Switchboard

Every message that reaches VOICE, from any source, needs a record, a named person or team responsible for it, and a status that everyone working on it can check. Without them, requests made between sessions and during busy sessions are easily lost. The Switchboard is the part of the VOICE software that does this work. Volunteers from several organizations share it, so a message has more than one possible path to its intended recipient. A request left out of the Switchboard cannot be seen or continued by anyone else, which is why VOICE's volunteers record every request there, including those resolved on the spot.

Relays

Each item in the Switchboard is a relay, which follows one message from the time it arrives until a volunteer closes it. A relay has these parts.

• A number that people can say on the phone, such as R7K2Q, made of letters and digits that are hard to confuse.
• The message itself and its source.
• Its sender and its intended recipient, each an individual, an organization, or the VOICE Team, with the few details each kind needs, such as how to reach an individual or a caseworker's organization.
• A Family or a Friend mark when the sender is the recipient's relative or friend.
• A status of New, Open, Waiting, or Closed, a priority of Normal, High, or Urgent, and a Needed By date when the message itself depends on one, such as an appointment.
• The person, organization, or workgroup responsible for it, and a CC of other volunteers who receive its notifications.
• A thread with every reply, internal note, and change.

The kinds of sender and intended recipient show how much work delivering a message takes. A message for someone who can be reached only through VOICE may wait until volunteers can reach that person or the person comes to a session.

Beyond these, a relay can record the following details.

• The type of each organization involved, such as Health Care or Government Agency, which comes from the Directory, so that the counts can show messages from providers to the people they serve, from people to providers, and between peers.
• For a message to the VOICE Team, the request it makes, such as a verification code, a VOICE email address, faxing, or help with a phone, from a list kept in Settings > Switchboard.
• In its Alert section, a request that the people who write alerts post one, or a link to an alert already sent.
• In its Beacon section, a short text for Beacon screens and sheets once the sender has agreed or asking them has proved not feasible, or a request that a volunteer with permission to choose displays post it.

Sources

Each relay records its source. The Switchboard sets the first three itself, and a message that a volunteer records with New Relay is Entered by the Team.

In Settings > Switchboard, each source can have a usual assignee, whether a person, an organization, or a workgroup. New voicemails can then go straight to the workgroup that reads and delivers messages, for example, and messages from the public form to another workgroup.

For email, a short Google Apps Script in the Switchboard's Gmail account sends new messages to the Switchboard every minute, signing each one with a secret so that no one else can send messages in its place. The Switchboard's email settings show the complete script, ready to copy, with a short setup guide. The script checks in every hour. System Health warns when it has been silent for two hours, and when the version running is older than the one the settings show, so that someone can paste in the new one. Mail the script has not passed on waits in Gmail until the script runs again. While the script is silent, the backup collection, which uses an app password for the Gmail account, can bring in that mail.

When a message is a Google Voice voicemail notification, the Switchboard keeps the transcript, the caller's number, and the link to the recording, and leaves out the rest of the email. Replies to a relay's emails return to the same relay, and a closed relay opens again when such a reply arrives, as long as its information has not yet been deleted. A message matched only by a relay number written in it, which anyone could type, is marked as unverified, and it never reopens a closed relay.

Replies and Notifications

Volunteers reply by email from the relay itself, so that every reply stays with the message, and saved replies can be chosen and edited before sending. Each volunteer chooses which notifications they receive, such as one when a relay is assigned to them, their organization, or one of their workgroups, and whether those arrive by email or on their own devices. Every notification is also listed under the bell in Operations. Notifications give only the relay's number, its priority, and whether its sender and intended recipient are individuals, organizations, or the VOICE Team. They never say what the sender said or who anyone is, unless VOICE has been set up to allow messages in notifications, as described below. The full message can be read only by someone signed in to the Switchboard.

Volunteers can also add an internal note to a relay by answering a notification's email. The answer is accepted only when it comes from the volunteer's own address and passes Gmail's check of who sent it, and the Switchboard's inbox has to accept plus addresses, as Gmail's does. VOICE can also be set up to let volunteers receive the full text of new messages in their notifications and reply to the sender by email, a step that stays off unless someone turns it on. That step places private messages in personal and partner inboxes, which VOICE cannot clear, so a group should settle what its confidentiality agreement says about it before allowing it.

Protecting the Public Form From Spam

The form guards against spam without sending anything about its visitors to an outside service, using a hidden field that people never see, a signed token that refuses forms sent too quickly or too late, limits on how often one visitor can send, and limits on links. Suspicious messages are held for a volunteer to check rather than thrown away, and the team can pause the form, which then directs people to the message line.

Retention

A relay with no activity for 30 days closes automatically, and everything in it that could identify anyone is deleted 30 days after it closes, with a reminder to the volunteers working on it before each step. What remains is a numbered record without names or message text, and the activity log keeps each step volunteers took on the relay under its number alone. The Privacy page lists exactly what the record keeps.

Archive > Relays counts relays by month, and the counts can be downloaded. They show these figures.

• The kinds of sender and intended recipient, the types of organization involved, and the relays marked Family or Friend, each counted on its own.
• The requests made of the VOICE Team.
• Each source, priority, and outcome.
• How many relays led to an alert or were shown on Beacon.

Example

A caseworker writes a message on the main site for a person she has been unable to reach by phone, and leaves her own number for a reply. A volunteer who monitors messages reviews the new relay and assigns it to herself. She knows that a caseworker at another organization, who also volunteers with VOICE, works with the person, so she adds him to the relay's CC. He delivers the message the same week and records in the relay that it was delivered. The first volunteer closes the relay once the person has called the caseworker back.

Other Ways to Track Messages

Before the Switchboard, VOICE used osTicket, and any of the options below can work. Their plans and prices change, so it is worth checking them before choosing one.

• A shared spreadsheet, with columns for the date, the sender, the intended recipient, a description, the assigned volunteer, the date it is needed, and the status, needs no new accounts, although every entry is typed by hand. It is a reasonable way to begin.
• osTicket (osticket.com) is free, open-source help desk software that you host yourself, with a paid hosted version.
• Help Scout (helpscout.com) works like a shared inbox and has offered programs for nonprofits.
• Freshdesk (freshdesk.com) has offered a free plan for small teams.

Whatever the tool, the approach can stay the same. Each request is recorded with its sender and its intended recipient and assigned to someone, however it arrived.