Make User Dashboard More Need Focused After Log In/Creating an Account, not Hours Focused

Posted almost 7 years ago by Julee Laurent

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Julee Laurent

We would like to suggest that Galaxy do a small build that will allow managers to choose the order of their dashboard? For us, we think the way it populates after you log in, for the user, looks jumbled and not as clean as the 1st landing page. It’s a lot to scroll down through just to get to the picture rotator and pictures are really what grabs people, not volunteer resumes or words in colored blocks.

Our organization would like to see the picture rotatory with recent needs populate at the top after log in instead of the volunteer hours/resume. While that is a great feature, to a new user its confusing and not why they came there in the first place. It takes the focus off creating a log in so that you can be a part of something bigger and better than yourself & being excited about helping others, and shifts that focus on racking up hours. Which is only important to few, the volunteer experience and how you impact people should stay the focus. Thank you.

4 Votes

11 Comments

Caitlin Lowe posted over 4 years ago Admin

Hi Andy,

I apologize for the confusion here! The Hours Dashboard cannot be moved at this time. We have submitted your request to our development team for review. Based on what you've shared, this is the enhancement request we have shared with them, "As a site manager, I would like to move the hours dashboard lower on the volunteer's homepage, so that the volunteer is shown opportunities first and are then more likely to engage with those opportunities.". While this is not current functionality, we are doing our best to advocate on your behalf!

The good news regarding your Teams and Responses request is that Spotlights can be added as Menu Items in the Left-Hand Navigation! I created an example of this on my test site and have attached it here for reference, but you can get creative with this tool! Many of our clients utilize spotlights to make the menu items in the left-hand navigation show information they want their volunteers to have access to no matter where they are on the site. I think this will meet your goals of having menu items for teams and responses readily available for volunteers. If you have questions about how to set something like this up, please reach out to support@galaxydigital.com!

All the best,

Caitlin

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Andy Sherwood posted over 4 years ago

Thanks for the response Caitlin,

Moving the hour's spotlight below the volunteer opportunities would be great. If there is a way I am able to do that, I would love any direction you can give.

As far as the "my teams" and "my responses" the issue, while I could create the spotlights as you mentioned, the user will more intuitively look to the menu for those options and having to scroll through the landing page to find it may not be their first instinct to find information. I would be curious if you have any data you are have collected, or used in your site design, that might reveal what most users are doing on the site. Additionally, you mentioned that the teams and registrations options are listed when you click on the profile dropdown, however I have that when using a mobile device, the profile dropdown does not exist. So if a volunteer is using mobile (which many do) they will not have that option when searching for their teams and responses. My ultimate goal is to make signing up the MOST easiest thing to do as any hinderance could become a barrier to sign up. In an age where people can't take the time to watch a video longer than 90 seconds having to go 3-4 clicks in to find something can reduce their likelihood of signing up.

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Caitlin Lowe posted over 4 years ago Admin

Hi Melanie,

Thanks for sharing your feedback on this forum post!

Based on what you've shared, would adding a Spotlight, like I described for Andy, meet your needs? This would add tabs for "My Teams" and "My Responses" to the left-hand navigation. While this wouldn't add these items to the Hours dashboard, this would enable them to quickly see these links no matter where they are at on the site, rather than using their profile dropdown to access these areas.

Please let me know if this sounds like something that would work and I'm happy to work with you on a support ticket to get these set up or continue working through your enhancement request!

Thanks and keep up the great work!

Caitlin

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Caitlin Lowe posted over 4 years ago Admin

Hi Andy,

Thank for sharing additional information around the dashboard enhancement request! With this in mind, here is what I would like to suggest to our development team:

As a site manager, I would like to move the hours dashboard lower on the volunteer's homepage, so that the volunteer is shown opportunities first and are then more likely to engage with those opportunities.

Please let me know if this covers your request!

Regarding your feedback on teams and site navigation, I want to talk through a few things here.

