Best Practices, Tips, and Training from AngelPoints

Training Opportunities for AngelPoints Clients
AngelPoints now offers three training session to ensure that your team is using your volunteer management site to maximum benefit. Each session is limited to 25 participants, so sign up today if you haven't already taken advantage of this great opportunity.

AngelPoints Overview for New Managers
This training is recommended for new Event, Group, or System Managers, or anyone who needs a refresher. It covers the basics of using the system, including creating and managing events, using the calendar and File Manager, and validating hours.

To sign up for the next session on September 1, click here.

AngelPoints Group Manager Training
This session provides more in-depth training for Group Managers, including advanced tips for creating and managing events, adding and editing content, and getting the most out of AngelPoints reports.

Click to sign up for the next session on August 19 click here, or for next month's session on September 23 click here.

System Manager Training
AngelPoints training for System Managers is now offered once per quarter. This session covers managing users, understanding access levels, managing site content, tips for designing your site, and best practices for editing content and promoting special events.

To sign up for System Manager Training on September 30, click here.

Save the Date for the State of the Product Call
Join Vice President of Product Stephane Giraudie and the AngelPoints team for the next State of the Product Call on Tuesday, September 15 at 10:00 A.M. Pacific time. During this call, Stephane will share product development news, our plans for the remainder of the year, and give an update from the Ideas Bank. This is also your chance to share feedback about new features and ideas with AngelPoints. Keep your eyes open for your invitation next week!

Tip: Adding "About Page" Content to the Login Page
Did you know you can now link About page content from the Login page? Adding links from the Login page is an easy way to share information about your program with employees who may not have logged in or created a password yet. Please contact your Account Manager if you would like to link About page content from your Login page.

Best Practices and More Tips for Using AngelPoints
AngelPoints Customer Support regularly publishes best practices to both the AngelPoints blog and archives them on the AngelPoints help site. To view the archive, click Help on your AngelPoints site, and navigate to Extras and Examples > Tips and Tricks. Here you'll find:

• How to make your external links open in a new browser
• Guidelines for posting images to your site
• How to hide a published event
• How to use a custom search result link on your home page
• Best practices for launching your AngelPoints site

What Every Volunteer Manager Wants to See: Your Event is Full!

We're always excited to announce features that make your AngelPoints site more user-friendly, especially when the ideas come from our most knowledgeable users -- our clients. One such idea is a simple designation to let users know that an event is full without having to click through to the event's detail page. Thanks to your feedback, we've now added "event full" information to event listings to improve your volunteers' experience.

Site Configurable? No, this feature is now enabled for all AngelPoints clients.



Motivating Employee Volunteerism During Tough Economic Times
AngelPoints is pleased to spread the word about a very timely research project by LBG Associates and the LBG Research Institute, and invites your company to participate. This study is designed to help companies make crucial decisions to bring their volunteer programs more in line with today’s economic realities -- and employees’ needs and desires -- by answering the following questions:

• Are employees more driven to volunteer during this recession, or are they so depressed that they are in a state of inertia?
• Are employees not using workday-based programs, such as skills-based, pro bono, or paid time off, for fear of losing their jobs?
• How are companies successfully motivating employees to volunteer during these tough times?

How can you help? Click here for details on how to participate in the study. Participation involves answering a short online survey and providing access to employees for their input.

See You at the National Conference on Volunteering and Service
To all of you who are attending the National Conference on Volunteering and Service in San Francisco this week, welcome to our neighborhood. We look forward to an fantastic week of presentations and opportunities to meet with you, including our client gathering on Tuesday evening. We'd also like to wish good luck to all of our clients who will be presenting at the conference, and provide a special thank you to Anna Hennes of Cerner, who will be presenting about AngelPoints in the Technology for Managing Corporate Volunteer Programs panel on Tuesday morning.

Follow Us on Twitter
Do you like your news in small doses? AngelPoints is now on Twitter. Follow us for quick updates, resource links, and all the rest at http://twitter.com/angelpoints.

