Volunteer Activities Coordinator

Samaritan Software - producer of software solutions for volunteer centers (USA)

The mission of Novosoft customer is to develop business applications for volunteer organizations. The company provides products and services for volunteer management, community integration, and impact tracking.

Traditionally, coordination of volunteers at volunteer centers was handled manually, so the internal business processes were very slow and inflexible. The company saw a business opportunity in developing an applications to improve the speed and efficiency of internal processes at volunteer organizations.

The system was designed to include two applications - Coordinator and Recruiter.
Coordinator was designed for installation in volunteer centers, and is used for entering and uploading volunteering opportunities onto a server at the volunteer center. Recruiter application was the add-on for Coordinator that can be installed on a company's own Web site (or a non-profit agency's web site) that allowed potential volunteers to register and search for service opportunities.

One of the shortcomings of the system was that it could be accessed and used only from a computer at the volunteer center. Also, the system didn't provide its users with all the functionality they wanted to have. For instance, the information about volunteer opportunities could only be downloaded, but not uploaded.

That resulted in the customer demand for a new solution, which would fix all current system deficiencies. Responding to the client needs, our customer decided to develop and launch to market an enhanced Coordinator application, which would be entirely Internet-based and have enhanced functionality. To develop such solution, the company placed an order to Novosoft, which had an extensive experience in developing similar systems.

Novosoft started working on the project with thorough analysis of what tools and technologies should be used to develop the solution. Using a right toolkit in each specific situation enabled programmers to develop a quality solution at a minimum cost, reducing solution time-to-market. Novosoft specialists pay special attention to such issues while developing any software application or product.

Novosoft has developed eCoordinator, which is a version of Coordinator that runs entirely in Internet Web browsers. Volunteer agencies received an opportunity to subscribe to the on-line version of the software. The software ensures the information safekeeping through providing access to authorized users only. Subscribers should use usernames and passwords to get in and manage their information databases.

One of the major advantages is that the software doesn't require to be installed on the computer at volunteer center, since any user can access the program through the Web-based interface. That gives users a higher degree of flexibility. Next, the solution allows central administration of all users' accounts. That gives a whole range of benefits, i.e. generating all kinds of reports from one central place.

The solution was developed in close collaboration among Novosoft specialists and business representatives from volunteer business. That ensured that the final solution is highly customized specifically for volunteer business, and contains all functionally critical for running and supporting that business in the most effective way.

eCoordinator functionality is now integrated with updated releases of Recruiter (developed by Novosoft via a Homebase application), which allows volunteers to browse their assignments for opportunities in corresponding agencies, to change their personal information, etc.

It is very important, that Novosoft is committed to developing the solutions that meet and exceed the customer and user expectations. That is why Novosoft continues working on developing new releases of e-Coordinator, which now has the possibility to fully exchange data with Coordinator. Also, in the most recent release of eCoordinator a user can share data with other accounts. Further, Novosoft plans to introduce statistic analysis and reporting capabilities to the new version of the application soon, as well as any other features that the final users experience the need for.

Linux Red Hat 6.2, Sybase 11.0, Interbase, XML/XSL, PHP

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