Enterprise Edition - FAQ
| An online volunteer matching application designed specifically for United Ways and Volunteer Centers |
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Getting Started How it Works Customization Reliability Pricing
Getting Started
How do I get started?
Getting started is easy - we recommend signing up for a free
trial. Registration requires only basic information about
yourself and your organization and takes only a few minutes.
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What is the free trial?
The free trial provides you unrestricted access to a product
without the need for a subscription or any financial
obligation. During the free trial, you can fully customize your
site, register organizations, volunteers, create events, etc. When
you are ready to purchase, you can choose to keep all the data
and customizations you have entered, or you can start over with
a fresh installation.
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How do I buy?
You can have a salesperson contact you.
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How it Works
Can I access Volunteer Solutions from anywhere?
Yes. Volunteer Solutions technology is designed to make your data
available via the Internet 24 hours per day, 7 days per week. As
long as you have an internet connection and a web browser, you can
access and update your database.
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Why is there no software to download and install?
Volunteer Solutions is designed to work through any modern web
browser. Your data and the Volunteer Solutions software are stored
on secure servers in a modern hosting facility to ensure access to
your data at any time, from anywhere. This configuration allows us
to handle backups of your data and to provide frequent upgrades
and enhancements to the Volunteer Solutions software.
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What software do I need?
You only need a web browser to fully run VS. See our System Requirements for more information
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What type of computer do I need?
Volunteer Solutions runs on all computers equipped with a fairly modern web browser. See our System Requirements for more detailed information
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Can my entire staff access my database?
Yes - You can give access to your online database to an unlimited
number of your staff members. Volunteer Solutions also provides a
sophisticated, robust, multi-tiered security system to control the
levels of access you give to each of your staff members.
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Can I access Volunteer Solutions through a modem?
Yes - You can access Volunteer Solutions from any computer with
any type of Internet connection, including dial-up modems, cable
modems, DSL, and other high-speed lines. For frequent access, we
recommend a high speed internet connection (e.g. cable modem, DSL
or better).
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Customization
What can I customize?
Volunteer Solutions was designed to provide a extensive
customization. The site itself can be designed to seamlessly
integrate with your existing website. In addition, you can
create custom questions, add categories to the taxonomy,
choose your own icon to display, feature agencies, modify the
Terms and Conditions for agency registration, turn on/off
certain features such as volunteer hours tracking, and the
list goes on. For more information, please refer to this
online article.
You can also engage our professional services department to
do further customization for your needs.
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Can I add custom data fields?
Yes - Volunteer Solutions provides an industry leading online
data customization tool. You can create an unlimited number of
custom questions, including private data fields,
administrative only questions, agency-entered questions,
etc. These custom questions are fully integrated into the
online report center, volunteer search forms, and CSV
downloads. For more information, please refer to this
online article
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Can I download my data?
Absolutely. At any time, you can download a snapshot of your
volunteers, referrals, agencies, or volunteer opportunities into
a comma-separated value (CSV) format which is readily read by
Filemaker, Microsoft Excel and Access, and most other popular
software packages. Learn more about the CSV process
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How are enhancements handled?
We have a formal process where an enhancement
group composed of customer volunteers actually votes on which
enhancements are made to Volunteer Solutions each year. We take our
customer feedback very seriously!
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Reliability
What database software do you use?
Volunteer Solutions is build on top of an Oracle database. Oracle
is the market leader in providing robust database technology and
the latest versions of the Oracle database were designed for
internet services such as Volunteer Solutions. Oracle is also one
of a very small set of database vendors that provide a database
that is guaranteed to never corrupt your data.
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How reliable is Volunteer Solutions?
Volunteer Solutions utilizes a fully redundant server environment
where no single incident can cause an outage. This configuration
provides industry-best availability to ensure you have access to
your data at all times.
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How do you monitor your servers?
Volunteer Solutions monitors all servers in a number of different
ways including multiple status checks every 1-2 seconds, every
minute, and every 15 minutes from both inside and outside of our
hosting facility. Additionally, every 15 minutes, the overall
health of our servers is checked, recorded, and plotted to ensure
that as Volunteer Solutions grows, our servers scale accordingly.
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Is our data backed up?
Volunteer Solutions utilizes redundant hard drives to ensure that
mutliple copies of your data are always available. Volunteer
Solutions also implements multiple backups on a nightly basis. On a
weekly basis, tapes containing the backed up data are shipped out
of our facility to prevent total data loss in the event of an
extreme disaster. For more information, please refer to our online backup systems overview.
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How do I know that nobody else can access my data?
All Volunteer Solutions servers are protected by firewalls and
hosted in a secure environment with strict access control
policies. An advanced, built-in permissioning system allows you to
control who else has access to your data.
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Pricing
How much does it cost?
Please see our pricing information
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What's included in the annual licensing fee?
The annual licensing fee provides you with 24 hours
per day, 7 days per week access to your online
database, for an unlimited number of your staff
members. Your annual license also includes site
upgrades, data backup, and support throughout the
year. Volunteer Solutions also absorbs most start-up
related costs in the first year
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What kind of support / training is included?
We provide industry leading Training Manuals and Getting
Started Guides, ongoing webinars and other training events
throughout the year, and an annual in-person user group
meeting. Phone and email support is available for all
customers of Volunteer Solutions. We also offer online
forums where all customers can learn best practices from
each other.
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The inclusion of any organization or person in this database does not
constitute a representation, warranty, or endorsement with respect to the
competence, suitability, or reliability of such organization or person by
Volunteer Solutions;
nor does Volunteer Solutions
sponsor or endorse any third-party web site.
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