System Setup Guide

This document is a walkthrough of the Administration menu, which contains almost all of the settings used to administer your whole Charitylog system. This is a long document. Rather than trying to read through the whole document in one go, you might like to consider using the links out of Charitylog to find the help content you need. Above the navigation menu on each Charitylog page is a button like this: File:Wikibutton 1.png. Clicking on this button will take you to help content relating to that page.

If you haven't already done so, it is strongly recommended that administrators read the Introduction to Charitylog for Administrators and the Quick Start Guide for Administrators before this one.

Accessing the Administration section

To set up your system you will need access to the Administration menu. It is at the bottom of the main menu which appears in almost every Charitylog screen. If you can't see it, it is because you do not belong to a user group which is granted access. You need to contact one of your system administrators and request to be moved to one of the relevant User Groups.

Our Details

Contact email address

This is the reply-to address that will appear on system generated emails. It's worth checking this before your system goes live; sometimes in pre-implementation it is set to the email address of the main contact in your organisation, which is often the chief executive. Leaving it set like this may lead to users sending out emails which appear to have come from your chief executive.

It's important to have something filled in this box, as without it, system generated emails will be sent as if they have no sender, which often means they get diverted to spam folders. Note that the system won't check this email address for validity, so it's up to you to format it properly. Alternatively, you might like to use a "donotreply@" address.

Referral Audit

The Referral Audit feature is intended for service managers to independently audit the work your organisation has done, usually by telephoning the client and checking that they are happy. Clicking the "Referral Audit" link will show you a display of the referrals on your system. You can narrow these results by date range, the user that entered the referral, Project, whether they have been checked already, and whether the referral(s) in question are complete.

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Clicking a "Check" button will show you -

• The client's contact details
• The details of that referral
• Simple diary outcomes
• A "Check Completed?" box.

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You may like to consider using Simple Diary Outcomes specifically for audit checking, since Project-specific outcomes are almost always better when structured as Ladder Outcomes.

Once checked, you can fill in the required outcome and/or add notes, set the "Check Completed?" field to "Yes", and click the "Save and Close" button.

Standard Document Setup

Publication Setup

If your organisation gives out standard publications, like fact sheets/bus timetables/etc, you can use the options in the "Publication Setup" submenu to categorise these publications, and your users can then log each time they give one out. In this way, you can track how many have been provided and to whom.

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• Publication Categories can be used to categorise your publications - for example, "Fact Sheets", "Bus Timetables", "Library Leaflets" and so on.
• Publication Languages is an extra level of categorisation if you have the same publications available in several languages, but it is not available for reporting and so can be ignored.
• Publications is a list of the publications themselves.

Each publication has some options attached, as shown -

• Name and description
• Author
• Category (users will be able to use these categories to find the right publications)
• Language
• Number (might be a standard reference number)
• Electronic? (yes or no)
• Source File Name (to help users find the relevant file, if they need to print a copy for a client)
• Sale price
• Display order (in the list of publications)
• Active?

Standard Letter Templates

Standard Letter Templates are the basis of letters that users can automatically create. These letters can either be created on a one-off basis, for example from a client's Details screen, or via a mail merge to a group of people. "Standard Letters" can also be emails, or you can set up letters that can create a letter or an email depending on how you want to use them.

Clicking on the menu link will take you to a list of letters set up on your system, if there are any. Click on "Enter New Letter" to create a new one. The options you have available are as follows:

