Messenger updates - messaging multiple users

Be Collective's messenger has recently been updated to make it more clear when you're sending messages to more than one recipient.

When you're in a conversation with any set of Be Collective users, a Group chat icon is now shown above the chat box. This appears in the following scenarios:

- a conversation with more than one Be Collective user
- a conversation with all members of a Be Collective group
- a conversation with all volunteers assigned to an opportunity

The text box also shows exactly who your message will be going to, e.g. 'Write a message to The Community Gardens group ...'; 'Write a message to Sara and Amie ...'

This can be a helpful prompt if you're in a conversation with all of your group members and would like to reply to only one member in that conversation. In such cases, you can start a new conversation with that group member only, instead of posting in the group chat and messaging everybody!

More information on how to use Be Collective Messenger can be found in Be Collective's Help Centre here.

If you have have any questions about Be Collective's messaging functionality, please contact our friendly support team at help@becollective.com.

Add free text and hyperlinks to your application forms

Great news for volunteer managers - one of our most requested enhancements has just been released!

You can now include free text and hyperlinks in your application forms, for both group membership and opportunities, using the new Paragraph field in the Be Collective form builder.

Selecting this field opens a text editor within your form. This can be used to can add any text that doesn't fit into a question, such as an introduction or instructions on how to complete your application form.

You can also add a hyperlink to any text entered in the Paragraph field, so you can now easily direct volunteers to any external webpages or documents you'd like them to view before submitting their application.

More information on how to use our Paragraph field can be found in Be Collective's Help Centre here. You can also find out how to add a hyperlink here.

If you have have any questions about Be Collective's form building functionality, please contact our friendly support team at help@becollective.com.

Update: Technical issues with platform

Update: 6:58pm AEST - Services are back up. Platform should now be operational. 


Apologies but we've noticed that some of our services are currently down.

Our engineers are working on this right now and we will update this post as we know more.

Apologies for any inconvenience caused.

An update on Be Collective Messaging

Be Collective's messaging and chat functionality will soon be improved to make it more clear when messages have been received within our platform. Another announcement will follow later this week when these improvements have been released.

What's changing?

All messages between a group and multiple users will release an email notification to all recipients. For example, a group owner/administrator sending a message to all group members, or all volunteers assigned to a specific opportunity.

This will not, however, override any individual recipient's customisable profile settings. If a recipient does not have email notifications activated for received messages, they will only receive an in-platform notification and the message to their Be Collective inbox.

We encourage you to check messages regularly to ensure you don't miss out on any communications from volunteers or organisations. Messages can be accessed easily through the message icon in the header bar.

In the coming months, we aim to better understand the needs of our users with a view to releasing new and improved communications tools later this year.

If you have have any questions about Be Collective's messaging functionality, please contact our friendly support team at help@becollective.com.

Opportunities table improvements

We've made some improvements to the Opportunities table shown to volunteer managers, allowing you to see the status of opportunities easily from the table view. The table now includes the following fields:

• Application Status – this will show if the opportunity is open, closed or paused to new volunteer applications.

• Application Closed Date – this will show when the opportunity is/was set to be closed to volunteer applications.

To make room for these columns, we've removed the Credits column from this table. Credits can now be found by clicking Manage under an opportunity shown in the opportunities table – the number of credits offered is then shown in the opportunity preview on the right-hand side.

For more information on opening, closing and pausing opportunities to applications, please see our Help Centre article here.

Issues with platform: RESOLVED

Update 2:38 AEDT:  Services have been restored in production. We'll be monitoring the system closely to ensure everything is working correctly

Update: 2:25 AEDT - Investigations are still ongoing. Next update to follow at 3:00 AEDT.

Apologies but we've noticed that some of our services are currently down.

Our engineers are working on this right now and we'll hopefully be back up shortly.

Apologies for any inconvenience caused.




Our exciting new scheduling and rostering features are here!

Full service has been resumed, and we're delighted to announce that our new suite of scheduling and rostering features are live! Thanks you again for your patience.

If you'd like to learn more about our new features and how to use them, Be Collective's Help Centre is a great place to start - please click here for more details or get in touch with our friendly support team at help@becollective.com.

We're back online, and our exciting new scheduling and rostering features are (almost) here!

Thank you for your patience while we've been offline this morning – now that we're back, we're delighted to announce that our new suite of scheduling and rostering features will be live soon!

Our developers are hard at work on the final stages of our software updates and while we're back online now, not all features are currently available. We recommend you don't make any changes to your profiles or Be Collective data until further notice.

If you'd like to learn more about our new features and how to use them, Be Collective's Help Centre is a great place to start - please click here for more details or get in touch with our friendly support team at help@becollective.com.

Planned site outage for maintenance on 29-30 November – find out more here

Be Collective will be temporarily offline on the evening of 29 November (UK) / the morning of 30 November (AU & NZ).

This will allow our engineers to carry out essential maintenance before the launch of our exciting new scheduling and rostering features.

This outage is currently scheduled for:

United Kingdom: Sunday 29 November 9pm - Monday 30 November, 1am (GMT)
Australia: Monday 30 November, 8am - 12pm (AEDT)
New Zealand: Monday 30 November, 10am - 2pm (NZDT)

We apologise for any inconvenience caused by this outage, and we'll endeavour to make sure full service is restored as soon as possible.

If you'd like to learn more about our new scheduling and rostering tools, please click here.

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