Tip of the Week May 20, 2013

Posted on 05/20/2013 by Volgistics Team

Give access to the Volgistics Store without giving access to your volunteer database

In many organizations payment and billing is taken care of by a person in a department outside of Volunteer Services. In these cases, you can allow access to the Volgistics Store for your account without giving access to the volunteer database used to manage your records. Access to the Store allows a person to perform operations such as:

To allow access to the Store, give the person your account's nine digit Volgistics account number, along with the Accounting Access Code for your account. If you have access to the Setup page, you can follow these steps to get your account's Accounting Access Code.

1. Select Setup from the Menu.

2. Expand the "System operators" link.

3. Select "Accounting operator."

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Tip of the Week May 13, 2013

Posted on 05/13/2013 by Volgistics Team

Use a Set to find records that have information in a spare field

There may be times when you need to find all the volunteer records in your account that have information in a specific text field. For example, if you've been given the task of verifying the information in a field called School where you record the educational institution a volunteer attends, or attended last. It may be helpful to start by finding all of the records that have information in this field.

You can use the Sets feature to speed up this process. Simply make a Set rule based on the spare field that was used to create the field you need. Use the "does not contain . . ." option, leave the search field blank, and finish making your Set.  You can now view the volunteers in the Set to see which records have information recorded in the field you need. You can also limit a report to just the volunteers in the Set if you need a hard copy of the information.

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Tip of the Week May 6, 2013

Posted on 05/06/2013 by Volgistics Team

Customize which fields show on the Volunteers Page

By default, the Volunteer List page shows the Name, Tag, Group name, Street, City and Status fields in new trial accounts. However, you can customize the fields that are shown to make your account more usable for your organization. To do this, you will need access to the Setup page. Then follow the directions in Help topic 1202.

You should keep in mind:

  • Avoid selecting too many fields because this will make the page hard to read if your monitor isn't wide enough to show all the columns of information.
  • You can click on the column headings to sort the page by the information in that column. For example, clicking the heading for the Number column sorts the list from the lowest to the highest number. Clicking the heading again sorts the list from highest to lowest number. Exit the page and return to it to go back to the original alphabetic view.
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Tip of the Week April 29, 2013

Posted on 04/29/2013 by Volgistics Team

Review VicNet and VicTouch use

If your account's service level includes the VicNet or VicTouch modules, you may want to review usage at times. This allows you to make informed decisions about whether the module is being underutilized and more training is needed, or if you want to remove the module from your service level altogether.

If you have access to your account's Setup page, you can do this by:

1. Select Setup from the Menu.

2. Expand the "Account management" link.

3. Select "Account status."

The Vic Activity section shows usage and the date the counts were reset last. If you want to start a fresh count at zero, click the Reset button beside the module you want to reset.

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Tip of the Week April 22, 2013

Posted on 04/22/2013 by Volgistics Team

Edit a volunteer's sign-in time for VicTouch

If your organization uses the VicTouch module, there may be times when volunteers arrive for duty and begin serving without remembering to sign-in. If this occurs, and you find out before the volunteer leaves, here is what you can do to have the volunteer's time recorded correctly.

First, have the volunteer sign-in through VicTouch. If it is not practical to have the volunteer leave their station to sign-in, you can sign-in for them if you know their PIN number. This can be done at either the VicTouch station, or at your own computer. Our Tip of the Week from July 2, 2012 explains how you can briefly start VicTouch to do things such as sign-in for a volunteer.

Once the volunteer is signed-in, bring up the Who's Here page in your Volgistics account. You can click the Edit link beside the volunteer's name to change their "Time in" to the time they actually arrived for service. You can learn more about using the Who's Here page in Help topic 2307.

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Tip of the Week April 15, 2013

Posted on 04/15/2013 by Volgistics Team

Place links to URL addresses for training videos, web pages, and more on the VicNet module

If your organization uses the VicNet module, you can place a link on the Home tab of VicNet to training materials the volunteers need. Volunteers can login to the secure module and click the link to be taken to the web address that has the information. This allows you to post links to training sites for your volunteers, but not make these links available to the general public.

Please note, that there is not a way for the actual content of the web site (i.e. the training video, PowerPoint presentation, etc.) to be hosted through Volgistics.  You will need to host the material on your organization's web site, a third party's site (such as Screencast or YouTube), or use an existing web site that already has the material in place.

