During March and April, we released a handful of features not included in our usual release cycle. These features were a direct response to feedback we received from clients who were responding to urgent COVID-19 needs in their community. During this period, we focused on features that we could release quickly, would benefit clients without frustrating known COVID-19 responses, and had unambiguous use cases.

Additionally, we had a planned feature release during the period we were adding these COVID-19 related features. For more information about the upgrades we made to teams and the calendar, refer to the release notes.

Public release date: March 31, 2020

Virtual Needs

As volunteerism adjusts to social distancing, many volunteer need require work to be done offsite. If you have a need that someone can do from home, you can mark the need as a "virtual need," so that you don't have to enter location information. Additionally, volunteers can search for virtual needs on the needs search.

Additional options for need questions

Some questions on the need form had restrictive options, such as the "yes/no" answers for the family friendly question. We've added "N/a" to several questions so that you can remove answers to those questions.

Clickable banner

You can now add a link to your site's banner. If you upload an image that directs people toward a page about your COVID-19 response or virtual needs, for instance, users can click on the image to go to the page you specify. Use this to funnel important traffic toward important topics.

Public release date: April 16, 2020

Alerts are more obvious and usable

Alerts in the site manager's area will be more obvious. If there is an unread alert, it will be very clear. Additionally, the alerts area has more inbox-style features including the ability to "star" an alert, search, and mark alerts as read in bulk. This will let us do an even better job of communicating important updates to you.

Capacity not longer appears on need cards

The number of available slots for a need used to appear on the top right of the need cards. We removed them because some volunteers saw a "100" on the need card as "there are already 100 people showing up," and they would not respond because of social distancing concerns. It was inhibiting sign ups, so we removed it.

Pending qualifications emails

The "notice of pending items" email we send you each morning when something on your site is pending will now tell you if you have any pending qualifications. This can help you be more responsive to volunteers attempting to sign up for important needs.