Many of you may know that we have been able to share our Volunteer Management System (VMS) with several other states.  That income stream has allowed ANR Communication Services to hire some additional help to work on VMS issues for us in California.  In light of that, there have been several changes that have been requested and approved that have recently been completed to the VMS program.  Here they are:

• MERGE PROJECTS
  Project merge can be done from the bottom of the “Edit Project Information” screen.   When two projects are merged, all members, calendar events, and hours from project A will be given to project B.  Then project A will cease to be!  Simply view project A within the “Edit Project Information” screen and scroll down to the bottom.   Select Project B as your destination project and hit ‘Merge Projects’.
• SEPARATE NAVIGATION FOR DOCUMENTS AND NEWSLETTERS
  Documents and Newsletters have been separated into two separate pages.  Users will see them as distinct menu items under the ‘General Information’ menu.  On the admin side, the two can still be managed from the same page.
• ARCHIVING OLD DOCUMENTS OR NEWSLETTERS
  To archive a Document or Newsletter group, simply open the group for editing from the admin screen and change the group type to ‘Archived’ using the corresponding radio button.  Archived groups will remain visible to admins but will be invisible to users.

Also of interest: We’ve added a new demographic to the system!  ‘Hawaiian & Pacific Islander’ demographic data fields are now present on the hours entry page, the contact report page, and on all contact report excel documents. If you have suggestions that might help to improve the usefulness of VMS, please let the Statewide MG Program Office know.  While there is no guarantee the suggestions will be adopted, all will be reviewed for their applicability to the county programs.

Final note:  All future changes to VMS will be documented as part of the statewide news blog. 

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