cannot be edited:

• Home Zip Code (Also Required)
• Gender (Not Required)
• Ethnicity (Not Required)

Date of Birth - The date of birth field now has different options for the information gathered.

• MM/DD/YYYY - This asks for the full date of birth of the volunteers and has been updated to use a Month dropdown, day dropdown and Year text field to make it easier to enter.
• YYYY - This allows for the volunteer to just enter the year in a text field.  Date of Birth default to Jan 1 of the year entered.
• Over 18? - This provides a checkbox for volunteers to indicate if they are over 18 or not.  If they are over 18, the date of birth defaults to the Jan 1 of the year that would make them 18 (currently 1995).  If they are under 18, the date of birth defaults to Jan 1 with the previous year to make them 1 year old (currently 2012).    This option is not available to HandsOn Network Affiliates.

NOTE:  

YYYY - Selecting this option means that the system will not be able to reliably determine whether or not a volunteer is legally a minor or under age 13. Age restrictions will be limited by year, not actual age. 

Over 18 - Selecting this option means that the system will not be able to determine if a volunteer is under age 13 and thereby in violation of COPA internet laws for children. Age signup restrictions for opportunities will be limited. 

Consult your legal counsel before choosing either of these options.

For example a volunteer opportunity with a minimum age of 18 could allow a 17 year old with a birthdate of Nov 10, 1995 to register when using the YYYY option since it would calculate their date of birth as 1/1/1995 making them already 18.

Note:  The following fields are on the Vol Registration Configuration Control Panel, but have not yet been added to the pages on the public site.  These will be added in a future release.

• Alternative Email - Registration Page
• Address Type - Personal Information Page
• Time Zone - Registration Page and Personal Information Page.  This will be added as we make improvements to HandsOn Connect for customers in multiple time zones.

Full information on how to use the Vol Registration Configuration can be found here.

Updated process for creating Custom Registration Questions.

System Admins now have the option to redirect volunteers to the Opportunity Detail Page after completing their registration form and bypassing the Registration Confirmation page.  When checked, if a volunteer uses the above mentioned Login/Register Window to arrive at the Registration Page, when the volunteer completes the Registration form they will immediately be taken back to the Opportunity Detail Page to complete the Sign Up or Express Interest.

This feature is deployed as inactive.

^{ADMIN ACTION (OPTIONAL)}

To enable, System Admins should go to Control Panel - Site Configuration and scroll down to the System Defaults section and check the box for "Re-direct to Opportunity Detail Page."

In this release we've added the ability to recycle Questions.  

Using the new interface shown above System Admins, Staff, Partner Staff, and Employee Coordinators can create 1 question and associate it with multiple volunteer opportunities.   The page allows users to search through existing questions or create new questions and then select the Volunteer Opportunity to associate the question with.

Each time the volunteer answers the question, a new Answer record will be created for each response and associated to the Question, Connection AND to the Contact.  

In addition to, the ability to recycle your questions, when a volunteer is presented a question that they have been asked before their previous answer will already be displayed/ selected so the volunteer can just hit submit or edit/ update their answer before submitting.   I think you're volunteers will be happy to see that they don't have to select their t-shirt size again and again, and can easily update it when they've hit there weight loss goals!

Finally, if a user were to view an existing Question through the Questions tab or related list in the Volunteer Opportunity record, the page has a new button labeled "Add to Volunteer Opportunity" which will open the interface shown above with the Select Question field already populated so that they can easily add existing questions to new opportunities.

DEPLOYMENT NOTE:

1. During deployment a batch update will be run to associate all existing questions with their Volunteer Opportunity using the new structure.
2. Existing Answers will not be updated to populate the Contact field, but System Admins can do a batch update to add that relationship if desired.

Full documentation on how to create Volunteer Opportunity Questions using the new structure can be found here:

System Admins and Staff

Partner Staff

Employee Coordinators

ADMIN ACTIONS (STRONGLY ENCOURAGED) If you do not take these actions, questions will no longer be listed under the Questions related list since the relationship is now with the new Volunteer Opportunity Questions object.

The new Volunteer Opportunity Question enhancements have been deployed to you so that they work with the existing format and related lists.  Anytime a user clicks on New Question in a related list or in the Questions tab they will be provided the new interface so no further action is needed on your part to utilize this functionality.   However, there are two additional related items that can be added to increase access to these features.

