Home | About | Sample Screens | Free Trial | Subscribe | Support | FAQ | Forum | Contact | Media | ||
 | | |
 |  | ||||
 | |||||
Q: What is i-Volunteer Online? How does it work? A: i-Volunteer Online helps organizations with the process of signing up volunteers for events. An Administrator first designs a sign-up sheet for an event with slots typically defined by stations and blocks of time, and then shares this sign-up sheet with potential volunteers by distributing a public link to the event. Volunteers use that public link to view the sign-up sheet and key at least their name and e-mail in one or more slots to volunteer. The volunteer then receives an e-mail from which he or she must click a link to confirm that he or she has in fact signed up to volunteer.
Q: How reliable is the i-Volunteer Online? A: i-Volunteer Online is hosted on dedicated servers in Amazon's high-end Elastic Compute Cloud. For our customers this means that i-Volunteer Online is fast, reliable, and secure. We do not share our servers or databases with any other organizations or other hosted services. Furthermore because e-mail is an important part of the volunteer confirmation process, we have partnered with another company that does nothing but relay outgoing e-mail. For our customers this means that volunteers receive e-mail as fast and reliable as possible.
Q: Can I extend my 21 day free trial? A: Your trail may be extended for several days upon request. You may keep events you created during the trial when you purchase the subscription.
Q: How do I buy i-Volunteer Online? A: Click here.
Q: How do I buy the subscription after my free trial is over? A: Log in to your free trail account. Click the link to purchase the subscription and complete the online order form. If you would like to change your URL please make a note of your requested URL in the comments.
Q: Can I change the URL that I received for the free trial? A: When you purchase the hosted service you can request a change to the file portion of the URL (i.e. whatever.asp).
Q: Will you display 3rd party advertisements in my account or on my events? A: No.
Q: Is there a way to organize the volunteer sheet other than rows and columns (because I end up with a lot of slots that I don't need)? A: Currently this is the only way a sheet can be organized. You can optimize your events by giving thought to using more or less rows versus columns. For example, repeating a crowded time slot across multiple columns might reduce the number of rows needed. Disable slots that you don't need by putting "N/A" or a dash in the name field.
Q: How can I disable slots that I don't need? A: Disable slots that you don't need by putting anything (such as N/A or a dash) in the name field. You must do this while editing the event logged in as the Administrator and don't forget to press Save. The Administrator can hide custom fields (i.e. fields other than name and e-mail) for specific slots by keying N/A in the field.
Q: How many volunteer slots can I fit on one event sign-up sheet? A: There is no ultimate limit to the number of rows or columns, but a large sign-up sheet might open slowly on some computers and is more likely to confuse volunteers. If you need many more than about 1,200 slots in one event then contact support and we may increase it for you. Consider splitting a large event up into multiple smaller events for i-Volunteer Online. Nonetheless we have seen sign up sheets with over 1,000 slots work successfully. Keep in mind the basic hosted license currently permits 6,000 total volunteers per year so you may need an additional license in order to run very large events more than several times per year.
Q: Can I put multiple headers above volunteer fields? A: Yes. Alternatively you can use <BR> for a line break in a single header.
Q: Can one event span multiple days? A: Yes. Specify both a start and end date for your event. Then you probably want to repeat specific dates in the row or column headers so that volunteers will be informed about exactly which date they have signed up for. Alternatively if your event is very large (maybe over 100 volunteers per day) consider creating a separate event for each day.
Q: Why does my event say that it already occurred when volunteers try to sign up? A: The date that you put in the end date field (or start date if you leave end date blank) must be in the future or the current day.
Q: Is it be possible to report or export all events together? A: Yes. The Administrator can select multiple events to include on one report. The report is optimized for being exported to Excel. For example the columns in the "one-slot-per-row" report are aligned to make sorting and merging the reports easy.
Q: How do I send out reminder e-mail as events' dates approach? A: Log in as the Administrator, select an event, and press the Reminders button. Reminder e-mail will be sent out immediately to the volunteers for that event. Currently you must repeat this step for each event that you wish to send out reminders for. Currently there is no way to schedule automatic reminders.
