Creating & Enabling Custom Registration Questions

Custom Registration Questions allow you to expand the information collected from volunteers when they are registering for specific opportunities. This is a perfect option when you need additional information from select volunteers. 

There are a variety of ways to utilize this feature, ranging from collecting event-specific information to expanding on volunteer approval processes. For example, you may have an event with a potluck afterwards and you want volunteers to indicate at the time of their registration what dish they are bringing so you can plan accordingly. This feature works great to poll your volunteers ahead of time and inquire about items being brought.  Or perhaps you’re recruiting for an internship and you would like to include additional questions for vetting applicants. 

Custom Registration Questions are opportunity-specific and are not saved on the volunteer’s profile, but are tied to the opportunity and associated with each registration. They are asked when the volunteer registers or applies for a certain opportunity as the last step of the registration process, and can be applied to any opportunity type in CERVIS. Administrators can always view, edit, and report on the responses to these questions. For more information on this, please see the article on viewing custom question responses.

Creating Custom Registration Questions

Any Custom Registration Question you create will be stored in an inventory so that it can be reused as needed on multiple different opportunities. You can access the menu to create this inventory in the Information Collection section of the “System Configuration” or through the opportunity itself on which you are enabling these questions by clicking the Manage Registration Question Inventory icon ().

To create Custom Registration Questions in your system, follow the steps below:

1. Login to your CERVIS Account.
2. Click on Edit System Configuration under the “System Management” section of the Main Dashboard.
3. Locate the Information Collection heading and click on it to expand the section.
4. Click on the Manage Custom Registration Questions button.
5. The Question Type field determines the format of your volunteers’ responses.
   • Text (Single-Line) - allows the volunteer type in anything, but has a limited character length (40 characters)
   • Text (Multi-Line) - allows the volunteer type in anything, but has a longer character length than the single-line option (up to 1,000 characters)
   • Email - will only allow volunteers to submit a response in an email format
   • Date - will only allow volunteers to submit a response in the date format determined in your System Settings section of your System Configuration
   • Number - will only allow volunteers to submit a number as a response
   • Phone - will only allow volunteers to submit a number as a response in a phone number format determined by your Locale Setting in the System Settings section of your System Configuration
   • Selection Box - allows you to create a list of response options in the “Selection Options” field, from which your volunteers can choose one answer
6. The Question Requirement field determines whether this field is optional or required for the volunteer. Regardless of this setting, volunteers will always see the questions when they register.
7. The Question Status field determines whether or not you are currently using this question.
   • Active - set it to this for all new questions.
   • Archived - set it to this ONLY if you are no longer using a question. It will no longer appear in the list to choose from on opportunities, but you can still view and report on past answers.
8. The Question Text field is where you will enter the wording of the question you are asking exactly as you want it to appear.
   • As an additional option you can include a clickable hyperlink as a part of your question text (as seen in the image below). This functionality allows easy access to externally stored documents, videos, or any online resources referenced in your question.

9. The Selection Options field is only used if you are creating a Selection Box type question. To create response options for volunteers to choose from, enter them in the box in a comma separated format (i.e. Yes,No).
10. The Required Answer field is also only used if you are creating a Selection Box type question. If applicable, copy a response from the previous field that the volunteer must choose in order to be able to register. 
11. The Failure Message field is optional and only used if you are creating a Selection Box type question with a Required Answer. Enter the message volunteers will see if they do not select the required answer as specified in the previous field. You can leave this field blank to use the default failure message (included for your reference below).
    • We apologize for the inconvenience, but the answer you provided for this question does not meet the registration criteria established for this opportunity. Please double-check to make sure you have accurately answered the question and/or contact us for additional assistance.
12. Click the Add Custom Registration Question button to create the question.

Enabling Custom Registration Questions on Opportunities

Once you have questions created in your system, you can enable them on opportunities individually. Follow the steps below to do so:

1. Click on the Search/Manage Existing Opportunities link under the "Opportunity Management" section of the Main Dashboard.
2. Locate the opportunity in question in the list of opportunities in the bottom section of the page and click on the  Manage Custom Registration Questions () icon to the left of the opportunity name.
3. In the drop-down box at the top of the page, choose whether you’d like these questions to be asked using one of the options below:
   • Ask these questions for BOTH individual Volunteer and Group Registrations
   • Ask these questions ONLY FOR INDIVIDUAL Volunteer Registrations
   • Ask these questions ONLY FOR GROUP Registrations
4. Select the question(s) you want asked of the volunteers that are registering or applying for this opportunity by using the checkboxes to the right of the question(s).
   • If you need to create a new question or modify an existing one, click the Manage Registration Question Inventory button then use the Back button to return to this menu when you’re done.
5. Determine the order that you would like for questions to be displayed by dragging and dropping them in the order you desire.
6. Click the Save Custom Registration Question Assignment button to save your changes

For information about viewing and reporting on these Custom Registration Questions, review our Knowledge Base Article linked HERE.