Scheduled Maintenance and Other AngelPoints Updates

AngelPoints has a scheduled maintenance this Friday, June 5. AngelPoints client sites will be unavailable from 10:00 P.M. PDT - 2:00 A.M PDT for a database upgrade.

AngelPoints Training
We'd like to thank all of our clients who have joined us for live AngelPoints training webinars over the past couple of months. As a reminder, we offer beginning and advanced training sessions via GoToMeeting each month, and you can sign up for either session on the AngelPoints website:
http://www.angelpoints.com/index.php?page=events#training

There are two sessions coming up. The next advanced session is Wednesday, June 17 and the next beginner session is July 7.

We are also working on recording the different topics covered in these sessions and will add them to the Help site. Stay tuned for an announcement of availability.

User Data Imports
To create a more transparent data upload process and give you easier access to your data upload information and results, we have added a report for System Managers that shows:

• The status of all your imports (In Progress, Pending, Completed)
• File information including the date received, the file name and size, the number of users in the file, and the date the upload was completed
• Details about the upload, including errors, users added to the system, users modified, and users removed

To see this information, select Users > User Imports from the Manage tab.





Design Updates
If you have recently logged into AngelPoints, you will have noticed a few new design changes including new tab placement and a change to the design of call out boxes. There are a number of reasons we make changes to the user interface; chief among them are to accommodate client feedback, to make the site as usable and engaging as possible, and to incorporate new features. When such updates are associated with changes to existing features or workflow, we make every effort to alert you in tandem with -- or ahead of -- the launch.

State of the Product Call
Due to the timing of the National Conference on Volunteering and Service and other client initiatives that are taking place over the next couple of months, we are delaying the next State of the Product call until early August. We have many exciting updates to share with you and also look forward to introducing our new Vice President of Product, Stephane Giraudie. Please be on the lookout for your invitation in the coming weeks.

AngelPoints Ideas Bank
Your feedback and suggestions are extremely valuable in shaping the AngelPoints product direction. If you haven't visited the Ideas Bank in a while, please stop by, vote or comment on current ideas, and add your top wants and needs for the product to the list. The AngelPoints team is actively involved on the site and uses this forum to ask for more information and to give you the status on different ideas.

If you do not have a log on, contact Professional Services Manager Kate Derrick at kate AT angelpoints DOT com.

New Enhancements and Upcoming Tab Changes

Two significant changes have been made to the tabs on the top of your AngelPoints user interface. These changes will take effect with the next release of AngelPoints early next week.

First, the name of the About tab will be configurable, allowing you to rename the tab to be more reflective of your program. If you would like to change the name of this tab on your site, please contact your Account Manager.

Second, because comprehensive Help is now available from the link on the upper right of your site, the Support tab has been renamed FAQs, and will now be available from the footer of your site rather than the tab area. You can still provide custom content to your FAQs page as before; however, you may also opt to remove this page entirely from your site if you find that you do not use FAQs or if you prefer to provide Q & A about your program on your About page. To remove the FAQs link and page from your site, contact your Account Manager.


Google Maps Now Used for Driving Directions
Driving Directions on the Event Details page now link to Google Maps rather than Yahoo Maps. In addition to driving directions, Google Maps also provide public transportation and walking directions where available.
Site Configurable? No, Google Maps are now used on all client sites.

Schools and Universities Added to the Organizations Database
All public schools and universities have been added to the Organizations database. This information comes from the National Center for Education Statistics and the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System, respectively.
Site Configurable? No, public school and university data has been added for all clients.

Coming Soon! Ideas Portal Implementation
We're excited to pre-announce our next Ideas Portal implementation. Later this month, we will be providing a checkbox to copy event managers on email sent using the Contact Roster feature. Thank you to the clients who suggested and voted for this helpful feature.

New Customization Options

The latest update to AngelPoints includes several new customization options:

Viewing Lifetime Hours
Motivate your top volunteers by showing them how much impact they've made. You can now opt to display lifetime volunteer hours on the dashboard.


Site Configurable? Yes, please contact your Account Manager to enable this feature.

