Personal data

These fields form the most basic information VSys knows about a person.

When dealing with groups of people who are unlikely to volunteer on their own, always work as part of a team and may have varying sizes and memberships, it may not be convenient to make a record for each volunteer in VSys. Marking a person as a team of people makes this person the point of contact for multiple people whose names and information you don't track individually.

Field name

Definitions and comments

This is a team of people

Check to mark this person as a team.

Team name

The name of the team. You can search for teams by name in the person lookup tool.

Team size

The default size of this team. When making an assignment for this team, e.g. dragging and dropping the person/team onto the assignment scheduling tool, the assignment will default to having this many people. Note: changing this count later does not affect any assignments which already exist.

Ignore capitalization rules

When entering name information, VSys will apply any automatic capitalization rules that you've specified under Name Setup Options. If this causes a name to appear incorrectly here due to an exception to the rules, checking the box Ignore capitalization will let you enter the values without VSys making any changes to what you've entered.

Prefix/title

A common list of values is included here, but you can add other values in the Name Prefix tool in the Setup panel.

First/given name

Middle/Initial

Family/last

Suffix/generation

Other names

The pronunciation hint for a name that may be difficult to pronounce, and/or the person's alternate name. Alternate name fields are commonly used for nicknames, or names in other languages.

Mailing label title

On letters, mailing labels and exports, the field Mailing title will get the value here. If you leave this blank, VSys will use the various parts of the person's name to get an appropriate value.

Example: Mr. Jim Doe

"Dear ..." title

Like Mailing label title, this value is inserted when the field Mailing dear is used.

Example: Jim

Gender

Date of birth

If you don't know someone's year of birth, or don't wish to enter it, use the year 1904. It's the first leap year in the 20th century and it's unlikely that you have many active volunteers who are 107 years old.

Requires wheelchair and/or handicapped- accessible locations

This is the same field as is present on the optional Alerts panel. Changing its value here changes it on the Alerts panel and vice-versa.

Person type

The primary type of person, such as an volunteer, staff, VIP, etc.

Additional people types

Any additional types the person may be, not already specified in the Person type field. You may check as many as are appropriate.

Group

The primary group with which the person belongs.

Additional groups

If a person is affiliated with multiple groups, then you can use this field to identify their other affiliations.

Volunteer type

Depending on how this field is defined by your organization, it may be used to indicate a person's volunteer status, such as prospect, youth, or active. If there are no options configured in the Volunteer types section of the Setup panel, this will not show.

Volunteer source

Used to track how people were recruited into your organization. If there are no options configured in the Volunteer sources section of the Setup panel, this will not show.

Company

Person's employer. You can enter this one of two ways: by either typing the name in, which stores it directly, or by clicking on the button and selecting a group. If the company is linked, any changes to the group's name are automatically reflected here and the name will always be spelled consistently for all employees.

This field will not be present if the advanced system preference Don't use the "Company" field in the Profile Editor is checked.

Archived

Archiving is used to track people who are no longer active and are not expected to return. This does not remove the person from database, and the person's hours, assignments, etc. still remain in all reports. It does suppress the person from most reports and mailings. The person can later be un-archived easily.

Date archived	Date the person is archived (optional).
Reason archived	Why the person was archived (optional). Note: your administrator can define the options here in the system setup tools.
Comments	Any free-form text reasons you want to include (optional).

Banned

A person who is banned cannot register in any project and may not participate in any way in your organization.

Reason banned	Why the person is banned. Note: your administrator can define the options available here.
Date banned	Date the ban is effective.
Ban expiration	Date the person's ban is up for review. Note: VSys does not un-ban the person on this date, that must be done manually.
Comments	This field may be hidden by your administrator.

Deceased

Rather than deleting a person who has died, check this box. He will be suppressed from most reports and all mailings, but his past projects and historical data are preserved.

Date deceased

When the person died (optional).

Status

Used to indicate whether the person is active, inactive, prospect or applicant, terminated, rejected or leave of absence. People marked as inactive, terminated, rejected or leave of absence are automatically suppressed from most mailings and some reports.

Date started	Usually the first day the person starts with your organization. VSys doesn't fill in this field automatically - you use it how it makes the most sense for you. You can use this as the date of their application, date they were cleared to become a volunteer, date of their first assignment, or whatever the appropriate milestone in your organization is.
Date active	Date the person most recently became active.
Date inactive	Date the person most recently became inactive. If this is blank when you change a person's status to inactive, it will be filled with the current date.
Reason inactive	Why the person was marked inactive (optional). Note: your administrator defines the values available here.
Inactive followup	Date the person should be communicated with to see if they'll become active again. You can also use this for the expected end date of a volunteer's leave of absence.