Volunteer Hours
Eli Poulos
Hi Debbie, thanks for writing in!
I can see how it would be helpful to prevent people from checking into a need until the actual day of the shift, while still allowing people to respond to the need up until that day.
I have added your idea to our list of product suggestions, and will be sure to review it with the team!
Have a great day,
Eli Poulos
Thank you!
Eli Poulos
You're welcome!
I am also having issues with this. I prefer to turn off the option allowing volunteers to log their own hours for that reason. That is currently not an option that I know of.
Good morning Lacey!
I saw that you posted a product suggestion in our forum, so I thought I would reach to collaborate with you about it. Just to communicate, my goal in reaching out is to be able to make sure I fully understand your suggestion, so that I can post an official product suggestion to our internal team and our internal product suggestion board if it is different from Debbie's original request above!
Would you be able to walk me through if you feel that your product suggestion is the same or similar to what Debbie mentioned above in this post? Or would you say that it's different than what Debbie is describing in the comment above? I want to make sure that I fully understand your post to this thread.
Thanks, Lacey, I look forward to your response, and to collaborating with you on this!
Essentially, I would like the option to turn off volunteers' ability to input their own hours. Under Settings> Main Settings> Approval> Hours Approval there are only three options:
Volunteers must submit hours for approval
Hours logged will automatically be submitted for approval
Hours logged will be automatically approved
There should be an option that Volunteers may not submit hours for approval. We often have to verify hours for organizations partnering with us so not having the ability to forge hours is important. Entering hours on their own phone or computer opens the door for volunteers to be able to not show up to the location but still get credit for those hours.
It could also work though if I had the ability to turn that option off for volunteers that are in certain user groups. But sometimes I have volunteers email me at a later date to verify hours for them. So, if a user has not been put in a user group, they would still be able to enter their own hours (if user group restrictions were the route you went with).
Furthermore, it would also be useful for volunteers to not be able to enter a different time for check-in/check-out other than the current time. I feel that agency/program managers should only be able to change that.
Hi Lacey,
Thank you so much for providing your thoughtful feedback, I really appreciate it. That really helps me better understand where you're coming from and what features and functionality that you would like to add as a product suggestion in our forum.
I've taken some time to look over your thoughts, and this is what I'm thinking and this is what I would love to collaborate with you on:
It seems to me in reading in your reply that we have three different product suggestions:
1) the option for site managers to turn off volunteers' ability to input their own hours
2) the option for site managers to turn off volunteers' ability to input their own hours that are in certain user groups
3) the option for site managers to turn off volunteers' ability to enter a different time for check-in/check-out other than the current time
My recommendation in this case, since this would be three different software builds, would be for us to pick your top choice out of these three, and submit a formal project suggestion from your top choice! For example, if you think the user group suggestion that you made, is your favorite, we can definitely move forward with that here. Ultimately, this is your opportunity to let us know what you would like, so I want to make sure I capture that info in the best detail possible. The good news is that you can still submit the other two product suggestions if you like, as new, separate product suggestions in our forum so that they also have the same ability to make it into our forum!
I look forward to your feedback Lacey, and thank you again for taking the time to share your thoughts with us, we appreciate it!
For me, it would be easiest to turn off the option for volunteers to enter their own hours outside of a kiosk or manager check-in (Option 1). But I can see where the user group option would be beneficial too.
Thank you so much for that feedback, I appreciate it.
It looks like we're making great progress in building this product suggestion together.
Here's what I have so far / rough draft of our product suggestion!
1) the option for site managers to turn off volunteers' ability to input their own hours outside of a kiosk or manager check-in.
I have two questions for you:
1) I wanted to ask about the last part that you added about manager check-in. Are we just saying that we still want program managers (who are also volunteers in our software) to be able to check-in volunteers? So in this sense, we still want volunteers (who are program managers) to be able to check-in other volunteers? I would love to pick your brain on that piece.
2) In terms of the point you made about the kiosk, you would still like volunteers to be able to check in and out using the kiosk, regardless of whether the site manager turns the volunteers ability on or off to input their own hours is that correct?
Thanks Lacey
We are interested in having option 1 implemented as well. Has there been any update on this feature?
Hi Schaefer,
Good morning! Thank you for adding your support to this suggestion. We do not currently have an update, but I will make a note of your support on the original suggestion.
Thank you again, and I hope you have a great day!
Autum Brown, Education Manager
We would also love to be able to turn off the option for certain volunteers to log hours outside of a kiosk or manager-added check-in. We've had some issues with court-appointed volunteers erroneously logging hours from home and luckily have caught them, but it would be so nice to just eliminate that possibility.
Hello Schaefer,
Thank you for following up with us on the forum about your request. I absolutely understand how in your line of work, having this option would be especially handy.
Accordingly, we'll go ahead and add your thoughts to our end as a vote toward an option for site managers to turn off their volunteer's ability to input their own hours outside of using the kiosk or manager check-in.
Thank you for your time, and please feel free to let us know if you need anything further!
There should also be a feature to remove the drop down on the sign in. We sometimes have Community Service Restitution Volunteers that arrive late but when they sign in just choose "Sign in at start of Shift" instead of "Sign in now". So they could arrive 30 minutes late and still get credit for the entire shift.
Debbie Gormley
We typically have volunteers completing Court-Ordered Community Service hours at our location and we normally have a large number of volunteer at one time so it is not always possible to keep track of which volunteers are present when signing in. Though I know the hours volunteers add for themselves are pending but my suggestion would be to have an on/off button so that specific volunteers are not able to add their own hours and can only sign in and out the day of their shift. Especially because volunteers can sign in at our Kiosk days before the actual volunteer event.
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