Overview
Onboarding Journeys are a sequence of courses or checks that guide a volunteer from start to finish. Enforce step-by-step completion and automatic reminders.
With Onboarding Journeys, you can create tailored experiences for different roles, opportunities, or volunteer pathways, all while keeping everything organised in one place. You can trigger journeys automatically or manually. They can be triggered automatically by using:
Opportunity enrolment
Journey map field in your form
As volunteers progress, groups can be assigned automatically, reducing manual admin. Journeys are only used for onboarding. For compliance purposes and renewals, we recommend using courses by themselves.
As part of your onboarding journeys, you can also configure:
Automated background checks - DBS (England & Wales Only)
Automated ID checks
DBS and ID Checks will be available for setup soon, with a launch expected later in June.
How to create an onboarding journey
Navigate to the Onboarding and Learning section, and select Journeys.
Click on + Journey. Give your Journey a name and description, and you can enable reminder notifications. These reminders can be useful to nudge your volunteer to continue their progress. You can set these to every 3 days, 7 days, for example. And then click Create Journey.
You can now start creating your Journey and add the Courses and Verification Checks.
The courses you can add could be forms, booking links, or modules. To find out more about Courses (your building blocks), please check out this article here.
On your journey, please click + Course and select which courses you would like to see added. You can drop them in, change the order of them, and decide whether the course is required or not.
In your journey, click + Course to add the courses you want. You can then drag and drop them to reorder, and choose whether each course is required or optional.
At the bottom of the journey, you can decide whether it must be completed in sequence, as well as which group the volunteer will be assigned to upon completion.
More information on how groups work is provided further down in this article. You don’t need to assign a group here, as this can also be configured at the form or opportunity level.
When you are done setting up your course, make sure to select Publish, and you are ready to start using your Journey. Congratulations!
How to manage, sign off courses, and chat with volunteers
You can now have a full overview of all volunteers completing an onboarding journey. You can click on any volunteer in the journey volunteers section, and you can see all the things they have done or haven't done yet in the journey.
You can also sign off on steps when required. You can see which courses might require a sign-off from a staff member under the sign-off column.
In order to sign off, please click on the volunteer and navigate towards the step that needs sign off. When you are happy to proceed, you can then click on Sign off.
If you have any questions for the volunteer or want to check in with them while they are completing a journey, you can click on the Message button and ask them there directly.
How to trigger/ start a journey
How does a volunteer start a journey? Great question. A volunteer can start a journey:
Manually
Opportunity enrolment
Journey map field in your form
Choose one of the above; you don't have to use all available configurations.
Please note: a volunteer needs app access to start and complete a journey.
Any automation will only run if your organisation has a sufficient volunteer account quota available. As such, to ensure your automation runs smoothly, please check this in Settings > Quota > App accounts.
Manually
You can assign a volunteer to a journey manually by enrolling them on it. Go to the relevant Journey, click on Enrollments and then on Assign, and select the volunteer that needs to complete the journey.
You can also manually enrol the volunteer directly from their volunteero profile. Go to their profile, click on Learning > Journeys > + Assign Journey.
Through an opportunity
Go to the relevant opportunity and select Access and Automation. From there, choose the onboarding journey you want volunteers to automatically enter after applying. Once selected, they will be enrolled in the journey immediately and granted app access.
You can also assign different onboarding journeys to each opportunity, allowing you to tailor the experience for different roles or programmes.
Through a form
You can also trigger an onboarding journey directly from a form by adding the Onboarding Journey field.
Within this field, you can create multiple options and link each one to a specific onboarding journey. Each response can then be mapped to the appropriate journey, as shown in the example below.
As with opportunities, applicants will be automatically enrolled in the selected onboarding journey based on their selection. A volunteer account will also be created for them within your organisation.
Alternatively, on a form, a journey can also be added to the form settings, so instead of a question, the whole form is linked to the journey itself.
Managing Group Allocation
After completing a journey, you can award the volunteer a group, meaning they immediately can get access to missions and chats that also have that group.
This group can be set:
At the end of a journey
A group can be awarded upon completion of a course within your journey that grants a group.
Through a group linked to a “Groups” question within one of your forms
Via a group that is passed down from an opportunity
Please note: Choose one of the above; you don't have to use all available configurations.
At the end of a journey
This is the simplest option. Simply add the group to the journey, and once it is completed, the volunteer will automatically be assigned to that group.
Completion of a course within your journey
Different groups can be awarded throughout your journey while completing individual courses. These groups are added to the courses individually.
Groups field in a form
The group selected in your initial application form can be carried through and automatically assigned to the volunteer upon completion of their journey.
To enable this, go to your application form and configure the relevant groups question field options. You can then map each response option to the appropriate group, ensuring volunteers are correctly assigned based on their selection.
Opportunities
You can assign a group to your opportunity by navigating to the opportunity and selecting Access & Automation. From there, choose the relevant group and ensure that Pass groups down the chain is enabled.
If this option is not selected, the group will only be used to organise the opportunity for staff users. Enabling Pass groups down the chain ensures that the selected group is automatically inherited by any submissions and journeys linked to the opportunity.
Please note: if a group is assigned within the opportunity settings, the group field in your form will not activate and will no longer apply.
Please note: we understand that this process may vary across organisations and onboarding journeys. Your approach may differ based on factors such as role, location, or other organisational requirements.
If you would like tailored recommendations or guidance, please contact your Customer Success Manager or email support@volunteero.org and type 'speak to person'.
Video Tutorial
Not sure where to start when it comes to modules, courses and journeys? Sign up to our webinar series here and we’ll guide you through step-by-step.
Please sign up for one cohort; each cohort contains two live sessions.