September 2026
We have made some great improvements to Cochrane Engage!
To help you keep track of your tasks, we've added a "to do list" that shows you a list of outstanding actions needed. You can access this from your My Tasks menu or just click on the notification icon at the top of the page, this will tell you how many actions are on your list. We know some of these actions will go back a few years for long term Engage users!
| For task posters - if you are prompted to select / decline volunteers from a long time ago you can do this. To avoid confusing applicants from old tasks we suggest adding some text to the decline email "declining old applications for admin purposes – thanks for your interest – no action required". |
We know a lot of projects use Engage to look for people with specific interests, so we’ve added a new search filter on the Browse People page that will search the database for people with key words or phrases in their profile. If you’re applying for tasks, make sure your About Me and Special Interests details are up to date in your profile so you can be found easily!
You can also specifically just search people who are in our Patient and Public Network.
For task posters, we’ve added an email that is automatically sent to you when your task is published, outlining next steps and giving you links to relevant guidance.
You can now include your Cochrane Group name when you leave a recommendation for a volunteer who’s done a good job for you. Recommendations are really useful for other task posters, to help them choose the best volunteer for their task.
And finally we fixed something that’s been annoying us for a while – when you want to select GRADE from the “skills and interests” menu this is now found under G (GRADE expertise) instead of U (this used to be listed under “Using GRADE”).
If you have questions about any improvements, please get in touch.
---------------------------
November 2025
As we continue to improve your experience of volunteering with Cochrane, we have made some changes in our volunteer hub, Cochrane Engage. Thanks to everyone who has given us feedback that helped us to prioritise which changes to make.
Volunteers can now:
- Be more specific about what email alerts you get
- Include your ORCID id on your profile
- Mark a task as finished more easily
- View the platform better on a mobile device
- Always be able to see who has posted a task – a task poster must now have made their profile visible
- Get reminders to complete your task when its due – this will make sure you get your membership points
People posting tasks or opportunities can now:
- Attach more than one file to a task or message
- Save a task as draft and come back to it later
- View ORCID ids of your applicants (if supplied)
- If you decline a volunteer, you can now change your mind
- See more easily which of your posted tasks has new applicants
To ensure a respectful, inclusive, and fact-based space for volunteers and community members, we are introducing moderation for tasks posted by people who are not part of a Cochrane Group or currently active as a Cochrane author. We welcome tasks from the whole evidence based healthcare community, but as Engage gets more popular, we need to add a check to ensure we don’t host tasks that are spamming our community or that aren’t following our guidance. For more details please see our guidance on what can be posted on Cochrane Engage, and how to post a task.
-----------------
April 2024
Looking for a new member of your author team? Cochrane Engage now makes it easier to find people who have the skills you need. We’ve added to the list of 'Skills and Interests' so task posters can now ask for people with skills in project management, review development, and writing (drafting and editing). More details are provided in this helpful article.
A new ‘Join an author team’ button on the homepage allows people to view all authoring tasks in one click. This makes it much easier to find suitable tasks. People can also sign up for email notifications when a task that matches their skills is posted – so you could get a response to your task very quickly.
If you are looking to join an author team, you can use the new ‘Join an author team’ button to view relevant tasks. We also recommend you add any authoring skills to your profile in your Cochrane Account. This will allow other interested teams to search for your profile on Cochrane Engage.
-------------------
November 2022
Cochrane is pleased to announce the launch of Cochrane Engage, Cochrane’s one-stop-shop for those who want to get involved and volunteer in Cochrane.
Formerly Cochrane TaskExchange, the platform had outgrown its name and look, and it is now being used for much more than review tasks. The new name was chosen through conversations with members of the Cochrane Community and we're very grateful for everyone's participation. You can read all about the new launch and watch our video here.
As well as a new name and new look, we have made other improvements suggested by users. Opportunities are now listed with the most recent tasks at the top of the page so you can easily see what’s new. People who post tasks can filter their tasks to find what they need more quickly. We have plans to continue improving the platform; let us know your suggestions
-----------------
November 2021
Today we have made some further improvements to TaskExchange which we hope will make it easier to find opportunities or volunteers.
As well as some general tweaks to make navigating the site more simple, here are the top four changes you will notice:
- Email alerts - You may have noticed the return of the weekly digest of new opportunities. This is still available, but if you can’t wait that long, you can now choose to receive an email every day, or an instant alert every time a task that matches your requirements (choose topics, skills or methodological skills) is published. You can change your preferences at any time by clicking on your name and choosing “Email alerts”. More details are in the help page. This means if you're posting a task, you may get responses a lot faster.
- Posting a task - You can specify which Organization and Affiliated Group your task relates to, if any. For example you can choose Cochrane as the Organization and Bias Methods Group as the Affiliated Group. We have also added our partners Campbell Collaboration as an organization that you can select.
- My applications - This list, found under "My Tasks", now shows your tasks that are in progress at the top, reminding you to mark them as finished so you can claim your Membership Points.
- Profile page - We have removed some old fields, and added some new ones. There are new checkboxes you can tick to show whether you are a student, an early career professional, a healthcare professional, researcher or clinician. We’ve also added a list of your Cochrane group roles, so people can see how you are actively contributing to Cochrane. Please also update your Cochrane Account with your job title, organization or academic suffix, to ensure this information also shows on your TaskExchange profile. More information is here. Think of your profile as your Cochrane CV, which will help task posters understand more about the volunteers who’ve applied for each opportunity. If you want to add more to your profile, use the “About me” box to add details of training you’ve completed, tasks you’ve done before, previous non Cochrane roles etc.
----------------------
September 2021
We've made some changes to improve your experience of using TaskExchange, and we'd like to tell you about a few of them. The main change is entirely invisible - the whole site is now built in a different coding language (Java instead of Ruby) which will make it easier to connect to Cochrane's other sites. We hope you don't notice this at all!
These are the changes you will notice:
- We have merged the TaskExchange profile with the profile in Cochrane Account, so that you only need to add or update your details in one place.
- Profile pictures are now being managed by Gravatar, which will save you time.
- You told us the messaging feature in TaskExchange wasn't working, so we have removed it. All messages sent via TaskExchange will now arrive in your normal email inbox. You can still access your old messages for the rest of 2021, and you can still message people directly via TaskExchange, without needing to share your email address.
- Improved search functions including being able to search for people based on their methodological interests
- Some minor bug fixes including stopping repeated expiry notifications, and reinstating the weekly task alert emails.
