OnSide Youth Zones
Overview
OnSide’s Youth Zones are designed to give young people aged 8–19 (25 for those with a disability) somewhere to go, something to do and someone to talk to in their leisure time; occupying their bodies and minds with fun activities, learning new skills and socialising in a safe, positive way.
Each year, OnSide enhances the lives of more than 40,000 young people by enabling 500,000+ visits to Youth Zones, and delivers a 203% measurable return on social investment.
The challenge
In the UK, 81% of young people say that their local area offers little to do outside of school and 66.2% spend most of their leisure time in their bedrooms. OnSide is a charity that seeks to make a real difference, with the ambitious aim of helping young people grow into healthier, happier and more aspirational adults. The organisation runs a growing number of Youth Zones where young people can meet, eat, play, exercise, learn and access support.
OnSide had deployed Salesforce to help its Youth Zone reception staff manage memberships and admissions, and to help youth workers manage activities and look after members. Deployed in 2015, this solution was starting to show its age; OnSide wanted to move from Salesforce Classic to Salesforce Lightning for a fresh user interface, improved functionality and the opportunity to enhance customisations.
The makepositive solution
makepositive worked with OnSide to plan and deliver a phased introduction of Lightning, including a number of enhancements to existing functionality. For example, the heavily used Member Search functionality enables Youth Zone reception staff to easily search for members, check their photos and other important information, take any relevant payments, and grant admission. makepositive rebuilt Member Search as a Lightning component, adding the ability to save member photos directly from a webcam to Salesforce, saving time and effort.
makepositive also rebuilt the Activity Register as a Lightning component. This functionality enables OnSide Youth Workers to quickly register members for a particular activity using a handheld device, and add notes as required. The new Lightning version offers enhanced search functionality, empowering users to search through members currently in attendance and add them to the register. In addition, new Wait/Go functionality checks values in a number of member fields and prompts reception staff to seek any missing information before admitting members to the Youth Zone.
To reduce project costs for OnSide, makepositive restyled selected Visualforce pages using the Salesforce LightningStyleSheet and converted buttons using the Lex Converter wherever possible. Some custom buttons were rebuilt as Lightning Quick Actions, harnessing new Lightning functionality.
Finally, makepositive supported OnSide’s SFDC administrator in making Lightning page layout alterations and getting up to speed with the deployment of changes.
The benefits
To avoid disruption to the Youth Zones and their many users, OnSide wanted a staggered rollout of Lightning, which made it vital for the solution to work in both Classic and Lightning. Thanks to the phased introduction planned by makepositive, users at OnSide’s latest Youth Zone will use the new Lightning user interface while existing Youth Zones continue with Classic, making the switch when they are fully ready.
Users of the Lightning-based solution enjoy a fresher and more responsive interface. For example, reception staff can log new Memberships more quickly using the new Add Photo functionality. Speed and ease-of-use are particularly important when there is a queue of eager members at the door at opening time!
The makepositive solution also makes it easier for youth workers to log attendance and make notes during their sessions, enabling them to focus less on administration and more on the young people they are supervising.
To read the full case study, click here.