1.     Add Question button - System Admins can add a custom button to the Volunteer Opportunity page layout called Add Question.  When a user clicks on this button it will open the new interface shown above with the Volunteer Opportunity pre-populated in the Select Volunteer Opportunity field so all the use needs to do is select or create the Question.

2.     Volunteer Opportunity Related List - Currently the Volunteer Opportunity page layouts have a related list called Questions.  We recommend that System Admin remove the Questions related list and add the Volunteer Opportunity Questions related list.  When adding the Volunteer Opportunity Related list the recommended columns to display are Volunteer Opportunity Questions, Question, Question Text, Active, Required, and Order so that you can quickly access both the Volunteer Opportunity Question relationship if you want to select a different question and also access the Question record if you need to edit the text, options, or other fields.   You can select to leave the New Button in the Volunteer Opportunity Questions related list and it too will open the new interface.

Both of these optional modifications are included by default in the Staff and Partner Staff Page Layouts v3 that are described below.

Here's a video on how to make these changes and where to check which page layouts are assigned to your users.

There are three email alerts that we managed as Triggers as opposed to the standard workflow rules because of their complexity.  Previously, there was no way for system admins to disable these notifications.

In this release we added to the Control Panel a new page called "Workflows & Email Alerts"

To start there are 3 existing notifications that can now be turned off using this control panel:

• Notification of Volunteer Sign Up
• Notification of Volunteer Removed
• Notification of Volunteer Waitlist

In addition to these existing notifications, the Workflow & Email Alerts page also controls new notifications associated with Grouped Occurrences (detailed below).  In the future other trigger based email notifications will be managed on this page as well.

If you wish to disable a notification, simply uncheck the box and click Save.

While this is enabled primarily for the Move/Copy Connections functionality described below, the ability to move individual connections is present for any user that can Edit connections.

When a volunteer contacts you or an partner to reschedule their connection you no longer have to decline the existing connection and create a new one, you can simply edit the connection and select the new Occurrence, even the new Volunteer Opportunity if needed.

This functionality could also be helpful in reassigning Self-Reported Volunteer Hours associated with the Individual organization to the correct existing organization. Just make sure that when updating self-reported connections that you use the lookup for Existing Organization and select the correct Volunteer Opportunity and Occurrence associated with the selected organization.

In this release, we provided some new Page Layouts for Volunteer Opportunities, Occurrences, and Connection that can be used by your Partner Staff, Volunteer Leaders, Employee Coordinators, Staff, and System Admin.

These page layouts are not enabled by default and require System Admins to activate them for users. Click here to see how to enable these new Page Layouts for your Staff and Partner Staff.

The new page layouts organize all the required information at the top of the page followed by fields that can be optionally populated or edited.

HandsOn Connect uses standard Salesforce.com page layouts for the Volunteer Opportunity, Occurrences, and Connections objects.  If you do not wish to enable the page layouts we provided you can utilize standard Salesforce.com methods to modify your existing page layouts to suit your business needs.   For more information on how to modify standard Salesforce.com page layouts, click here.

• New "Locations Detail Page" URL field added to the Occurrence object.  When added to the page layout can display the link to the Location Detail page on the public site that is emailed to volunteers and accessed via the Upcoming Opportunities.
• New Visualforce page has been deployed called "New VO Button" that can be used to redirect the New button for Volunteer Opportunities for Staff, System Admins, and Premium Partner users to open the VO Wizard.
• Registration Cutoff (hours) has been updated to have a default value of 1 hour.
• Premium Partner Portal - Partner Help tab has been updated to point to new link for premium portal documentation.

The following features and functionality that has been added to the HandsOn Connect package are optional and therefore not enabled when deployed to customers.

These release notes feature general information about the feature with links to detailed steps on how to enable the functionality for your various users.

We will be offering special webinars on these advanced features, please check the 2.5 Release Training schedule to locate the desired training or recording.

It is strongly recommended that you consider your Staff Training process before enabling the features outlined below.

System Admins can now override the "New Volunteer Opportunity Button" that appears in the Volunteer Opportunity tab as well as the Volunteer Opportunity related lists using the "New VO Button" visualforce page.  When the "New Volunteer Opportunity" button is clicked it will direct the user to use the VO Wizard instead of the standard Salesforce volunteer opportunity page.

