OrgAction

Event updates: Freezing registrations and sending change alerts

2009-10-07T08:55:00.004-05:00

Freezing event registrations
It is now possible to prevent registrants from changing their schedule within a certain number of days of an event. This can also be used to prevent people from registering for activities in the past. Enable this option by going to advanced options on the event setup page.

Alerts for last minute changes
Alerts can be sent when someone changes their response to an event with a certain number of days of its occurrence. To help control the volume of email sent, the alerts are not sent until after someone logs off the website. The number of days for alerts and the person to receive the alerts is defined on the event setup page under advanced options.

Rich Text for Event Information
The event information field now has a rich text editor to make it easier to embed links and add other formatting to the description. The controls are similar to what you would see in a word processor.

Event Registration
If an event is either freezing dates, or sending alert emails, a notice will show up on the event signup page under the information box to alert members.

Please let me know if you have any questions about these changes.

2009-10-05T18:59:00.003-05:00

The email center is being updated to include a sent mail report that allows administrators to view messages sent from the email center. The new report includes details about who received the message, if they opened it, and if they unsubscribed as a result of the message. Recipient email settings determine if we can track the opening of a message so the opened statistic may under report. To help save time, messages can now be copied and forwarded to others.

The email tool has been updated as well with performance enhancements and interface tweaks. Now when sending a message, the page will display a “please wait message” while the emails are sent. If it takes more then few seconds to send the mail, the page will forgo the final confirmation message and continue processing the emails in the background. The new sent mail report is always available to view the finial status of any submission.

Upcoming Enhancements for Events

2009-09-25T14:06:00.002-05:00

Copy Event
You will have the option to create a new event by copying an existing one. You have the option to copy everything, or exclude dates.

Change Notifications
When creating an event, you will be able to request email alerts for registration changes that occur within a specified number of days of your event.

Freeze Registrations
When creating an event, you will be able to prevent members from updating their registration within a specified number of days of your event. This will also prevent them from editing entries in the past.

When?
We hope to publish these changes early next week!

New Email Center and Improved Navigation

2009-09-20T23:53:00.004-05:00

OrgAction has recently been updated! The most exciting new feature is our email center which allows you to communicate with your volunteers and clients directly from the OrgAction website. Significant improvements have also been made to navigation and the look and feel of several pages. Look for more updates over the next week as I update our marketing materials with details of the changes.

With the email center you can send email to all active members, those in a particular group, specific people you select, or everyone who is registered for an event within a date range. Create professional emails with images and rich formatting. Member email preferences are respected by automatically including an unsubscribe link in all outbound messages.

Much of the new eye candy comes thanks to the Crystal Clear icon set!

September Update Complete

2009-09-08T14:20:00.003-05:00

The recently announced enhancements to the OrgAction system are now live for all our clients! One of the biggest changes for members is that they will now be directed to the member information page with the events preselected. The goal is to reduce the number of screens and clicks needed to register and signup for an event.

This update also includes a relationship tracker for mentoring and many small tweaks to polish the interface. Please don’t hesitate to contact us for help making the most of these new features.

Coming Soon - Member Relationships

2009-09-06T22:32:00.002-05:00

The ability to associate two member records together will be made possible in a update next week. This feature can be used to track relationships with mentors, parents, animals or anything else.

Upcoming Changes

2009-09-04T09:53:00.002-05:00

The following changes should go live early next week.

Removal of main menu for volunteers
- Volunteers will now be directed to the member screen when they login
- If enabled, volunteer reports will be accessible from the member screen
View event list from member/registration screen
When a volunteer is signing up, the system will prompt them to complete the next required form.

If you have any questions about these changes please let us know!

Interface Improvements for Event Registration

2009-09-01T17:50:00.003-05:00

To make OrgAction a little bit prettier and even easier to use we have cleaned up the interface on the event registration page. Some unnecessary information is now hidden and the grid on the matrix has been cleaned up. Formerly, the decision to use either the matrix, or day, view was set at for the entire account. It can now be set at the individual event and, if an event only has one date, it will automatically show the single day view.

Matrix View

Day View

Entering Event dates is now easier!

2009-08-26T18:15:00.005-05:00

Several of our clients requested it, so we did it! You can now enter event dates using a calendar format.

Look for this update to go live in early September.

To create the cool looking check boxes we used a script from ryanfait.com.

New version of Report Builder released

2009-08-10T17:49:00.000-05:00

A new version of the report builder has just been released. Filters, performance, and the UI have all been improved. The backbone of OrgAction is our ability to support custom forms for our clients and the report builder is what lets them make sense of all the collected data. This ended up being the most complex programs that I have created for OrgAction, which of course, also means that it was one of the most fun. I am looking forward to adding additional features in the future.

Weekend website updates

2009-07-13T09:07:00.001-05:00

We have made some updates to the website in preparation for a marketing push we are making at the beginning of August. This weekend we updated the public side of the OrgAction website to include support for the Live Person chat tool and spruced up the home page to make it a little less crowded. Please send us a message if you have any comments or ideas!

Custom forms... what are they good for?

2009-06-13T22:40:00.001-05:00

One of the powerful features about OrgAction is that custom forms can be linked to either a member, or an event. This allows organizations to use OrgAction as repository for all volunteer, member, and client information. Some common uses of our custom forms include:

Volunteer applications
Volunteer reviews including background checks
Creating appointments that match volunteers with clients
Tracking the outcome of an event or action

Once the data is in OrgAction it can be exported to Excel using our included tools but many organizations opt for custom reports. These tailor made reports eliminate the tedious task of merging data from multiple sources. By making up to date information available with a few mouse clicks, organizations save significant amounts of time.

Free Signup Application

2009-06-01T08:59:00.000-05:00

This weekend we finished a free application that lets organizations add a signup/interest form to their website. This should be good for planning one-time events or collecting signups for mailing lists. Excel downloads are supported and we added some eye candy with a graph that trends the response rate over 60 days.

The paid OrgAction service is a natural extension of this free application and allows respondents to register, sign up for reoccurring events, maintain their information, and much more. Our hope is that some of the organizations using our free services will consider our paid services in the future.

Check out the free signup application at http://www.orgaction.com/org/public-free-tools.cfm

The birth of OrgAction as a Volunteer Management Solution

2009-01-12T16:08:00.002-06:00

I had a strong desire to do something fun and technical that would serve the nonprofit industry. I was browsing Volunteer Match for opportunities and realized that many non-profit groups were looking for volunteer coordinators. I signed up with Catholic Charities of Central Texas and started compiling schedules for their food pantry. Manually compiling sign up sheets into an Excel sheet proved boring, tedious, and error prone, so I decided to get started on building a volunteer scheduling service to handle the task. After a few quarters, I folded the scheduling service I created for CCCTX into a database for tracking volunteer contact information and OrgAction was born.