• Name
• Description
• Letter Type: Choose from letter or email (the default), letter only, or email only.
• Letter Default Font Face
• Letter Default Font Size
• Print/Show Letter Headers?
  • "Yes (Use Standard)" will use the standard page header. The page header is the section at the top of the page. On the first page it also has the organisation (from) address and the organisation's logo.
  • "Yes (Use Alternate)" will let you manually write in a header, specific to this particular letter.
  • "No" will not show a header.
• Including Our Logo? - choose from "Yes (on right)", "Yes (on left)" or "No".
• Alternate Image Path For Our Logo - this is a web URL which can be used to show a different logo to the one set up on your system. You can also (if you're careful) use this box to bring in a high-resolution image of a page header, if you have a complicated header that the standard text creation tool will not allow you to create.
• Print/Show Our Address? - choose from "Yes", "No", or "Use "Alternate Address" Box". Picking the last option will make an extra text entry box appear above the main body of the letter, where you can enter a different address from your standard one, if required.
• Print/Show Recipient Address? - Choose whether to show the recipient's (to) address on the top left of the letter. If used, this will be located in the envelope window position.
• Use Letter Salutation Section? - This will show or hide the letter salutation section. It also relates to the following 4 options...
• Use Salutation From Record? - Organisations and People stored on Charitylog have a salutation on their Details screen - in the case of clients, the system creates it automatically from the client's surname and title (so, title = Mrs and surname = Jones would mean the system will create the salutation "Mrs Jones"). You can choose to use this salutation, use no salutation, or use an alternate one which you can enter below.
• Alternate Letter Salutation
• Alternate Email Salutation
• Email to Name - choose from None, Salutation, First Name, or Full Title And Name.
• Send To 3rd Party Recipient Instead? - If this is set to 'Yes' Charitylog will prompt at the letter creation for you to use the client's address or select a 3rd party address for the letter.
• User Access Rights - control who can use this letter; choose by user group, certain users, or both.
• Active Letter - set to "Yes" for current letters, set to "No" for ones which are obsolete.

Depending on the options selected, you may now proceed to entering the main letter text, or you may need to enter an alternate header and/or address.

The editor for the letter body text has all the usual formatting options. Note that there is a "Paste From Word" button to use if you are having trouble with text pasted from Microsoft Word displaying incorrectly. Word text contains a lot of formatting information which is not usually shown, and this button strips out this formatting.

There is also an important button at the extreme right-hand end of the toolbar:

This is the Insert Merge Fields button, and it allows you to merge in fields from the data stored about a particular person. Clicking the button will open a window where you can pick the fields to be merged in. For example if you picked all the address data, as shown:

You could then merge these into the letter, as shown:

And the resulting letter would read as follows (showing an automatically created email to Mrs Ann Jones - note the system created salutation):

When to use Standard Letters

Standard Letters are often overlooked feature of Charitylog, but they can be very useful to an organisation. They are particularly useful for quick, "one-shot" letters, for example -

• If your organisation is moving offices, or going to be closed for works etc, you could use a Standard Letter to let your clients know. The useful thing about using Charitylog's Standard Letters functionality for this is that because of Charitylog's excellent reporting features, you can use a very specific report to find the people you want to contact. In this scenario, you might do the following -

This shows how Standard Letters can be a powerful addition to a strategy like this.

• You can use Charitylog to identify every client with a currently open referral, and telephone these clients directly to make sure they know about your office move.
• You can then identify the recent clients, and send them a letter (which is relatively expensive, but at least it has been targeted to the people that are currently active).
• Then you can identify historical clients, and send them an email with the same text as the letter.
• Finally you might choose to disregard the older historical clients, assuming that if they have had no interaction with you for three years, they have either moved away or no longer require your services.

If you would like help with setting up a process like this, please contact your Implementation Consultant, or give us a call on our support line: 01989 763 691. We're here to help.

When not to use Standard Letters

The Standard Letter creator is designed to be easy to use, and so it does not have complicated image formatting tools or graphic design capability. If you want to make some sort of mailing which uses these functions - for example, a yearly newsletter - you may find that Standard Letters is not the best way to do this. We would advise that you use the reports to identify the people you want to contact, as in the diagram above, but then export the results to an Excel spreadsheet. From this spreadsheet you can mail-merge using Microsoft Office, Outlook (for email) or any other office productivity package you wish.

Standard Letter Types

As well as communicating with organisations and people, Standard Letters have another use, which is to be used as part of the Information Links process. A letter can be sent to the organisation in question about the client, for example, to ask that organisation to get in touch with the client. For this to work effectively, the "Send to 3rd Party Recipient?" option on the letter should be set to "Yes", and the letter should be set to bring in the client's details (whatever is relevant) using the Insert Merge Fields button.

There are also letter types available here for Funded Work.

