We're excited to announce that we've already enhanced our new custom fields feature with a data import wizard! This makes bulk uploads of data for your existing members to your group's custom fields quick and easy.

How do I upload custom fields data?

An upload template file is provided for your convenience with your group's custom fields and members already included. To begin, simply download this template, add the data you'd like to import, save as a CSV file and upload this file in the first step of the import wizard.

The second step of the import wizard gives you the opportunity to match the columns in your data file to your custom fields. This is particularly useful if you choose to upload your own data (for instance, an exported file from another platform) Any columns that match the names of your custom fields are matched automatically.

Once you've matched your file columns, you can then verify your data. This allows you to correct any errors immediately instead of updating and re-uploading your data file. Once you've verified your data, all you need to do is click 'Next' to upload it!

More information on how to upload data to your custom fields can be found in Be Collective's Help Centre here.

If you have have any questions or feedback on Be Collective's custom fields functionality, please contact our friendly support team at help@becollective.com.

Great news for volunteer resource centres, and any group with lots of partners - Be Collective's partnerships table is now searchable!

Searching the table is easy - you'll now see a search box above each tab of the table, which you can use to search the partners in the open tab of the table by group name.

The Group and Request Date columns in all tabs of the Partnerships table can also be sorted by clicking on the column header.

More information on how to search your group's partners can be found in Be Collective's Help Centre here.

If you have have any questions or feedback on Be Collective's partnerships functionality, please contact our friendly support team at help@becollective.com.

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.

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.

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.

We're very excited to announce that Be Collective now offers the functionality for volunteer managers to create and issue certificates!

This expands on our previous Social Currency module (now called 'Rewards and Certificates') and is a great new way for Be Collective Plus+ groups to recognise the great work your volunteers do.

For more information on how to use our new certificates module, please see the following articles on the Be Collective Help Centre:

How do I create a certificate for my volunteers?

How do I issue a certificate to my volunteers?

At Be Collective, we're committed to providing you with a consistent Search experience across our platform, making it easier for volunteers to find opportunities that interest them.

First of all, we're working on our search algorithms but we won't send you to sleep by explaining how! What we can tell you is that we've recognised how many users enter location into the main search bar (as opposed to the location field on the the search page), and soon our search weighting will be adjusted to ensure these searches generate more appropriate lists of results.

In the meantime, we've added a 'Sort By' filter into the main search, allowing you to sort search results by Relevance, Distance and Newest.

Sharing opportunities with offline volunteers just got easier!

We've added a 'Print' button to all opportunities, and if you click it you'll be given the same set of printing options you'd see if printing a webpage (including 'Save as PDF' if enabled on your device), with the opportunity details cleanly and plainly formatted for easy reading.

The printable opportunity also includes the contact details provided in the opportunity, so volunteers can easily get in touch even if they're offline and unable to apply through Be Collective.

We've listened to feedback from volunteer managers and updated our opportunity builder, making it easier to write compelling opportunity descriptions for your volunteers!

If you're a volunteer manager, you now have helpful hints and examples to support you in writing your opportunity description. We've also made things easier by providing a list builder for specific tasks and responsibilities, which are shown on the social CVs of all approved volunteers.

Any  opportunities you've posted before this update will contain the overview you've already provided, and you can edit the opportunity to add tasks and responsibilities.

For more guidance on how to post an opportunity on Be Collective, please take a look at our Help Centre article here.

Good news for volunteer resource centres, and other organisations – our Opportunities CSV export has been improved to include more data on opportunities you've endorsed.

We've also improved reporting on tagged opportunities. This make it easier to report on opportunities tagged under our recent Covid–19 campaign.

The following new fields have added to this export:

• External organiser – the group providing the opportunity
• External organiser location – the location of the group providing the opportunity
• External organiser postcode – the location of the group providing the opportunity (if provided)
• Campaigns – any campaigns attached as tags to the opportunity
• Opportunity postcode – the postcode of the location where the opportunity is based (if provided)