Q: Is there a way to add additional information to reminders, such as "bring gloves?" A: Yes, you can add additional information or instructions per event that will appear in Confirmation and/or Reminder e-mails. You can configure exactly where in those e-mail that this additional information will appear from the global Preferences screen.
Q: How can volunteers track hours volunteered? A: i-Volunteer Online does not yet have a fancy way to collect and aggregate volunteers’ (or groups of volunteers’) hours, however it is possible to configure an event for collecting hours and then including those hours in a report, which the administrator can export to and work with in Excel. … To configure an event to collect hours, the administrator would create an additional field by keying a relevant label for an additional field to collect, such as “Hours Worked.” The administrator should include, in the event’s sign-up instructions, instructions to provide their hours worked either when they sign-up to volunteer, or to return and update their hours after they volunteer (see next Q&A if you plan to do the later).
Q: How can volunteers edit or come back to a sign-up sheet and update additional field information? A: The event administrator can optionally allow volunteers to edit data keyed in additional fields, such as Hours Worked. To do this the administrator must select the “Additional Field Visibility when Confirmed” to “Editable by Volunteer.” To allow a volunteer to update additional fields AFTER the date of an event, the Event End Date must be empty or in the future.
Q: What is the fastest way to send an e-mail (besides the standard reminder) to one event's group of volunteers? A: Administer the event. Press the Excel button to Open the event’s report into Excel. Highlight all of the cells in the e-mail column. Select Copy. Open Outlook (or whatever e-mail program you use). Paste the addresses into the To field (or into Bcc if you prefer to keep the recipients from seeing each others’ email addresses). Beware that if volunteers signed up for more than one shift then you may want to eliminate duplicate e-mail addresses; you can do this manually in Outlook or you can use Excel’s sort and Filter functions before you copy the addresses into Outlook.
Q: Can I provide default values for fields? A: No, not currently. The administrator can hide an event's additional field(s) for specific slots by keying "N/A" for the field's value.
Q: Can I see what date/time volunteers signed up (in addition to what date/time they signd up for)? A: The Administrator can see final slots (i.e. what date/time they signd up for) where volunteers are signed up in the Report feature. An Action Log feature shows exact dates and times when volunteers attempted to sign up or confirm.
Q: How do I remove a volunteer? A: A volunteer can cancel themselves unless the Administrator has keyed alternative instructions in the "how to cancel" field for an event. When a volunteer cancels the slot becomes open, but the volunteer's name will remain visible to the Administrator with the word "canceled" appearing in red. This allows the Administrator to see who had volunteered until someone else signs up for the slot. The Administrator can remove or replace a volunteer simply by backspacing or keying over both the name and e-mail address from the slot and then pressing Save.
Q: Can I define one slot that signs up multiple volunteers? A: By creating slots with perfectly matching row and column headers, i-Volunteer Online will consider those slots identical and sign up a volunteer in any of those slots that remain available IF the exact slot that the volunteer selected is taken and confirmed. i-Volunteer Online will also prefer the nearest identical open slot over a slot that is taken but not yet confirmed. It is rare that a slot will appear available but have been taken and confirmed, however this might happen for example if a lot of potential volunteers view the sign-up sheet simultaneously when it is initially published. If for some reason this feature is not wanted it can be disabled from the Preferences screen.
Q: What if two volunteers sign up for the same slot at the same time? A: i-Volunteer Online will first look to see if there is a nearby identical slot available. If not, the first volunteer has about five minutes to respond to a confirmation e-mail before another volunteer is allowed to sign up in the same slot. If the first volunteer does not confirm, then another volunteer may sign up for the same slot and the original, unconfirmed volunteer will be sent an e-mail notification that someone else has taken the slot.
Q: What is the difference between the Report and the Log? A: Use the Report to display a concise view of an event's volunteer schedule. This should also be your final view of an event's volunteer plan. The Report displays an event in two formats: (1) The traditional row-column model just like the sign-up sheet and (2) a detailed one-slot-per-row model. If you press the button to open the report in Excel, the report is downloaded into Excel. ... View the Log to see exactly when volunteers signed up, confirmed, canceled, or received system warnings. Use the log to research any difficulties that could arise in the process of signing up volunteers, such as where a volunteer, who failed to confirm, attempted to volunteer. Note that the log only records volunteers' actions and not changes an administrator saves in administrative mode.
Q: Why is Export to Excel not working? A: Save the file and then go to Excel and open it from there. In Office 2007 you may need to right-click the dialog where you should be given options to Open in a New Window or Save. Select Save.
Q: Why is a volunteer not receiving confirmation e-mail? A: The three most common reasons for e-mail failure are: (1) the volunteer provided a bad or misspelled address or (2) the e-mail was delivered to a spam or junk mail folder. Or (3) the volunteer's receiving e-mail system is using an anti-spam product based on a challenge/response mechanism that i-VolunteerOnline's automated e-mail system cannot respond to. If #1 is the case please have your volunteer retry with the correct e-mail address. If #2 or #3 are the case please try to configure your spam filter to not flag e-mail from i-volunteeronline.com as spam. One way to do this is by adding confirmi-VolunteerOnline.com to your e-mail system's white list. Finally, you can also try using a different e-mail address. The i-VolunteerOnline staff is constantly working to ensure the highest possible reliability of e-mail delivery. ... In the event that no one is receiving e-mail make sure your e-mail addresses set in the Preferences screen are valid. Make sure that e-mails come from is an address in the same domain as the Outgoing SMTP server (set it to confirm@i-volunteeronline.com). If you modified the Outgoing SMTP mail server make sure that it is valid. Otherwise the Outgoing SMTP mail host should be default and the backup mail host should be localhost. ... If you see an error message about failed e-mail in the browser immediately after pressing Volunteer and you have followed the steps above, please e-mail a copy of the error message to i-VolunteerOnline Software's support. ... Use the Reminders button to re-send confirmation e-mails. Finally, an Administrator should review the event periodically to see if any unconfirmed volunteers should be contacted manually.
Q: Can we enter or confirm volunteers on their behalf and bypass e-mail confirmations? A: Yes. A user logged in as the Administrator can enter volunteers (or disable slots) simply by typing something in the name field and pressing Save. Also type an e-mail address if you intend to use e-mail reminders and want to include that volunteer. The Administrator can also mark unconfirmed volunteers as confirmed by unchecking the box in front of "Not confirmed" and pressing Save.
Q: Is there a way to eliminate requiring e-mail confirmations? A: Yes, however this is not recommended because doing so may expose the event to unwanted volunteering. This is also not intended as a solution for volunteers not receiving confirmation e-mails. Only use this feature if you have set the status of the event to Hidden. You should also use it only briefly and temporarily for situations where your entire volunteer pool is trusted and sign-ups can be completed within a short period of time. For example, a meeting where the volunteer pool is present at the same physical location with internet access, but having everyone access e-mail is inconvenient. It is recommended that you turn e-mail confirmations back on after such a situation. Do not turn off e-mail confirmations if your volunteer pool is signing up from many different locations across the internet. To turn off e-mail confirmations first go to Preferences, uncheck "require confirmation by e-mail for all events," and Save. Then go to a specific event, uncheck "Volunteers must confirm by e-mail", and Save.
Q: Is there a way to disable online cancellations? A: Yes, if the Administrator puts anything in the "How to Cancel" field for an event it will disable online cancellations for that event and override the cancellation instructions set in the global Preferences. For example, a day or two before an event you might want to say "Please call if you need to cancel at this time."
Q: Is there a way to disable volunteers' access to an event while I am still designing it? A: Yes. If the Administrator sets the Event Status to Disabled and presses Save, then volunteers will not be able to sign up for that event until the event is enabled again.
Q: Can an administrator make changes to an event after volunteers have started signing up? A: Yes. If you add rows or columns then volunteers will shift appropriately to remain under the headings they signed up for. Be careful changing headers of rows or columns because volunteers will expect to have signed up under those headings. If you remove rows or columns, any volunteers in those rows or columns are removed and cannot be recovered.