The left-hand navigation is used as a site map, so that volunteers can quickly find the different areas of the site where an organization has posted items related to their volunteer program. This is why only Events (if using), Opportunities, Programs, and any custom pages/spotlights created by the site manager.
The user can find information related specifically to their role as a volunteer, by using the dropdown available when they click their profile picture or icon. Within this dropdown, they can navigate directly to their "My Teams" page, where they can view their team responses or manage teams if they are a leader.

If volunteers are having trouble accessing these profile areas, we recommend creating a Spotlight that redirects to the URL of the area you want them to have access to. If you'd like to learn more about the Spotlights feature and how to set something like this up, I recommend reaching out to support@galaxydigital.com. The support team can also talk through best practices for sharing resources with team members and leaders.

Thanks and keep up the great work!

Caitlin

0 Votes

Melanie Berringer posted over 4 years ago

I would like to second Andy's points about the teams features being difficult to find and use. I've had a lot of team leads not know how to add members to their teams or be unable to figure out how to remove members once they've signed the team up. It would be nice to have the dashboard include a "My teams" button or something to that effect.

It would also be nice if possible to have their responses listed in the dashboard without having to click, maybe under an "upcoming responses" header. We have some volunteers who are not super adept with technology and navigating to their opportunities seems to be a reoccurring stumbling block.

1 Votes

Andy Sherwood posted over 4 years ago

Looking at the dashboard for volunteers/potential volunteers the emphasis seems to be on the number of hours worked and you have to scroll halfway down the page to find available opportunities. For most volunteers, they are not going to utilize their portal for tracking their hours. If they are doing hours for an employer, they typically have a form that that they are filling out for their employer and thus wouldn't need the site to do that for them. Its a cool idea for people to be able to see how many hours they worked, but if my goal as a volunteer coordinator is to get people to volunteer then I want to streamline the process as best as I can. I also want volunteer opportunities to be on the forefront. Basically I'm suggesting that the "snapshot" section at the top be moved to the bottom as it is the least important section for getting volunteers to sign up.

As far as my comment on teams, we use a lot of volunteer groups (or Teams) for our organization. When we tried having groups sign up with the teams feature, we got a lot of complaints that the group leaders could not figure out how to manage their team/add members/take members off. I ended up having to manage all of our teams and undo/redo what the team leaders had tried to do. Also, the menu option for "My Teams" is not intuitive to find for a user. You have to click on "my responses" to find it, while it would seem to make more sense just to have it listed under the navigation menu. I would think it would make sense to have all of the sections listed in the second attached image shown in the navigation menu so that it would be easier to find those areas on the site.

Overall, I've found that the navigation on the site for users is not really intuitive and it can be hard to find the things that they are looking for.

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Caitlin Lowe posted over 4 years ago Admin

Hi Andy,

Thanks for sharing your thoughts here. This thread supports your comment about making it easier for volunteers to find opportunities from the homepage by moving the suggested opportunities higher up. Since you mention Teams in your feedback and I'd like to know more about how you'd envision this feature appearing on the user's homepage and how you envision this improving overall volunteer engagement. I look forward to hearing about your proposed use case!

All the best,

Caitlin

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Andy Sherwood posted over 4 years ago

Is this something that is being considered now? We have had complaints from volunteers saying that it hard to navigate the site to find opportunities and manage their teams.

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Nina Rogers posted about 6 years ago Admin

This is not a change we will be able to make in the current version of the software. Your requests have been recorded, and we will take them into account for later builds.

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Molly Callaway posted almost 7 years ago

I really like this idea! I agree that would be a better layout of our site if we could move the hours lower and have the suggested needs etc. closer to the top. I agree with Julee that most of our users are logging in to find opportunities and new organizations and the hours are the last thing our site wants to promote. I know that other sites might want the current layout so the idea that we could move content in blocks to fit our preferred layout sounds like a great suggestion. Thanks! What do you "product suggestion" folks think about including your website when you add comments so we can see how eachother are using the software? Here's ours: www.montgomeryserves.org

Molly

1 Votes

Kelly Flynn posted almost 7 years ago Admin

Hi Julee -

Thanks so much for your comments! I will add this to our enhancements feedback list. Hopefully, we will get feedback from other users to support this enhancement request.

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