This is a recommended enhancement for users of the Premium Partner Portal to ensure that partner staff (as well as your staff) always use the VO Wizard when creating new Volunteer Opportunities.

ADMIN ACTION

1.    To enable this System Admins would go to Setup -> Create -> Objects -> Volunteer Opportunities.   Then scroll to the Button, Links, and Action section and click Edit next to the "New" option.  On the Override options page (shown above) select Override With "Visualforce Page" and use the dropdown to select the "New VO Button" page.   Click Save.

2.     System Admins also will need to grant access to the Visualforce Pages for the respective profiles as well.   Go to Setup -> Develop ->  Pages.   Locate the New_VO_Button page and click on Security.  Then select the additional profiles to enable.  (See image below).

In this release we have added 4 new advanced option fields to the Occurrence object.

• Include Pending for Max Attendance - When checked, this will include the number of connections in "Pending Approval" status when determining the maximum attendance.  Once the maximum attendance, total of confirmed and pending connections, is reached any new volunteers will be prompted to join the waitlist.   This is recommended for Date & Time Specific - Express Interest occurrences, but can be used for any occurrence.
• Maximum Waitlist - Populate this field with a number to indicate the maximum number of connections allowed to be waitlisted for this occurrence.  Once the Maximum Waitlist has been reached, new volunteers will be told that this occurrence is full and not accepting any additional volunteers at this time.
• Turn off Waitlist -  When checked, this will prevent any volunteers being added to the waitlist for this occurrence.  Once the Maximum Attendance has been reached, new volunteers will be told that this occurrence is full and not accepting any additional volunteers at this time.
• Turn off Teams - When checked, this will prevent any teams being able to register for this occurrence and the "or sign up/ express interest with a team" link wil be removed from the Sign Up/ Express Interest box on the Opportunity Detail Page on the public site.

ADMIN ACTION

If System Admins want to enable any or all of these fields, they will need to:

1. Grant access to the field to the desired profiles.  It is already granted for the recommended use by System Admins and Staff, so this is only needed if you want to grant access to Partner Staff, Employee Coordinators, or Volunteer Leaders (if they have access to modify occurrences).
2. Add the field to the page layout(s) associated with the desired profile(s).

If desired, System Admins can also create a custom workflow rule and field update to set a default value for any of these four fields.

Full documentation on how to enable these four fields can be found here.

The features in this section are pretty powerful tools.  So remember "With great powers come great responsibility" and train users how to properly use these features.

To make it easier for you to manage existing contacts we have added two wizards, one for Team Members and one for Connections.  

There are two ways to create a Volunteer Team introduced in this release.

1.    Import Team Members - Left Side Menu

2.    Create Team Members button - Contact List View

Both of these work by using Contact records that already exist in your instance and adding them to a Volunteer Team.    

REMINDER: If you are batch adding Team Members to an existing volunteer team, make sure your the contacts included in your report or selected in your list view don't contact any duplicates.

There are two ways to create a Connection introduced in this release.

1.    Import Connections - Left Side Menu

2.    Create Connections button - Contact List View

Both of these work by using Contact records that already exist in your instance and adding them to existing Volunteer Opportunities and Occurrences.    

REMINDER: If you are batch adding Connections, make sure your the contacts included in your report or selected in your list view don't contact any duplicates.

This functionality allows users to move or copy a set of connections from one occurrence to another occurrence or volunteer opportunity.   Make sure you train any user that you grant this feature to so that they don't duplicate or corrupt your data.

This feature is enabled to support the use of Campaigns, which is a native functionality of Salesforce.com.  Campaigns can be used in a variety of ways and are often utilized with 3rd party Mass Email applications found on the Salesforce AppExchange.

While Campaigns is not part of the HandsOn Connect applications, we hope that customers that are leveraging this tool will be able to utilize the "Add to Campaign" functionality to make it easier to add contacts to your campaigns based on their involvement.  We think this will be helpful in managing communications and donation efforts around volunteer events and disaster response.

To learn more about campaigns and how they could be beneficial to your organization, click here to see documentation from Salesforce.com.

The features in this section are pretty powerful tools and create multiple connections at once.  So remember "With great powers come great responsibility" and train users how to properly use these features.

Grouped Occurrences allow users to have volunteers sign up or express interest in a series of occurrences as in one step.  They can only be associated with Date & Time Specific volunteer opportunities and all the occurrences in the group must be associated with a single volunteer opportunity.