Before creating your report type/s, have a read of our best practice article that may conceptualise the necessity of report types for your operations.

If you are looking to not submit a report you can visit our other articles on No Report Required (No Impact) or No Report (Impact Tracked).

You can also utilise the the ability to pin popular report fields and also merge field types across reports. You can read more about these at the end of this article.

Creating a report type can be done in two places:

Please note:

NEW! You can now restrict report information to the volunteer who was rostered on that session. More information at the bottom of this guide.

2. Click 'Create Report Type'

3. Fill in this box to give your report type a name and then click on ‘Add a description’ below to add a description.

* Adding a description is optional, this can be utilised to add notes for this particular report type and will not be visible to the volunteers.

4. Start adding some fields to your report type. Fields are impact measurement points. What do you want to know about and measure from this activity?

When creating your fields, keep in mind:

Therefore, you won't have to include the above fields in the report.

You can then either choose from existing report fields or create new report fields.

To choose from existing:

5. Browse or search the report fields from other report. This can be done to centralise your data from various reports.

6. Click on one of the fields to select one that is already available, and then click on ‘Add Field’ to save.

7. Once you have finished adding in reporting headings and fields, you can save the report by clicking Save Report Type.

To create new report fields:

There are 8 field types that capture different data points in Volaby: checklist item, dropdown, rating, thumbs up/down, attachment, time, text, number. Each field type is best used for different data points. There is the option to provide a description for each field. When thinking about constructing your fields, think about how you would like data exported in the future.

If you have a lot of fields that need to be in the report, consider "Add Heading" to break up the volume and give the report type structure, again this is optional.

5. Click on ‘Add description’ to add instructions.

6. You can opt to highlight this field by clicking on the slider next to ‘Assign as Featured Field’.

You can also make this field optional by clicking on the slider next to ‘Make field optional’, not clicking on the slider will make this a required field.

7. Click on ‘Add field’ at the bottom to save changes.

*Session Creation Screen

Sometimes when you are Creating an Activity as well as its sessions, you may find your existing report types don't quite suit. If this does happen, you have the ability to create a new report type when creating your activity. When you start creating activities initially, this may be the easiest place to set up your report types.

Which will drop down a screen displayed below:

2. Create your report type as you would in the previous steps starting with a name, and description and continuing with field types.

3. Save your new report type and it will be saved in the Report Type Bank with any others.

Some handy additional features are:

Pinned Report Fields

Pin important fields to the top of your page for easier visibility when creating new reports.
Example: My star rating asking volunteers how they find their activity is something I would like in all reports, so I can pin this to the top and it will be easy to see when anyone is creating reports

Merge Report Fields
If you have the same field in more than 1 report, you can now collate them into 1 data point.
Example: I have 2 different reports asking how many pieces of rubbish we collected, I can now merge these 2 sets of data into one so I can see how many pieces of rubbish we have collected all together in the Impact Dashboard

Who can edit a report?

Activity Leaders and Program Managers can edit reports they have access to! It is important to note that only Admins of Volaby (highest level of permission) can create and edit reports.

Who can submit a report?

Volunteers, managers and admins can submit a report. It is important to remember that only volunteers who are on the team, can submit a report for that activity.

If you choose to have volunteers submit reports, this is a conversation best had as part of orientation or inductions so they are aware of this responsibility. Alternatively, management can fill in the reports.

Who can view a report?

The volunteers who have been rostered on for a shift will be able to see the rosters, even if they are added just for that 1 specific roster. If you would prefer for general volunteers to only be able to see their report, then you can use a function named "STRICT SESSION REPORTING". This will mean that general volunteers can then only see the completed reports for the session they have been rostered on for. This might be used when handling sensitive information or asking your volunteers to give honest feedback on shifts.

Visit the Admin Console, click on Operations to view the Reporting options.

Restrict Report Visibility

If you have any sensitive information or would like your volunteers to share information in their reports that you would prefer to be confidential, then you can utilise this new feature.

It will mean that the volunteers rostered on for a session will be the only ones who can see the report information for that session.

You can toggle on this feature if you