Customizing Login Error Messages
You can now provide customized messages for user login errors. Error messages are displayed when users enter an incorrect user name or password, when they have one more attempt at logging in before they are locked out of the system, and when their account has been locked due to too many failed login attempts.

Site Configurable? Yes. If would like to change the default error messages provided by AngelPoints, please contact your Account Manager.

Customizing CRA Help Text
We have added rollover help to the Create Event page for clients using the CRA module. When you hover your mouse over the help icon next to the CRA Eligible checkbox, text is displayed to help your volunteer program managers better determine whether to use the CRA Survey as part of the event screening process. If you would like to customize this message to be more specific to your program, you can do so on the Manage > Setup > Content page.


Site Configurable? No. The help rollover on the Create Event page now defaults to on for clients using the CRA module and you can customize the text..

New Online Help Site, Event Icons, Search Enhancements from AngelPoints

AngelPoints Releases New Online Help and Website
We are pleased to announce a number of new resources to assist you in using AngelPoints to effectively manage your Employee Volunteer Program.

Chief among these resources is our new comprehensive online Help, which you can access by clicking Help in the upper right corner of your AngelPoints site.

This Help site will soon replace the AngelPoints Support wiki, so please update your bookmarks. AngelPoints Help provides explanatory and step-by-step information for all your common and not-so-common AngelPoints tasks. We are also working to build out a compendium of FAQs, Troubleshooting Tips, Best Practices and Examples, and other customer requests over the coming quarter, so stay tuned for more to come on the new Help site.



We've also launched a new website and this blog to keep you better informed about AngelPoints news and product updates as well as best practices in the CSR and volunteerism fields. You may also want to check out our Resources page, where you can find links for more information about
Your feedback about the new Help site, website, and blog is important to us, and suggestions are welcome by emailing marketing AT angelpoints DOT com.

First Wave of New Icons Released
A big thank you to all the users in our beta program who've helped us fine tune the icons used throughout AngelPoints. The first set has been released to better identify event types. Our next round will include icons for actions such as editing, finding an event, adding or removing oneself from the roster, checking weather, and checking driving directions. Following are the new icons that you will see on AngelPoints starting now:

Enhancements to the CRA Module
For AngelPoints clients using the CRA module, there are two new enhancements.
First, Flexible Opportunities and Recurring Events can now be marked as CRA eligible events. Second, the fields LMI, Employee Role, and Financial Activity are now all site configurable and can be removed from the CRA Details page. By default, these fields are all displayed; to remove them from your site, please contact your Account Manager.

More Intuitive Search for Flexible Opportunities
AngelPoints has released a number of improvements to make searching for Flexible Opportunities more intuitive. Because these are significant changes to the user experience, we'd like to prepare you for these enhancements.

First, the option to Search for Flexible Opportunities has been removed from the Home navigation bar. Users can now simply click Search for Events, and the Search for Events page will list both Scheduled Events and Flexible Opportunities on the same page, separated by tabs. In addition, the link to Flexible Opportunities in the Quick Links box has been updated to display the Search for Events page with the Flexible Opportunities tab foremost.




Users also now have the option to search for Flexible Opportunities by zip code, causes, and skill as well as by date.

Validating Hours Just Got Easier, Other Updates from AngelPoints

AngelPoints' redesigned Validate Activity Hours page now makes it easier for you to find and approve hours for your volunteers. Date search options have been moved to the top of the page, an option to search by groups has also been added, and new tabs make it easier and faster for you to manage Pending, Approved, and Denied hours.

Additional improvements indicate a reordering of the columns to be more intuitive and an indication of which hours were volunteered by Friends and Family. We also now display where the organization came from (whether it was from the IRS database, was a Write-In, or came from another source).

Site Configurable? No, this feature is now enabled for all AngelPoints clients.



Event Reminders and Follow-Up Emails - You're in Control
Managers now have the capability to specify whether they'd like to send event reminders and event follow-up emails for each event they manage.

Site Configurable? Yes, please contact your Account Manager if you are interested in turning on this feature.

Events Report Download Now Includes Event Manager Email Addresses
We'd like to thank one of our AngelPoints users for using the Ideas Portal to suggest that we add event manager email addresses to the downloadable Events Report. This idea has now been added!

