Hi Jennifer,

There are two ways in which you might find the right volunteer:

1. You can use the "Search" tab, then select the "Neighbours" tab in that screen.
   • It takes a bit of time for the search form to show up, but then you can select the expertise, keyword or motivation that best matches what you're looking for. You can also see how many neighbours will be in the result list.
   • When you look at the list of results, you can add more search criteria, or remove them again, to hopefully find the right person.
2. In your village, there is a block in the right-hand column titled "Neighbours who could help". That is an automatically generated list, based on the keywords of the village and the profile of neighbours, and may give you a few suggestions of who may be able to help.

I hope this is what you were looking for?

Regards,
Rolf.

Dear Rolf,
This is exactly where a user guide could be soooo helpful - us facilitators (and neighbours) could be saved a lot of frustrations and headaches if the user guides could have been given out at the start of the changes to the website...
Best, Angelika

Hi,

Just wondering what happens to the task once the status has been changed to finished? In Kabondo I changed the task "find a cell phone" to finished and it just disappeared. Where do the finished tasks go? Will we be able to see them and find them? There is valuable information in these that I don't want to see lost, but we also need to clean up old tasks and move on to new ones.

Also, in starting a new task it is difficult to figure out where you are placing it. In the old system, you could see where you were placing a task (order, under which step, etc) but now we just go into a new form window that doesn't show us where we are placing things. Is there an easy way to do this?

Barb

Rolf-

I would not say this is what I was looking for, but it shows me where the people are. What I find particularly ineffective is not knowing when this person was last online and being able to see how many times they've posted something to the Nabuur site to gauge if they are active or not. Anyone can join this website and have a profile that just sits there. Their time as a member will go up-but that doesn't tell me anything I need to know as a facilitator. I may just be wasting my time sending personal contacts to a bunch of people who aren't and never have been active-I have no way to know that anymore.

I would absolutely love to see a return of the old way of telling who is online when and a listing of "last online date" and "most current posts."

Jennifer

hi Jennifer,

I think your request of "last online" and "most current posts" shouldn't be too much of a problem: the "last online" is shown in the list of neighbours for a village, and I can see a list of "recent posts" of my contacts in "My Nabuur", so it should be possible to show a similar list on someone's public profile. And it would probably be helpful to see a list in which villages and groups someone participates as well?

It'll have to wait until Frans and/or Kester are back from the Drupal conference in Hungary and a bit of holidays before it's available, but I can prepare this a bit in the meantime!

Are there other ways you try to promote a task or find a suitable volunteer? Maybe there's a way to make the "neighbours who could help" box in a village more useful, and offer a shortcut to find those neighbours more easily!

Kind regards,
Rolf.

Rolf, that sounds like it might be a reasonable solution. With regard to promoting tasks, in my opinion promoting the village is more important than the task itself. What I've found is that when you get a core group of dedicated volunteers in a village, the task work gets done. What I do is try to promote conversation and keep the village active. That has been a huge problem since the new site went up. It is definitely not as user friendly to find the villages now. There's more search options, but search options don't tell me anything about the focus of the village or if its something I want to be a part of. I would say that definitely was not always easy on the old site either-I'd look at villages I thought would be great to be a part of and maybe never hear back from the LR or the facilitator. Then I learned to look for most recent posts and to choose which villages had current activity that way.

As a user, some of the most important pieces of the website being a good tool are:

1. Showing you that other people are out there (I liked the picture format versus username (online) format...in an online environment that helps to give a feel that there really are people behind that name and contributes to the cohesiveness of the volunteering community in my opinion)

2. Being able to easily see where there's current activity so you know what's needed and know you're not going to put a lot of work into helping complete a task where maybe no one's been online in months and the situation has actually changed so it's not longer needed...

3. Facilitators really need notification when new members join the villages.

Right now, the pages are too busy and overly complicated. It would be great to take someone off the street who'd never used the site before and ask them to walk through for the first time and talk you guys through their thought process. Then do the same with someone who's experienced with the site.

Anyway, I feel like I'm rambling-just some thoughts off the top of my head.

Jennifer

Hi Barb,

You can see finished tasks when you click on project room tab, and then you click on the title of the project. Then you will get listed all the tasks, including the finished ones.

I didn't create a task by now, but there is a button to select the step number. Does that work?

Rolf, thanks for your explanations. I agree with Jennifer regarding the detailes about neighbour search. I know I'm boring, but it's very useful for me to see on their profiles in which villages they are active and how many post they made by now.

Thanks,
Sonja

Thanks so much to the techies for enlarging the font size! I can now see the posts properly so I should now be able to use the website again.

Thanks so much to the techies for enlarging the font size! I can now see the posts properly so I should now be able to use the website again.

Hi there,

I created a new task and it was visible in the project for about 2 min and now is gone. I can not figure out where it went. Any suggestions?

-Tanja, Koliyonkulam, India

I think there are many people who are having issues with the website, but not all are posted here as people are very much focused on 'their' villages.

For example check out Ron's post in Matopeni http://www.nabuur.com/en/village/matopeni/project/task/project-room?#com...

I think his comment that many people will start to work via email are very true and that simplifying the posting page would make a huge difference.

Mary

Hi,

Maybe this has been discussed already, but I can't seem to find it.

I have tried uploading new photos to Matopeni, but they show up as huge!!! And they spill across the page. Is there a way to change the display size of photos (some programs/internet sites allow you to choose small, medium or large display sizes). Is this possible here? Not all cameras or images are taken at the same size, so if the original is the only option, then it could appear way to big for the page.

Second I have heard mention of a manual. Is there one and if so, where can I find it?

Third, thanks for the help Sonja regarding the finished tasks and steps. I will take a look.

Barb

Hi Barb,

A couple of weeks the issue of picture size was brought up (by Jennifer, I believe) and at the time Kester worked his techie-magic to fix it resulting in all pics being resized automatically. I'm not sure why this is happening again, but I'll check tomorrow with Pelle (please keep in mind that Frans and Kester are away at the Drupal conference this week, so answers may be a bit on the slower side).

As for the manuals: They have not gone out yet. Truthfully it's difficult drafting a manual while the system is still bugged down and suggestions/changes are implemented almost on a daily basis. For now, you'll have to continue asking here (or contact me via email if it's facilitator related). A user guide system will be out as soon as possible.

And yes, Thanks Tanja for helping out :)

Take care,
Romina

Hi Tanja,

Ugh, sorry to hear that.

What was the title of the task?
Which step # did you place it under?

Romina

Lynley,

Glad you don't feel the need to squint any more!

Really, nothing makes a person feel older like small font on a website. ;)