Over the past years, we've received a number of requests regarding Individual Hours. While this feature was originally developed to allow volunteers to log personal hours not associated with need responses on a Connect platform, we realize that different clients wish to use individual hours in more structured and systematic ways. Below are a few suggestions we've gotten in the forums:

• 
  
• 
  Ability to associate individual hours with an agency that is registered on the Connect site. This might happen if someone volunteers with a Connect site agency but the volunteer work isn't associated with a need that has been posted on the site.
• 
  
• 
  A way for the designated contact person to approve individual hours. At this time, it is up to the site manager to reach out to the contact person (specified by the volunteer) to see if hours can be approved, and then to approve them from the site manager panel.
• 
  
• 
  An automated notification for the the contact person, letting them know that individual hours have been submitted. This could be for informational purposes only, or it could be a kind of reminder to the contact person to approve the hours (or to reach out to the site manager so that the site manager can mark them as approved).
• 
  

The purpose of this thread is to ask you--our clients--how you are using individual hours on your site, and what additional features or capabilities you'd like to have with individual hours. Please be specific; when we discuss enhancement requests, it's important that we can point to concrete examples, or use cases, showing how the added or revised feature would be helpful for clients. In addition, if you would like to chime in and expand on the items above, we encourage you to do that as well. Thanks!

Hi Nancy and Jacob,

Nancy, I wanted to follow up to you and Steve’s conversation in regards to Individual Hours. Thanks so much for outlining what you are looking for! By definition, Individual Hours are not associated with volunteer needs or opportunities listed on a site. However, I can see the benefit to being able to associate the hours towards an agency or program. I’ll make sure your thoughts on this are added to our current notes about this request.

Just as a note, all hours including Individual Hours can be associated with a User Group. You can require User Group selection when users submit their hours in your Settings > Hours area.

For the second part of this suggestion Steve outlined, I will also adjust this to state: “Include individual hours associated with the selected agency/program managers in the automatic notification they receive in regards to pending hours, letting them know that individual hours have been submitted.” Mainly because we cannot send notifications to users that are not in the system, and Designated Site Supervisors do not require a user account.

Jacob, thanks so much for adding your voice to our forum! I will add your vote to the three items in regards to improving Individual Hours outlined in the original forum post.

Best,

Shonie

CX Specialist

she / her