YourVolunteers News
The Volunteer Schedule Wizard Returns
29 January, 2015
When we relaunched our system, we chose to not include a volunteer schedule wizard. Quite frankly, the new system was far more complex and re-creating the wizard was no easy task. Recently, we decided to roll up our sleeves, brew the coffee, and then bring it back. Please note that the wizard is still in beta so we would appreciate you letting us know if you find an unintended "feature" with it.
Nonscheduled Shifts
9 October, 2014
We have released a beta version of a new nonscheduled shifts feature allowing volunteer managers to add nonscheduled and virtual volunteering opportunities. After being assigned to them, volunteers can then add the hours that they worked. As an example, an animal shelter may need a professional photographer to take photos for a Halloween promotion. The photographer would only be able to come in between paying gigs or when a customer cancels. When the photographer comes to the shelter to dress up the dogs and cats as characters from The Hunger Games movies, he/she would be able to log those hours within our system for approval by the volunteer manager. This new feature is included in the free version of our system.
OpenSSL Bug
9 April, 2014
YourVolunteers does not utilize OpenSSL for the transmission of sensitive information. However, some of our underlying technologies may. We have been assured by our cloud services provider that they began rolling out fixes for the known vulnerability immediately upon the release of the patch. While the likelihood that your username and password have been compromised through our system is low, we do recommend routinely changing your password anyway so right now might be a good time to do so. You simply need to login as a volunteer and select the option on the menu. When you are done, you may want to change your password pretty much everywhere else once the site has applied the patch since this is a very serious vulnerability.
The All New YourVolunteers System is Finally Here!
16 March, 2014
After many months of work, we are happy to announce the beta release of an all new YourVolunteers system. The release was set to coincide with the tenth anniversary of our system. You can read more about the system's history on the Our Origin Page.
There really are too many changes to list, but we tried to take the very best of the Special Events and Ongoing Needs products from our old system to create a new unified product. To ensure that the system will be able to continue to handle our growing user base, we also made the decision to develop a cloud-based system. Because we are using completely different technologies to run the service, we are not able to run both the old and the new systems concurrently.
Some highlights of the new system:
- Group your volunteers and limit shifts to particular groups.
- Like before, you can build a list of available volunteers for a shift based on their interests and availability, but now you can also assign volunteers from a list of all volunteers. We still try to prevent scheduling conflicts.
- Improved tracking feature and tracking information is now included in summary reports and charts.
- Mobile-first design so that the system works better on tablets and phones.
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