Comparing volunteer stats between V-Base and VBC

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rtomalin
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Comparing volunteer stats between V-Base and VBC

I am now looking at exactly how we can gather our normal stats from VBC.  To do this I need to understand what look like some anomalies with the VBC data.

I am trying to create a list of volunteer enquiries for the last 3 months (Jan to Mar).

I have started by modifying the standard Activities report.  Changing the time frame, adding in the required columns (eg Ethnicity, Employment status etc) and defining the activity to extract.  For this latter I am using “Applied for Opportunity”, because VBC appears to generate this activity when the volunteer is imported.

However I have a couple of problems….

  • Not all entries in “My Applications” that have been Imported have an “Applied for Opportunity” (or a “Volunteer Imported” activity).  Why would this be?
  • We have Volunteers who have applied for multiple opportunities.  But they do not seem to have multiple “Applied for Opportunity” activities in their history.  Can you explain exactly how all the activities are generated when Volunteers are imported?
  • The activities report never seems to include multiple entries for the same volunteer where they have applied for multiple opportunities.

(if you need to look at our data, please check Rebecca Edwards and Holly Edwards.  They have both applied for three Opps.  Rebecca has only one "Applied for.. " activity in her history.  Holly has none)

I hope that you can follow my thinking here.  I really need to understand how all the activities are generated before using the reports.

Air Max Hyperposite

Lorna

Yes, I would be really interested in the answer to this. As far as I can see the only application that is recorded in the activities is the one you first import the volunteer from. All others do not seem to be recorded.

rtomalin
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Ah - so I'm not imagining it then.  This is actually quite important because stats do need to pick up each application.  Maybe there's another field that we can look at to get applications, but I cannot see at the moment.

Lorna

Yes the easiest way I can get stats on applications is to save all the e-mails sent through and put in a folder 'applications received' and count them each month. I could do it via do-it I suppose but we have a couple of organisations that we are admin for who have opps out of area and so that skews the stats.

Jen Volunteer Now

The two automatic activities (Imported and Applied for Opportunity) were only a recent addition I believe, so that might explain why some of you volunteers don't have them. I have also noticed that when vols apply for more than one opp, there is only one activity generated, I think it's whichever opportunity you happen to click import next to. Interestingly, my volunteer tried to do the bulk import for a number of applications by the same person, not knowing whether she need to import each one or not, and then no activities were generated.

The way I have got round this is creating my own activity for all applications, and would use this for reporting if I needed to. I tend to just ignore the automatic activities. 

Don't know if that helps or not...

rtomalin
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Thanks Lorna and Jen

It looks like custom activity is a good solution.  But what a shame.  The whole process is supposed to be automatic, so I personally feel that this is something that VEDA should look at.  Stats on number of applications is a basic requirement of volunteer brokerage.

Also, I don't think a custom activity against the volunteer will attach the opportunity information?

Finally, I would prefer that all the activities in the business process appear on the actions drop down on My Applications listing.  I don't think that custom activities can be put on that drop down!

vcsheather
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We created a custom activity for 'Do-It enquiry' which is added manually for each application. You can manually add the organisation name in the 'With' field which does link up to the organisation record. We then put the opp details in the subject line. 

This does add an extra layer of work, but gave us 100% accurate stats for the end of quarter report. I agree, it would be nice if the process were fully automated, but I'm pleased with how far this process has come thinking back to January where everything was totally manual. We can now process a Do-It enquiry in less than 5 minutes.