Activities
As an Extension Staff member, you have the ability to schedule and post upcoming activities for your program and/or county which will be seen by volunteers, members, and staff on their e-data homepages.
The Activities feature is one of the most powerful tools within the e-data system. It enables Extension staff to post training sessions, meetings, events and other activities so that members, volunteers and other staff can view details about them and then register for them online. Staff may include as many details about a given activity as needed, and can specify the target audience so that registration for that activity is open only to those for whom it is intended. This is just the most visible aspect of the Activities feature. Behind the scenes, e-data creates an attendance roster for the activity, sets up e-mail messaging for quick communications with those who have registered, automatically posts the activity to the Volunteer Activity or Advanced Training Logs of registrants, and then adds all activity related information to custom and standard reports.
Failure to post activities in e-data will mean that counties will not get credit for all of the activities they have conducted and volunteers will not get credit for all of the hours in which they have participated in 4-H activities. It will also mean that their volunteers will be inconvenienced by having to manually enter each of their activities into their logs.
Activities such as 4-H leadership training, quality assurance/ethics training, committee meetings, planning meetings, award ceremonies, or Master Gardener advanced training seminars should be posted in e-data. The Activities feature used to post the activity in the system may be accessed along the left side of the screen under Program Resources. Once the activity has been added in the system, users can register for the activity in Upcoming Activities area along the right side of the screen on their “My Home” screen. As participants begin to register and "unregister" for these activities, you will be able to view a registration roster for the activity.
All extension-sponsored activities should be posted in Activities or in special cases, under Alerts. This saves both volunteers and members time and effort and provides each county with extensive data on volunteer accomplishments, hours contributed, and training completed. When volunteers and members register for those activities, they will be automatically posted to their logs.
Having users register for activities in e-data is necessary for generating accurate annual reports through e-data. 4-H leadership training for teen and adult volunteers is compiled in e-data and reported on page 11 of the annual report. Likewise, Master Gardener volunteers will have their advanced training recorded to document that they have met their annual Master Gardener advanced training requirements.
