Here is a comprehensive guide of the technical terms used on the platform, their meanings, and their alternatives.
| Term | Definition | Other names |
| Instance | A client’s customised version of The Social Collective platform | [clientname].thesocialcollective.co |
| Vhost | Virtual hosting of multiple domain names on a single server | – |
| Platform | Cloud-based mobile and web-app | The Social Collective, TSC, “the site” |
| Users | Anyone who signs up to the platform via social login or username and password and creates a social profile for volunteering or administrative purposes. | volunteers, society/committee members, programme participants, beneficiaries, ambassadors, champions, trainers |
| Beneficiaries | Volunteers or users who share or learn skills by taking part in opportunities | volunteer, participant, user, |
| Subscribers | Users can subscribe to organisations on the platform’s front end, or be added by administrators in the back end. These are organisation-specific. | regular volunteers, programme participants, attendees, members |
|
Administrators
Opportunity Administrator |
Users who have the right/access to manage an Organisation
User who manages and reports on individual opportunities |
programme managers, facilitators, coordinators, super-volunteers
opp. admin, facilitator, manager, guest, volunteer, team leader, event leader |
| Organisations | Entities, both public and private, that need volunteers. Managed by administrators who create opportunities for them. | programme sites, societies, committees, groups, programmes, social causes, centres |
| Opportunity | Events, programmes, tasks, learnerships, or apprenticeships which need volunteers/members and has an impact/outcome you want to track | event, session, programme, task, learnership, role, volunteer need, workshop, training |
| Event | For recurring opportunities, an event is a single occurrence of the opportunity | occurrence, session, activity, workshop |
| Impact Story | Details (text or image) of the positive impact an organisation has had on a beneficiary/volunteer | story, outcome, experience |
| Quarterly Report | Collated data from reports over a selected period of time | report |
| Tags and Badges | Categorisations of users to indicate permisssions and to track role-specific activity | labels, categories, levels, status |
| Community | Leaderboard of all the users on the platform, able to be sorted and filtered by various categories | network, users |
| Social Profile | A profile containing demographic details and overview of user’s interests, activities, hours and rating (based on reports) | social employability profile, user profile, profile |
| Method of skills transfer | The nature of opportunity taking place | type of activity |
| Interests | Areas of skills development, enjoyment and activity are captured as interests. Interests are selected by users when creating profiles, and by administrators when creating opportunities – and these can be matched to match users with ideal opportunities | matching category, pathway |
| Industry | Every organisation falls into a category or group based on its primary activities | category |
| Outcomes | Expected outcomes that are indicated by opportunity administrators. Outcomes are then measured at the opportunity, attributed to individuals by in reporting, and displayed on the user’s profile | skills, outcomes achieved, pathway |
| Feedback | Users can give feedback for an opportunity once they have counted in | reflections, review of sessions, overview |