Scout Lens

How It Works

Scout Lens uses AI to understand your search query and match it against your volunteer profiles — not just keywords, but the meaning behind them. It considers expertise, engagement history, health scores, and willingness to serve.

Lens works as a conversation, not a one-shot search. You can ask a question, review the results, and then ask follow-up questions to refine your search. Each query builds on the previous context.

Writing Good Queries

The more specific your query, the better your results. Here are some examples:

• “Who has experience in education and could help train our kids ministry volunteers?” — Combines expertise with a specific use case.
• “Healthcare professionals open to helping” — Filters by expertise and willingness.
• “Build a team for finance committee” — Lens can suggest a group, not just individuals.
• “Who has construction experience?” — Simple and direct works too.

You can be conversational — Lens understands context. But avoid overly vague queries like “good volunteers” — give it something concrete to work with.

Understanding Results

Each result card shows:

• Volunteer name and their primary skill
• Team badge — Which team they’re on
• Engagement score and Health score — Displayed as arcs so you can quickly assess their status
• “Why this match?” — A toggle that expands to show Lens’s reasoning for why this person fits your query
• Considerations — If there are caveats (like low engagement or a recent flag), Lens surfaces them with a warning icon
• View Profile — Opens the full volunteer detail modal

Suggested Teams

When your query calls for a group of people (like “build a team for finance committee”), Lens may show a Suggested Team banner with the AI-proposed team name and the matched volunteers grouped together.

Follow-Up Queries

After reviewing results, you can ask follow-up questions in the same session:

• “Are any of them currently on the worship team?”
• “Who else has similar skills but is more engaged?”
• “Show me people with leadership experience too”

Each follow-up builds on the conversation context. When you want to start fresh, click “New search.”

Usage Limits

Scout Lens queries are included with your subscription plan. Each plan includes a monthly allocation of Lens searches that resets at the start of each month. You can see your remaining queries below the search input.

If Lens isn’t available on your current plan, you’ll see an upgrade prompt instead of the search interface.

Connection to Expertise

Scout Lens is powered by the same expertise data you see on the Expertise page. The richer your volunteers’ profiles are, the better Lens performs. Encouraging volunteers to complete their profiles directly improves the quality of Lens results.