Recent Updates
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Updated on: Jun 07, 2013
The HandsOn Connect app is a Managed Package
With Great Power comes Great Responsibility.
Before customizing anything in HandsOn Connect - be sure to read this entire chapter!
You can customize HandsOn Connect, in many, many ways -- but some things cannot be edited, because they are part of the Managed Package.
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Updated on: Jun 07, 2013
How to get the Project Description Text Into a Report
We have had several HOC customers say that they wanted to be able to export a report, that includes the Volunteer Opportunity Name and also its description.
The problem is: In order to make project descriptions look attractive on the public site, project descriptions are created in the WYSIWYG editor and are made up of html.
As a result, you can only get html project descriptions in reports.
However -- if its important to you to be able to do this (because you need a 'hard copy' of your projects and their descriptions - there is a somewhat painless way you can do it through some easy manual manipulation.
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Updated on: Jun 07, 2013
Direct access to a useful report from an object layout. Example: Questions / Answers report from the Occurrence Record Layout
Here's a customer report type and a great way to make reports more accessible when they are needed - that stemmed from some problem-solving between a HandsOn Connect client and our support team. Its presented here as an example of a 'power-use' of reporting!
Melia Tichenor from HandsOn Portland had opened a support ticket asking how she could get contents from one object type to appear in another object type. She was trying to somehow get the custom questions (that are related to the Volunteer Opportunity object), to display the Answers to those questions (which are associated with the Connections records that are connected to each occurrence).
While it IS possible to use formula fields to get items from one object into another - that didn't seem the right way to go about this.
Duplicating fields from one record to the next isn't a best practice in a relational database.
After mulling her goals -- we worked together on finding a more elegant approach. The solution we came up with combines three interesting functionalities and creates a dandy little custom feature that anyone can create!
Cool Beans! Here's how this was done!
Manual Reports and Dashboards -
Updated on: Jun 07, 2013
Using formula fields to add additional information related to lookup fields
Sometimes, you may have put a lookup field from another object into a page layout -- AND you might want some related information about the looked-up field, to also appear.
(Note: Reports are usually the best way to bring data from different objects together into an easy to see view however occasionally you may want a few items to be visible in the object record itself.)
Example: What if you want to add the mobile phone number for the Opportunity Coordinator to the Occurrence Record?
There is already a lookup for the Opportunity Coordinator name, as well as one for email.
As long as we have a lookup already in the object -- we can use formulas to bring in additional information about that 'looked-up' field.
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Updated on: Jun 07, 2013
Changing Your password security settings
We ship HandsOn Connect to you with convenient password policies to make it easy for your users to deal with passwords. But Salesforce supports VERY strict password settings if desired.
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Updated on: Jun 07, 2013
Email Logs in Salesforce
How many times have you had a volunteer tell you they never received a particular email when you're pretty darn sure it was sent? Ever wished you could check? Well you can. Salesforce allows you to run a log of emails sent from the system. Email logs are CSV files that contain information about all email sent through Salesforce over the last 30 days. Read on to learn how to run an email log.
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Updated on: Jun 07, 2013
Testing Email Templates and Verifying Merge Fields
The easiest way to test the content and merge fields in your email templates is to simulate the conditions under which they are sent from the public site using a test account. That'll absolutely show you what happens.
Salesforce does provide a way to test from the email template interface -- but it can be a little tricky. Here's what you need to know.
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Updated on: Jun 07, 2013
Diagnosing problems using the HOC Support Reports
When certains kinds of records in your database are missing required fields, it can cause problems in your system such as volunteer opportunities not showing up on your public site when intended, encountering error messages when trying to edit the records and at the most dire breaking your public site. Even though we advise you time and time again not to delete records in your system, we recognize that key data sometimes is deleted by accident. Never fear, we have installed some tools to help you diagnose the problem.
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Updated on: Jun 07, 2013
Working with Fields in Records
Salesforce has many different types of fields, many of which are identified by symbols or markings.
Manual Getting to know Salesforce -
Updated on: Apr 15, 2013
Creating a Report to monitor team signups as a percentage of total connections
When teams sign up for volunteer opportunities, the only person who may be notified of opportunity details may be the team captain! As a best practice, if a large percentage of your volunteers are part of a team, its a good idea to reach out to the team captain and make sure they are relaying all info to their team members, and that all team members WILL be attending.
You can create a report that will look at all upcoming connections where the volunteer is a member of a team, and then calculate what percentage of the maximum volunteers needed for the opportunity are team members. Here's how: