Features & Enhancements:
Achievements, Badges & Certificates:
Recognise your volunteers as they reach milestones. Admins can set up achievements in Admin Console > Recognition > Achievements. Each achievement is earned by 'Hours', 'Years of service', 'Sessions attended', 'Report field total' or 'Manual', and has one or more levels. A level can award a badge, a certificate, both or neither. Volaby checks every night and awards levels automatically, and volunteers can receive the 'Achievement Awarded' email with a link to download their certificate. Achievements are available on the Pro plan. See Achievements & Badges and Certificates.
Badge builder: design a badge for each level by choosing a shape, frame, colour and centre. The centre can be a number, an icon, up to 3 letters or your logo.
Certificate templates: design certificates in Admin Console > Recognition > Certificates. Choose the Classic, Band or Minimal layout, or pick 'Your design' to upload your own A4 PDF, PNG or JPG and drag merge fields into place. You can add up to 2 signatures.
Manual awards: award a level or issue a certificate from the new 'Recognition' tab on a volunteer's profile. To do this for several volunteers at once, select them in the Volunteer Database and use the 'Recognition' action.
Backfill awards: award an achievement to volunteers who qualified before its levels went live. No emails are sent.
For volunteers: a new 'Achievements' tab on My Elements shows their badges, their certificates to download and, if you allow it, their progress to the next level. A 'Your Achievements' card appears in the sidebar.
Communications:
A new Communications page in the main menu brings your organisation's messages together under 'Inbox', 'Bulletins' and 'Sent' tabs. Use the 'Communicate' button at the top to email or SMS any volunteers without opening their profiles first. See The Communications Page.
Sent: every SMS and email sent from Volaby, both ad hoc and automated. You can search it and filter by channel, type and date.
Bulletins: bulletin management has a new layout. It includes search, 'Audience' and 'Posted by' columns, and pinning straight from the list.
Two-Way SMS:
Volunteers can now reply to ad-hoc SMS messages. Turn on 'Allow replies' when you send an SMS, and it goes out from a number volunteers can reply to. Replies appear in the Communications Inbox, where you can read the whole conversation and reply. Whoever sent the original message gets an email when a reply arrives. A volunteer's Communications history on their profile now shows SMS delivery and reply statuses, and the full conversation for repliable messages.
International Phone Numbers:
Phone number fields now have a country picker and save numbers in international format. This covers the 'Phone' field in Account Settings (previously 'Mobile'), contact numbers on volunteer profiles, and phone questions in tasks and forms. SMS reminders now work with international mobile numbers. The SMS cost estimate is also more accurate. A message with an emoji or other special character fits 70 characters per unit instead of 160, and the estimate now counts this.
Saved Searches:
You can now save the filters, sort order and columns you use most in the Volunteer Database. Click the star icon in the toolbar, choose 'Save search' and give it a name. Turn on 'Share with team' so other managers can apply it. Only you can update or delete it. The Volunteer Database can now also show 25, 50 or 100 rows per page.
Program Headings:
Admins can now group programs under headings. In Program Management, click 'Reorder' next to Active Programs, click 'Add heading', then drag programs under it. Headings appear in the Program Management sidebar and in the program picker during sign-up. In the picker, programs without a heading are listed under 'Other'.
Importing One-Off Sessions:
Activity imports can now include one-off sessions for regular and event activities. Add columns such as session_oneoff_1_date, session_oneoff_1, session_oneoff_1_start and session_oneoff_1_end to your CSV, or click 'Add one-off session' in the activity panel. The session is added on each date you list, and every date must be one the activity runs on. See Importing Activities.
Unavailability Notifications:
There are two new notification types in Admin Console > Communications > Notifications & Alerts:
Unavailability Date - Rostered Only: sent when a volunteer marks a date unavailable for an activity they're rostered on.
Rostered Volunteer Can't Attend - All Sources: sent when a rostered volunteer submits an unavailability date, answers 'No' to an attendance reminder, or has unavailability that conflicts with a roster.
The existing 'Unavailability Date Submitted' notification has been renamed 'Unavailability Date - All Submissions'.
Funnel Invites:
When you invite volunteers, you can now pick a 'Funnel'. Invitees then apply through that funnel and follow its pathway. The option appears in the Invite Volunteers dialog when your organisation has at least one active funnel.
Enterprise Sub-Accounts:
Archive: master accounts can archive a sub-account from its page in Admin Console > Enterprise > Sub-Accounts. No one in an archived sub-account can use Volaby. Its data and accounts are kept, so you can restore it at any time.
Remove items: you can now remove a shared program, role, task, form, funnel, report type, resource, matching rule, email or dashboard from a sub-account. This deletes the item there and stops future updates reaching it.
Form notifications: form notification settings now go across when you push forms to sub-accounts.
Availability Lock:
'Prevent Availability Submission' in Admin Console > Operations no longer applies to activities with an open roster, so volunteers can still join and set availability on those. While the setting is on, the availability prompt is hidden from the volunteer sidebar.
Admin Home Page:
Admins now land on the management dashboard when they sign in.
Fixes:
Activity leaders who manage activities in a program now see only the activities they lead in its activity list, with no duplicates.
Removing a volunteer from an activity now also removes them from upcoming draft rosters.
Renamed Volunteer Profile tasks are now linked correctly between enterprise accounts.
The two-factor code boxes on the Sign In screen are displayed correctly again.
Phone questions in tasks and forms now accept valid international numbers.