Site Configurable? No, this feature is now enabled for all AngelPoints clients.

Note: The product changes described in this post apply only to AngelPoints Version 2. If a feature is listed as site configurable, please contact your account manager to enable it for your site.

New Feature Announcements, and an Update from the Ideas Portal

Keeping Your Volunteer Team in the Loop
This blog (in conjunction with your AngelPointers client email newsletter) gives you the most relevant information about changes to AngelPoints products and services that increase your productivity and drive engagement. To ensure that AngelPoints users at your company are aware of new features, we suggest that you point your system, group, and event managers to this information. Some ways to share: post a link to this page or copy its content to one of your custom content areas, such as the News & Information area or an About page.

Share Your Stories
Do you have stories that showcase your company’s commitment to volunteering? Have you found better ways of using AngelPoints to increase your productivity? Has AngelPoints better enabled you to promote your company’s events and boost engagement? If so, we’d like to write up your story as a case study, impact spotlight, white paper example, or best practice suggestion.

To share your expertise, please contact Molly Hovorka, Product Marketing Director, by email at mhovorka AT angelpoints DOT com.

Feature Updates

Note: The product changes described below apply only to AngelPoints Version 2. If a feature is listed as site configurable, please contact your account manager to enable it for your site.

1. Board Membership - Users can now specify whether they are representing your company when serving on organization boards. The Board Membership and Board Participation report downloads both show company representation.
   Site Configurable? No
2. Canadian Charities Added to the Database - The organization database has been updated to include approximately 84,000 Canadian organizations.
   Site Configurable? No
3. Submitting IVA Hours - Now when your users use the copy functionality to log additional Independent Volunteer Activities (IVAs), the date will default to today's date instead of the last date they logged.
   Site Configurable? No
   
   Also, when a user adds a new IVA, you can opt to make the Detail/Description field required. This is especially useful for clients who use the CRA module and need to track more detailed information about these activities.
   Site Configurable? Yes
4. Validating Hours - It is now easier to see more information about a volunteer’s participation when validating hours. Previously, you could click his/her name to send an email for more information. Now when you click the user’s name, his/her participant report is displayed. If you still need more information, an email link is available on the participant report page. Watch for more improvements to the Validate Hours page coming up over the next few months.
   Site Configurable? No
5. Updating Groups Via Data Feeds - If a data feed contains new group information for a user, the new group information replaces the existing information in the database. If the feed does not contain any group information for a user, the existing information remains as the current group.
   Site Configurable? No
6. Standard Text Boxes - Standard plain text boxes have replaced the rich text editors on the Submit Hours and Notes to Manager pages for all event types, as well as CRA Notes. By making the notes process simpler, overall usability will be improved and the number of errors reduced .
   Site Configurable? No

Your Ideas = Our Action
By now, you've heard about the AngelPoints Ideas Portal. Thank you to everyone who has already logged in, voted on ideas, and commented on them. We're also in there responding to ideas and keeping statuses updated. If you haven't yet logged into the Ideas Portal, you're missing your chance to guide the AngelPoints product roadmap. You can vote on or "promote" any idea. We use the Ideas Portal to ensure that we give you what you need from our product. Some of the ideas that have received votes and comments so far:

• A report to track which users haven't yet filled out their profiles
• Mark events as "full" from the event list view pages

We're also happy to announce suggestions from the Ideas Portal that we've added to our Roadmap and are committed to delivering:

• Additional options when searching for organizations
• Improving the organization search
• Making flexible opportunities CRA eligible
• Event Manager email addresses on the downloaded Events Report

If you are still unable to log in to the Ideas Portal or if you have any questions about how it works, you contact Kate Derrick at kate@angelpoints.com.

AngelPoints Seeking Beta Testers for Rewards Module

In an effort to ensure that you receive timely and relevant product news and updates from AngelPoints, we've given AngelPointers a new look and direction. AngelPointers will now be emailed to clients one to two times per month as we release new features, and will be cross-posted here on the AngelPoints blog. Typically, you will find brief updates in your email version and more in-depth coverage online.

