Site Level Access Overview¶

Site Level Access

Site Level Access Examples

In some organizations it is useful to have a single volunteer database in which different users have access to only some of the volunteer and assignment records. Volgistics makes this possible through a feature known as Site Level Access.

With Site Level Access, an organization creates two or more Sites in their Volgistics database. Then they enable Site Level Access by assigning at least one System Operator to a Site (or Sites).

We call operators assigned to a single Site Site-Level Operators, and operators assigned to two or more Sites in an account Multi-Site Level Operators. Operators who have access to all Sites in the account at the same time are referred to as Headquarters Operators.

When an operator assigned to a Site uses Volgistics, the account appears to only contain volunteers and assignments for their Site. Operators assigned to two or more Sites can switch their view between the Sites associated with them. Each time they switch, they only see the volunteers and assignments for the Site they are currently setup to see.

Advantages of Site Level Access¶

When Site Level Access is in use, it gives the organization many advantages that can make managing volunteers easier. These will vary depending on the structure and needs of the organization, but we have listed some of the common advantages below:

Headquarters can establish certain database and recordkeeping standards. This can help you apply organization-wide volunteer management policies and keep information consistent, an important task if you want to generate organization-wide reports and statistics. These database standards can include the choice of which fields the account shows, what dropdown list (look-up table) entries are created, who can access the system and what they can do, and the creation of organization-wide reports.
Headquarters can develop and apply uniform standards for Award or recognition benchmarks as well as requirements to volunteer. This can help with reporting outcomes for retention and compliance because the same tracking is used at all locations.
Volgistics is easier for Site-Level and Multi-Site Operators to understand and use because most administrative functions are performed for them by headquarters. This is especially beneficial in organizations where volunteer management is just one of many responsibilities a person has.
When Site-Level Operators generate reports, their reports include just their Site's volunteers. When Multi-Site Operators generate reports, their reports include just the volunteers for the Site they are currently connected to.
Headquarters can generate reports that include all volunteers from all Sites. Or, if they want the report to be limited to one Site's volunteers, they can select that option when generating the report.

Examples of Site Level Access in Use¶

Volgistics is designed to be used with a wide variety of organizations, which naturally means their organizational structures will differ. The good news is that the Site Level Access feature will work in many different circumstances because it is adaptable to the needs of different organizations. The different access levels (Headquarters, Mult-Site Level, and Site-Level operators) make this possible. These are not actual case studies. They are examples of how Volgistics could be used for a variety of organizations.

Example One¶

A health care network has three different local hospitals under its umbrella. Each hospital has a volunteer coordinator and a cadre of volunteer personnel. The main hospital serves as the headquarters, and the volunteer coordinator there has administrative responsibility for the volunteer programs at all three hospitals. This headquarters administrator wants to have access to volunteer records and statistics for all three facilities, to be able to set volunteer record keeping standards for the entire health care network, and to give the volunteer coordinators at the other hospitals access only to the records for the people who volunteer at their facilities.

In this example the headquarters administrator creates one Site in Volgistics for each of the three hospitals, and then creates one (or more) Volgistics system operators for each site. The administrator retains access to all Sites (Headquarters operator), and makes the operators who will just oversee their own Site Site-Level operators.

Example Two¶

A city government wants a single account for all of its departments (Library, Parks & Recreation, Arts Festival, etc.), and has a volunteer coordinator who oversees the entire volunteer program for the city. When volunteers apply, they are interviewed and approved by the Human Resources department. The Human Resources department then places the volunteers with the department that fits the volunteer's talents the best. Each department takes over responsibility for its own volunteers from there.

To accomplish this, the volunteer coordinator can make a Site for each department (including Human Resources) and keep themselves as a Headquarters Operator. The people who will manage volunteers for each department will have Site-Level Operator records assigned to just the Site for their department, but the Human Resources staff who onboard volunteers will have Multi-Site Operator records so they can switch between the Human Resources view and each department's Site. This arrangement allows the account to setup application forms to go to just the Human Resources Site. Human Resources can then onboard the volunteer and afterwards make the volunteer's record available to the Site for the department the volunteer will serve in. The volunteer's record is then removed from the Human Resources Site. Example of Using Multi-Site Level Access explains how the Human Resource's operator could do this.

Example Three¶

A state-wide child welfare agency has an employee in each county whose responsibilities include coordination of the local volunteers who assist the agency. At the state capital, an overall volunteer administrator needs to monitor volunteer background check results for volunteers statewide, to be able to produce state-wide volunteer statistical reports, and set volunteer record keeping standards for the volunteer coordinators in all counties. At the county level, the agency's volunteer coordinators need to be able to track, schedule, and communicate with their volunteers, but at this level they need only need access to the volunteers from their own county.

In this example, the state wide volunteer administrator creates one Site in Volgistics for each county, and then creates a Volgistics system operator for each county. The administrator retains access to all Sites (Headquarters operator) and the other operators become Site-Level operators assigned to the Site for their county.

Example Four¶

A national environmental education group has several dozen volunteer teams in local communities around the country. Each team has a coordinator who needs the ability to manage volunteer records for their own region. At the national office, an overall volunteer leader wants to provide a standardized volunteer record keeping system to all of its regional coordinators, and to be able to tap into information about the specialized skills of volunteers from all of the local regions while traveling around the country.

In this example, the national leader creates a Volgistics Site for each region, and a Volgistics system operator for each of their regional coordinators.

Security and Site Level Access¶

While Site Level Access provides great convenience, it is not intended to provide a level of security in which operators at one Site could never discover any information about volunteers from another Site in the same Volgistics account. For example, when a volunteer serves at more than one Site in the same Volgistics account, their record is shared between those Sites. In this case the operators at the Sites sharing the volunteer are privy to some information about that volunteer such as the volunteer's schedule and service at other Sites, as well as any information entered on the Notes tab of the record. A good rule of thumb when you use Site Level Access is that all System Operators should be people you trust with any volunteer information in your account, even if they normally only see the volunteer records for their Site.

If you need a higher level of security between the different sites in your organization, we recommend using separate Volgistics accounts for each site. With separate accounts, you can be sure operators from one account will never see information in another. However, you'll no longer have the advantages of a common database if you do this.

To learn more about the Site Level Access feature, see Setup Site Level Access and Manage Site Level Access.