The Manage Volunteer Pool page is where you can simplify the management of volunteers in your Volunteer Pool. Use the tool to simultaneously add and/or remove contact records with a single upload action.

The page hosts a .CSV "template" file that you can:

• download,
• populate with your contact records, and
• upload via the tool.

This bulk-upload of contact records saves having to manually and individually add and remove contacts in your Volunteer Pool.

NOTE: The upload tool is available to all Admins who manage the Volunteer program for their community site.

Volunteer Pool upload notes

Review the following information to fully understand how the upload works.

Higher Logic has provided a downloadable template file right on the upload page. You can use that file or create your own.

• If you create your own upload file, make certain that:
  • you use only the following valid column headers: ContactKey, LegacyContactKey, and/or EmailAddress.
  • you save the file in CSV format; .XLSX and other spreadsheet file types will not work.

The system will:

• process Contact Keys, Legacy Contact Keys, and email addresses as valid identifiers. You can use any combination of these in one upload file, but use only one type per record being uploaded. (Refer to the image below in Download the template file.)

The upload process:

• recognizes only ContactKey, LegacyContactKey, and EmailAddress as identifiers,
• supports add and remove actions in one upload execution,
• can manage up to 5,000 contact records,
• can accommodate upload files up to 2 MB,
• validates the format of the data in the upload file,
• checks for the required fields, and
• verifies that the listed contacts exist.

The upload process handles matched contact records as follows:

• Action = Add: Matched contact records are added to the pool. Contact records that are in the pool are skipped without error.
• Action = Remove: Matched contact records are removed from the pool. Contact records that are not in the pool are skipped without error.

Before executing the upload, a confirmation dialog displays counts of contact records:

• to be added,
• to be removed,
• to be skipped because they are already in the pool or not in the pool (as appropriate for add/remove), and
• that have errors.

NOTE: Successfully matched add and remove contact records are processed regardless of errors with other records.

The error report is downloadable as a .CSV file for review. For each failed record it lists:

• the number of the row (in the upload file),
• the identifier that was provided, and
• the reason for the error.

Access the Manage Volunteer Pool page

To access the Manage Volunteer Pool page:

1. In the Admin Toolbar, click Admin.

2. Navigate to Programs > Volunteer > Manage Volunteer Pool.

You are on the Manage Volunteer Pool page.

Download the template file

Higher Logic has provided a downloadable template file (volunteer-pool-upload-template.csv) right on the upload page. You can download the file and populate it with the contact records that you want to manage.

The file is pre-populated with headers for:

• the three valid identifier columns (ContactKey, LegacyContactKey, EmailAddress) and
• the action (Add/Remove) column.

Using the template

If you download the template to use for your upload:

• Be sure to delete the two rows of example data in the file.
• Do not make any changes to the headers in row 1; the system looks for these specific column headers.

To use the template:

1. Click Download CSV template. The file is saved to your device's default "download" location.
2. Navigate to the file and open it.
3. Clear the example data and populate the file with the contact records that you want to add and/or remove.
4. Save the file.

TIP: Consider saving a copy of the file and giving it a unique and identifiable name (e.g., using the date of the upload).

Upload the file

To upload the file to manage Volunteer Pool contacts:

1. Click the Select CSV file button.
2. Navigate to and select the upload file; the file name displays next to the button.
3. Click Upload and preview; the Confirm dialog displays.
4. Review the information on the dialog and verify that it reflects what you expect.

If the dialog indicates that:

• there aren't any errors, click Confirm to proceed.
• there are errors, review them on the dialog and, optionally, click Download error report to save the report (volunteer-pool-upload-errors.csv). Then:
  • click Cancel,
  • re-open the upload file,
  • fix the errors,
  • save the file, and
  • retry the upload.

The error-report file reflects the errors listed on the Confirm dialog:

Related articles

• To learn what the Volunteer Pool is and how Admins can manage it and users can opt-in to it, see Volunteer Pool Overview.
• Other Volunteer program articles are available in the Volunteer Manager section of the knowledge base.