We are also launching a new website and user Help system early next year. AngelPointers will tie into our product blog on the website, giving you the option of subscribing to an RSS feed for the all the latest about our products and services as well as trends in volunteerism and corporate social responsibility. You'll find complete user documentation in the new Help system, and each release will include release notes directing you to changes in the product.

Please let us know what you think by dropping us a line at marketing AT angelpoints DOT com.

Sneak Preview of Rewards

AngelPoints is preparing to start beta testing its new Rewards module in the beginning of January. The initial release of this module will allow you recognize and reward employee volunteers through grant programs, and a subsequent release will add a merchandise rewards catalog. Volunteers will be able to see rewards for which they are eligible at a glance, as well as peruse the full catalog.

If you would like to beta test the rewards module, please email Angie Schiavoni , Director of Product, at beta AT angelpoints DOT com.


CRA Task List

Many of our clients who use the CRA module have asked for a way to go straight to the task list without hitting the CRA dashboard. Starting December 17, your CRA landing page will be your task list.

News From the Ideas Portal

We'd like to thank everyone who has added ideas and comments to the Ideas Portal since it's launch last month. The Ideas Portal allows select system managers from each company to provide feedback and post ideas on AngelPoints, and we'll keep you updated on the progress of ideas posted. There are currently almost 40 ideas on the portal and we have already added several items to our product roadmap based on your feedback, including showing users that an event is full, better management of shifts within an activity, and the inclusion of flexible opportunities in event searches and event listings on the home page. Please keep the great ideas coming.

Improved Usability, Addressing Clients' Needs are the Themes at AngelPoints First State of the Product Call

50 Attendees Join AngelPoints for the First State of the Product Call
Ever wonder what new features AngelPoints has planned or what is happening with your feature requests? 50 attendees joined the AngelPoints team for our first State of the Product call on November 12. This forum, which will be scheduled quarterly, is your opportunity to hear a recap of recently released features, find out about upcoming product plans and share your feedback and questions with AngelPoints. The team also unveiled our new Ideas Portal, giving you more say and better insight into the way we prioritize feature requests. Keep your eyes open for information about our next call in the first quarter of next year.

AngelPoints Launches Ideas Portal
AngelPoints recently launched our client-driven Ideas Portal. This portal is a space for you to tell us what you need from AngelPoints products and services. You can post your ideas, as well as vote and comment on ideas posted by other clients. AngelPoints will be commenting and updating the status of issues to give you greater transparency into our product development process. We will be using the Ideas Portal as we plan out our future roadmaps and will give priority to the items with the highest votes.


We are currently in a soft launch of the Ideas Portal, so we ask that you designate one primary person from your company to be point of contact for adding ideas. To gain access to the Ideas Portal, please contact Kate Derrick at kate AT angelpoints DOT com. (If you RSVP'd to the November 12 State of the Product call, you should have already received your log-in information.)

New Icons and Usability Improvements
Improving your user experience is one of our top priorities. To this end, we’ll be making a number of changes over the coming months to improve usability and the overall look and feel of AngelPoints.

Some of these changes are relatively minor in nature, such as using standardized, more intuitive icons. The new Driving Directions icon is an example of a change you’ll soon be seeing when we update all of our system icons before the end of the year.


Addressing more substantial usability issues, such as those that will streamline your workflow, will undergo refinement through out beta testing program before being communicated and released to you. If you are interested in participating in the AngelPoints beta program, please email beta AT angelpoints DOT com and we will contact you.

Flexible Opportunities Improvements
Several improvements have been made to Flexible Opportunities. First, volunteers can now search for Flexible Opportunities by location, and the default date range on the search is consistent with other scheduled events. In addition, the Flexible Opportunities have been added to the monthly Manage calendar, making it easier for manager to see all events in one place.


Rewards
Much of AngelPoints’ product news through the rest of the year will center around the development and launch of our new Rewards module to better support programs such as Dollars for Doers and grants. We’ll keep you informed here in AngelPointers of these additions so that you can coordinate with your Account Manager to add them to your site.