Completing Criminal History Checks through Visitor Aware

To run criminal history checks in Visitor Aware, you'll need to buy tokens in advance. Think of these tokens as credits that allow you to perform these checks. You can purchase tokens through Visitor Aware. 


You can use these tokens to run checks on volunteers, and occasionally on visitors (at your discretion). Each criminal history check uses one token. These checks supplement the default security screening procedures Visitor Aware performs automatically upon check-in attempt (if enabled).


Note: Criminal history checks are not run automatically. If the volunteer setting "Automatically Run Background Checks on Volunteers When They Apply?" is set to No, you can choose to run them on individual profiles as needed. 


Our Volunteer Criminal History Check Information article describes the process to purchase tokens and enable automatic background checks. 


Run a Criminal History Check

  1. To run a check on a pending volunteer, from the left navigation menu, click People.
  2. Click Volunteers and then All Volunteers.
  3. From the Filter by Status dropdown menu, select Pending.
  4. Then, click the first name of the pending volunteer. You will see a banner above their profile that displays "Volunteer Pending."
  5. To run the check, click the Security dropdown menu,  and then select Run Background Check.
  6. In the Perform Background Check dialog box, click the Run Check button. Click the OK button.
  7. You will receive an email with a link to the criminal history check information once the check is complete. This may take several minutes.
  8. You can also refresh the pending volunteer's profile screen after a few minutes. Click the Security Checks tab and then click the Download icon in the Details column to view the report.



For information on how to approve the volunteer, please reference this help article: https://visitoraware.freshdesk.com/support/solutions/articles/43000703433-volunteer-approval-process


Troubleshooting

You submitted a background check, but no report was generated 

If you’ve run a background check and waited several minutes, but in the volunteer's profile under the Security Checks tab, you don’t see the downloadable report, please check for the following: 

  1. Is the first or last name abbreviated? Does it contain only one letter?  A volunteer’s first or last name must contain more than one letter. For example, Visitor Aware does not accept the names “Susan L.“ or "John M."
  • Use only the person’s legal first and last name
  • Do not include any other names or aliases
  1. Does the name match the name on the volunteer’s ID card? The name must match the name on their Identification card. For example, Visitor Aware will not process the name “Mary (Meredeth) Cook” because neither the first nor last name can be “Mary (Meredeth).”


Note: The background check will check the volunteer against aliases; it does not add aliases to the volunteer profile.

  1. Is the format of the date in the volunteer's Date of Birth (DOB) field valid? 
  • DOBs before 1900 or after the current year will not work
  • The format requirement for the volunteer portal is [MM/DD/YYYY]
  • The DOB must match the format and date on the volunteer's ID card
  • The minimum age requirement is 9 years old