The setup uses an image as the link to the URL address so you will need to create, or find, a suitable image for your link. Once you have your image, follow the process for setting up advertisements on VicNet shown in help topic 2288. It will work the same even though you're not setting up an advertisement. You can see an example of how this is used to link to the Volgistics' volunteer training videos in our sample accounts.

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Tip of the Week April 8, 2013

Posted on 04/08/2013 by Volgistics Team

Finding and recording volunteer absences

If your organization needs to keep track of when volunteers do not show up for scheduled assignments , Volgistics can help.

The first step is to make sure all volunteer service for the date in question has been entered into the system.  When this is done, you can create a Set to look for volunteers who were scheduled on a certain date, but who do not have any service recorded for the date. Help topic 2320 shows how to do this.

Once you identify the volunteers who were absent, you can use Volgistics' Service Measure feature to keep track of the date and assignment they were absent from. Help topic 2275 shows how to create, and use, a Service Measure to do this.

You can see an example of how a Service Measure for this is setup in our sample accounts. These accounts are pre-loaded with volunteer and assignment information mimicking how a medical center might use Volgistics. You can view and change the information in the account just as you would in a real account, but your changes will not be saved when your session ends. To see a sample account, go to www.volgistics.com, hover over Purchase in the menu at the top of the page, and select "Sample Account."

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Tip of the Week April 2, 2013

Posted on 04/01/2013 by Volgistics Team

Login tips for accessing your account

We hope you appreciated our April Fools' day post. Unfortunately, it's not possible to develop a Universal Login feature at this time—we'll see what technology has in store for the future. In the meantime, here are some tips to make logging in to Volgistics easier.

  • It is not possible to login without entering your account number and email address. However, if you use the same computer most of the time, and cookies are enabled on that computer, you can use the "Remember my credentials at this computer" checkbox on the login page to have these fields automatically populated the next time you login.
  • If you use the option to have your account number saved, you may not memorize the number so if you ever need to work at a different computer it will not be available. To avoid being unable to access your account, we recommend saving the number in a private, secure place. Please be aware that this may give potential unauthorized users access to information they can use. We recommend always memorizing passwords so that these are not available, or at the very least never storing your account number, email address and password in the same place.
  • If operators forget their credentials and make multiple invalid login attempts, Volgistics places a security block on that IP address to protect your information. If this inadvertently happens, a System Operator with access to Setup can clear the block if they are already logged in, or they login from a device with a different IP address. Our October 15, 2012 Tip of the Week explains more.

You can find more information on logging in to Volgistics in Help topic 2297.

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Tip of the Week April 1, 2013

Posted on 04/01/2013 by Volgistics Team

New Universal Login feature pre-release announcement

To protect your account from unauthorized users, Volgistics uses a three part login requiring the correct account number, user name, and password. However, we are pleased to announce that we will soon release a new Universal Login feature that gives you the option of bypassing the necessity of entering this information.

Our Development Team has developed advanced algorithms that automatically detect which account you want to access. You no longer need to be bothered with entering an account number, user name (email address), or password. Just go to www.volgistics.com, and think about the account you need. The algorithms determine that you are who you think you are so you'll automatically be logged in to your Volgistics account.

At a different computer than you usually use? No problem, the Universal Login feature automatically knows this and still directs you to the correct account. Have more than one Volgistics account? Again, no problem! The Universal Login feature knows which one of your accounts you need and logs you in. If you want to learn more about this incredible new option, click here for more information!

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Tip of the Week March 25, 2013

Posted on 03/25/2013 by Volgistics Team

Finding a volunteer's application date and/or when the record was added to your database

If you use online application forms to receive information from prospective volunteers, you may sometimes need information about when a volunteer submitted the application. There is not a field in Volgistics that tracks the exact date an applicant applies because information from applications is usually routed to the Applications tab of your Volgistics Mailbox until you process the application.

However, you can review your account's Event Log if you need to find the exact date an applicant submitted an application. The log will show an Event called "Application Submitted" and the Description column will list the applicant's name. In many cases, you can speed up the search process if you're looking for a particular name by using your web browser's find (or search) feature. You can usually bring this up by holding down the "CTRL" key on your keyboard while pressing the "F" key.

Once an application is received into your database, Volgistics tracks the date it was received by using the "Date Entered" field. You can find this field in the Dates box on the History tab of each volunteer record. It is also available on most reports that have volunteer information. Please note, if the record was added to your database in some other way than receiving an application form, the "Date Entered" field will reflect the date the record was created by the other method.

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