Electronic Logging of Volunteer Hours

[Benjamin Richards]

TL;DR

Offsite at logbook.wwfry.org/offsite
Forgotten sign-out at logbook.wwfry.org/kiosk

------------------------------------------

"The logbook is dead! Long live the logbook!"

The advent of 2024 brings a new method of tracking volunteer hours: An electronic logbook has replaced the traditional paper logbook at the General Order Board. Please use the electronic logbook going forward. This is another step in achieving compliance with FRA regulations, and we need everyone's buy-in to make this a success.

A secondary motivation is that my wife and I together spent over FIFTY hours doing logbook data entry last year. Automating this process lets me spend those 50 hours on something more valuable and productive for the museum. With total volunteer hours regularly exceeding 20,000 per year, the manual process had become unsustainable.

I am aware that electronic things may fail occasionally, for various reasons. In case this happens, a temporary paper record is certainly one workaround. However, before doing that, I would encourage you to try to access the logbook on your own device (if you have one) at logbook.wwfry.org/kiosk
If all else fails, I have put my cell phone number at the General Order Board. Please feel free to call me if there is a problem, and I will try to resolve the issue, or pay an in-person visit if necessary.

For those who occasionally (or habitually!) forget to sign out, you can now sign out from the comfort of your favorite armchair, using the above link.

Finally, for those who complete volunteer activities off-site, we have a dedicated form for capturing those hours: logbook.wwfry.org/offsite
We encourage you to log your offsite hours as you complete them. It only takes a second, and you can get rid of that pesky Excel sheet!

/Ben Richards

[Pete Stevens]

Thank you Ben!
What kind of detail is useful in filling out the work description?

[Mike Fox]

I have been using it for the last couple of days, and it is vefy easy.

[Benjamin Richards]

What kind of detail is useful in filling out the work description?

Great question.

Broadly, I would say shorter is better. Identify the long-term project if that is relevant. Envision what you could have fit in the small blank space next to your sign-out time in the paper log. Since the primary goal is FRA compliance, we sectioned off train operations and lumped everything else under "general".

There are a few cases where some kind of regularity would be helpful. For example, when we apply for grants, some foundations like to know how many hours are invested in this or that project. Coach 9 is a good example; Eric and Ron always write "coach 9" with their log entries, so in the backend, I can pull a report for each of them, filter on "coach 9", and get a good estimate of the number of project-hours they've invested. Likewise, Jonathan St. Mary always writes "brakes" so I can estimate the number of hours he's put in on the Eames vacuum brake project.

[John Kokas]

Did my first logbook entry on website - it was easy ...............  Thanks to those who put the time in to build it. 

[James Patten]

Ben, Saturday (our first day of using the electronic version) Nancy was wondering if there was a way to find out how many people had signed in that day.  She would use the old logbook to see the number of people that had logged in and used that as a guide for making lunch.  I looked at the pad for a few moments and determined that there was no obvious way to do that.

Maybe if there's an iPhone or Android version of the log there could be a "How many signed in?" button.

[Benjamin Richards]

James: You are correct that number isn't currently visible. I will make a feature request.

[Bill Reidy]

Thanks, Ben.  A big improvement.  Easy to use from home.  A question:  Is there a way to review the list of volunteers on a particular date?  Laying out the Newsletter, I periodically reviewed the old paper logbook to make help verify I am correctly listing all volunteers on a particular day/project.

[Ed Lecuyer]

I saw that number of volunteers logged in was added to the home page - nice!

It would be useful to be able to tap on that number and see who is present. That came up this morning: "Is so-and-so here? His car is here but I can't find him..."

[Benjamin Richards]

A question:  Is there a way to review the list of volunteers on a particular date?  Laying out the Newsletter, I periodically reviewed the old paper logbook to make help verify I am correctly listing all volunteers on a particular day/project.

Probably best done from the backend; I have sent you an email.

It would be useful to be able to tap on that number and see who is present. That came up this morning: "Is so-and-so here? His car is here but I can't find him..."

I suspect we could implement something like this. I'll put in a request.

[Bob Holmes]

Didn't see where that was on the homepage, Ed...

[Ed Lecuyer]

Didn't see where that was on the homepage, Ed...

Homepage of the app (when you sign into the tablet in the Percival House.)

[Benjamin Richards]

Now we have a list of who is signed in:

[Bill Reidy]

Now we have a list of who is signed in:

Excellent.  Thanks, Ben.  And thanks for your email.

[Pete Stevens]

Ben, Is it possible to figuratively flip back through the pages to see what I've already logged? I just clicked submit, just as I realized I might have mis-entered my AMs and PMs. I'd love to be able to see whether I actually goofed. Similarly, since the data is there, it would be interesting to see how much time I've logged for a particular project from time to time. Thanks for this most excellent resource!