Q: Can volunteers change information after they confirm their sign up? A: An administrator can configure an event to collect up to four fields of additional simple information. Visibility can be set to determine who can see and/or edit these additional four fields' values. The choices are: Only the administrator (view and edit), the volunteer (view and edit), or Everyone (view only).
Q: Are volunteers' e-mail addresses safe and private? A: Volunteers' e-mail addresses are only transmitted and visible to the user signed on as an Administrator, and are only used by the i-VolunteerOnline system to send system-generated confirmation e-mails. i-VolunteerOnline will never send unsolicited e-mail or use or share your e-mail addresses in any way. Once the Administrator deletes an event, all of the e-mail addresses for that event are permanently deleted from the database. i-Volunteer Online will never share, copy, or review customers' databases other than to support technical problems or to backup the system.
Q: Can we display our logo on the sign-up sheet? A: Yes, there are currently three ways to do this. All three ways require that you link to an image on an external web site that you own. If necessary, you may e-mail your logo to support@i-volunteeronline.com and we will put the logo on our server and then tell you what link to use. The first way to display an image will show the image on every event. On the Preferences screen for Logo URL, key the full and exact HTTP URL to your image and press Save. The second way will also show the image on every event. Include an HTML <img> tag at the beginning of the text for the volunteer sign-up instructions in the Preference screen. For example: <img src="http://www.i-volunteeronline.com/main/images/logo.gif" align="right">. The third way is event-specific. Administer the event, click the show/hide details icon until the Image URL field appears under the Description field. Key the full and exact HTTP URL to your image and press Save.
Q: Can we group, categorize, or sort events a certain way? A: Each event can be accessed directly by a unique link (i.e. a URL that ends with ?EventId=someid). This link is displayed for the Administrator and can be copied to any web site, e-mail, or online newsletter that you publish on your own. This way you can publish links to sign-up for your events in any way you like. Alternatively you can publish a general link to a list of all of your current events. This general link is your i-Volunteer Online account URL without the ending ?EventId=. This general link displays either a menu or list of your events sorted either by title and then date, or by date and then title. The administrator can select which style and order to use under Preferences. When sorting by title, if you include a colon (:) in events' titles then the sort only occurs up to the colon in the title. This allows you to group events by a common prefix and sort those events within the group by date. Currently this is the only way to group your events, however a future release of the system will improve ways to group and display events.
Q: Can we have multiple Administrators? A: Currently there is only one Administrator login for each organization. More than one person can sign on as an Administrator at the same time, however they share the same password and have access to modify all of the organization's events. Although multiple Administrators can log with the same password, We strongly recommend that you exercise caution in sharing your password as we cannot guarantee recovery of lost events or volunteer information.
Q: Can we have a different administrative contact e-mail for each event? A: Yes, if the Administrator goes under Preferecnes and checks the box "allow events to override the primary e-mail contact and specify their own" then an optional contact e-mail field will appear when administering each event.
A: The system is backed up to avoid a loss in the event of a system failure, however we will not be able to restore individual events or volunteer information that you overwrite or delete on your own. Upon request we might be able to restore your database to the state that it was one or two days ago. You can backup your own individual event information by running a Report or Exporting events to Excel. Be sure to review this topic in the license agreement (available for review in the online checkout process) when you purchase i-Volunteer Online.
Q: How do I get additional help? A: Telephone support is not offered at this time. Please e-mail questions to support@i-volunteeronline.com.
Q: Are you working on any upgrades? If I buy it now will I receive the upgrade? A: Yes, a new system is in the works, however there is no time frame for when it will be ready. Current customers of the hosted service should receive any upgrade without any additional charge to their current subscription. | |||||
 | |||||
 | |||||
 | |||||
 | |||||
 | |||||
 | |||||
 | |||||
 | |||||
 | |||||
 | |||||
i-VolunteerOnline is now owned by 79ware LLC. Stay tuned for new exciting features and enhanced support. | |||||
| | | | | |
| | |
