AngelPoints – Taking Advantage Of The Resources Available

Laura Sonnee

I promise I will not hop up on my soapbox (despite my desperate need for a few more inches of height) when I talk to you about the amazing resources available to help you use AngelPoints more efficiently. I won’t smile smugly when I hear you say that had you known about these great enhancements, you would have enabled them earlier (even though we did an outreach to tell you about them). I will reign in my know-it-all nature and desperate need to pat myself on my back and spare you that uncomfortable moment when I giggle gleefully at my intelligence. All right, now that I have that out of the way, I do have things to share with you.


Do you remember back in March/April when your AngelPoints contacts were telling you about the new and exciting things coming to AngelPoints? We were talking about the new mobile app and the new Sky UI dashboard and how awesome it is, ring a bell? Well it should.


Earlier this year, AngelPoints launched a new mobile app. I wrote about it in a previous blog post, which I’m sure you voraciously read. The app made it easier for your volunteers to submit hours, sign up for events and find additional information on upcoming events. The great thing about this new app is no matter which login process you have in place, we have a solution for you to get your volunteers in to it.


As part of the recent outreach program, a few Microedge associates worked behind the scenes on your AngelPoints site to set up the mobile configurations. What did we do? Well, we added logos to both your app and your welcome message, took information from your AngelPoints site and incorporated it in to the app, i.e. your welcome message and about page content. We did this in an effort to make the process of launching the app even easier for you. So what do you have to do to get your volunteers on to the mobile app? It is easy. First, let them know the app is available from Google Play or the App Store by simply searching for AngelPoints. Share with them the organization id they will need to use to access the app (it is found on your AngelPoints site by navigating to Manage – Setup – Mobile Configurations). Next, go out to Community and download the appropriate AngelPoints Mobile Sample Kit for your login process (I’ve included the link directly to Community here and search for AngelPoints Mobile Sample Kit) and work with your marketing contact to get the message out to your volunteers.


Obviously, by offering the mobile experience to your volunteers, you are making it easier for them to volunteer and easier for you to keep track of your company’s volunteer impact in the community. Coming soon to the mobile app is the ability to have your participants upload photos directly from events (system administrator has final posting approval since we don’t need anything to get out of hand).


So by now you are probably asking yourself, how on Earth could it get any better than this? Well, let me tell you. AngelPoints also launched a new Sky UI dashboard. You’ve probably seen the link on your dashboard that says "Go to New Dashboard" and wondered what it is. Well, it’s the fancy, new, fully configurable, dashboard! When I say fully configurable, it means that you get to decide what content you want your volunteers to see. Do you want them to know about upcoming events that match their profile? Do you want them to see a listing of upcoming events that provides the event details and allows volunteers to sign up right on the homepage? Do you want to enable everyone’s guilty pleasure of looking at photos or videos of themselves? Guess what? You can do all of that.


The new dashboard allows you to enable a photo carousel tile that can hold up to 20 photos and adjust the timing on the site. There is a video tile you where you can post a montage video with the best of 80s hair band songs playing melodically in the background (admit it, it’s okay). You can customize the short cuts tile to include the links that are relevant to your population. And, you have a new company goals tile that offers a beautiful visual display of your company’s goals and accomplishments. The best part? You get to decide how you want it laid out on the page. You can move the tiles around! It’s amazing, right? What is even better than all these awesome new features? Well, a few select Microedge employees actually took the time to set up and configure your new dashboard for you. So, if you love the work they did, you can easily publish and enable the dashboard without having to do any extra work. Simply click on "Go to New Dashboard" and then click "Edit Dashboard Draft" . The next screen gives you the options "Return to Dashboard", "Save Draft", "Publish Draft" "Delete Draft". You can make changes to the draft by changing content, moving tiles or adding tiles and then when you are ready to show it to your population, click "Publish Draft". On the next screen click "Enable My New Dashboard" and voila, your new dashboard is now visible to your volunteers! Easy, right?


**Due to legal requirements (well not really), I am obliged to notify you that the new dashboard is not compatible with IE 9 and lower, so you will want to make sure your population is on IE 10 and higher or any version of Firefox.**


So, by now you are probably really impressed by all these cool new features that you weren’t taking advantage of, right? And if you are paying attention, you are probably wondering how we are going to enhance the dashboard even more. You are so smart for thinking about that. We are always looking for ways to make AngelPoints better for you so coming soon to an AngelPoints site near you will be an enhanced volunteer sign up process that allows you to track acknowledgement of pre-screening information and the photo/liability release waiver. Volunteers will have a simple process to sign up for an event and an easy way to choose to join the waitlist.


I hope you aren’t exhausted thinking about all of these great enhancements so you can immediately use the resources made available to you and your volunteers. Get out there and update your dashboards and communicate the new mobile app. If you have questions about the mobile app and/or the dashboard, please contact your account manager who can assist with questions or put you in touch with someone who can.


Happy Volunteering!