My museum has been trying to figure out a way to get our volunteer hours into Tessitura for close to a year (since we went live July 2022). Everyone on the forums keeps saying we need to build a custom screen. A few really great institutions even sent me a zip drive of their SQL files and showed me how to use SQL/SSMS.
The problem is I am so new at this that the little they showed me wasn't enough, and also when I did try to input the SQL files into SSMS, one row had an error message and it's been a pain in the butt to deal with. Another thing is, this set of files needed InfoMaker to complete the process (the PBL file needed to be uploaded there). My institution does not have that, and when I asked via Ticket for it, Tessitura told me no because they are in the process of phasing out InfoMaker.
We are also still running on version 15 and I don't know when we will make the switch to version 16. Also, my institution does not want to spend the money to have the custom screen built, which is why I'm taking the time to try and learn to do it myself.
With all of this in mind, is there something somewhere that will give me a step-by-step as if I'm an idiot (kind of the way Tessitura does when you're first building out the system).
We have a goal of starting to input volunteer hours into Tessitura by July 1 (start of fiscal year and our 1 year anniversary of having Tessitura). If someone could point me in a direction, or maybe if there is a better way of inputting this data, I'd appreciate it.
This seems to be the best training/overview out there currently - https://www.tessituranetwork.com/en/Items/Videos/Webinars/2017/Resource-Scheduling
No, v16 doesn't have this specifically. But I'll echo what others are saying in that Resource Scheduling could possibly work for you.
My museum already hates the Resource Calendar as it is (we hate a lot of things about Tessitura, but that is one of the biggies), so we are trying to find things that will work that don't involve using it. As far as the reporting, if it only goes by what the volunteer was originally scheduled for, that is not going to work for us. Our volunteers have a little bit of leeway as far as their actual scheduled hours (some of them come and go as they please and their schedule with their supervisor is set as such), and also (especially with our docents) they will swap with each other last minute, and we won't know until they walk up to the front desk and say "Hi I'm here replacing so and so."
So we need something with a little more wiggle room where I can manually enter number of hours after the fact.
Chelsea, I would recommend looking at building a web-based custom screen, rather than InfoMaker. Using a web-based custom screen means that your custom screen will integrate with Tessitura via the REST API, and use technology that is future compatible with v16, and will not need to be completely rewritten. Depending on how you track your volunteers, you may need a local procedure or two to support the screen, but if you use standard functionality like constituencies, you may be able to build the screen using standard API methods.
If you need help getting started with a web-based custom screen to do this, we can assist! These custom screens can be build by you, an ecosystem web developer partner, or by our consulting team.
Documentation on building web-based custom tabs:
Tessitura_Custom_Screens_v150.pdfFor v15 - see section on "Browser-Based Custom Screen Guidelines " in the above document.
For volunteer management, you'll likely want a custom screen either on the constituent record, or one the Tools menu level.
Setting up a custom tab: https://www.tessituranetwork.com/Help_System_v151h/Tessitura.htm#System_Tables/TR_CUSTOM_TAB.htm?Highlight=TR_Custom_Tab
Doing a web-based custom screen / tab is the most future-proof way to build this functionality.
Thanks,
Chris Szalaj
This would be great. However, is there a cost associated with this if I have someone help me build it? This goes back to my original problem where I need to build it myself because my institution does not have the budget currently to have Tessitura build it for us; but I do not know the back end of the system well enough to build it myself without someone walking me through it step-by-step (as if I'm an idiot).
Hi Chelsea, While I am not remotely an expert on this topic, I have posted a community-wide invitation to build this as an open-source project here.
Hi Chelsea,
A quick thought rather than building something brand new for this -- we've used plans in the past as a way for tracking our interns.
Plans allow the tracking of status and several value fields (in dollars, but you could use it for hours if you wanted) for each plan attached to an individual account, as well as multiple tasks (steps) per plan.There is also batch add/update functionality native to Tessi, and the Plan Summary Report can save a flat csv for monthly and final reporting. Essentially plans are a CRM task management system disguised as a fundraising tool!
Sky
I just replied on the invite. Once the code is up and going, NBMAA would be more than happy to do the testing and also write up some user guides for it (since that is my job anyway).
That might not be a bad idea. Could you explain a little more about how the data would get put in? Where does Plans live in Tessitura?
Plans are under the History tab in Tessitura. You can bulk add/update plans to records using the Plans Manager which allows you to add or change all of the parameters on multiple plans, add steps, and update the associated workers. There are a bunch of helpful videos on the Tessi network site about plans and plans management, which you can find here -- https://www.tessituranetwork.com/Support/Training/Intro-Courses/Intro-to-Fundraising/Moves-Management. (n.b. these videos are aimed at fundraisers but if you think of volunteers as donating their time rather than money the same sorts of ideas would apply!)