Uploaded Doc. Categories

This menu item shows the categories that are set up on your system to categorise uploaded documents, which can be uploaded and stored with the details of any organisation/person on your system. Users can use the categories to categorise a document when they upload it. An example set of categories is shown. You can use these categories in any way you like - whatever suits your organisation.

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Drop-Down Lists

Throughout your Charitylog system there are drop-down lists. These are preset lists which can be edited from the Drop-Down Lists menu. Drop-down lists are simple, but fundamental to Charitylog. In particular, if you have certain reporting requirements, you need to make sure that the drop-down lists are set up so that users can log data which usefully matches these requirements. For example, if your funder has a certain list of ethnic origins that they want you to categorise your contacts by, you will need to make sure that the drop-down list of ethnic origins matches their list.

Note for system administrators and chief executives

Because all of the drop-down lists are customisable, getting these drop-down lists correctly set up is a very important way to start your Charitylog implementation. They will be set up for you depending on what you enter on your pre-implementation spreadsheets. There are default values for some of them (for example, the list of age ranges), but remember that these can be changed. However, it is difficult to change drop-down lists when users have already started using them, as you risk compromising the integrity of your data - so give the drop-down lists some careful thought before you start implementation, if possible.

Some drop-down lists (like Age Ranges) are universally used in the same way. Some are slightly less specific, and can be used for anything that your organisation needs. Your Implementation Consultant will be able to help you set these up and advise you on which is most appropriate to use.

Accomodation Types

Accommodation Types are found on the Personal Details tab of person-related records - clients, carers, volunteers and so on.

Age Ranges

The Age Ranges drop-down list is in fact a set of age bands. When a user enters a date of birth on a client's record (or another person type), the system will automatically set their age band accordingly. You may have sets of standard age bands which you have to use, set by a national body or a funder. Alternatively you may be at liberty to choose your own.

Clicking on the name of an age band will let you edit it, set the upper and lower limits, and so on. Care should be taken with the display order to make sure that the age bands display in age order, unless there is a very good reason not to - users will often find it confusing if age bands are displayed in any other way.

Benefits

If your organisation does any work around helping people to apply for benefits, and/or you need to store information on what benefits your clients are currently receiving, you will need to set up these benefits in this drop-down list. When recording information about a client, users can pick the relevant benefit and the figures will automatically be carried in according to this list. Here, the list has been set up with the different rates for the two DLA components (as at May 2013).

Categories of Need

Categories of need are one of the lists without a prescribed function, and you can use them to categorise clients if needed (example shown).

They do have one specific use, which is for Supporting People. If your organisation does not take part in Supporting People, you can use them in any way you wish.

Client Personal Options

The Client Personal Options menu is likely to be expanded or restructured in a future release. At present it only has one option in it - Payment Methods. This is mirrored from Payment Methods in the Accounts module. The "Client Personal Options" menu can be ignored unless you are using the Accounts module, and even then you should not need to actually use it.

Communication Methods

The list of Communication Methods on your system are used whenever a contact is recorded with a client (or any other Organisation or Person type). Users will pick from this list when recording the contact, to say what form that contact took. If you want to report on the different numbers of contacts your organisations has carried out (telephone calls vs office drop-ins, etc) then this list needs to be set up from the start to reflect the contacts you want to track. An example set of communication methods is shown here. Note that these are subject to Display Order, and because users will use this drop-down list all the time, it is important to set the order correctly.

Contact Types

Contact Types are an extra level of categorisation, separate to Communication Methods. For example, as well as logging the communication method, you might want to categorise your contacts in one of the categories below:

These Contact Types can be set by the user when recording a contact - see this page for details. The ability to enter a Contact Type from the Record a Contact screen also needs to be turned on for each Project you want them available for: see this page for details of how to do this.

Courses & Qualifications

This list of courses and qualifications is specifically for logging the experience and qualification of your organisation's volunteers.

Clicking on the name of a course/qualification will show its details, along with an option to say whether it is a course or a qualification. The Type which is set will govern whether it is available from the Courses link or the Qualifications link. For details of how to log these, click here.

Data Dictionary Fields

The Data Dictionary fields are fields in Charitylog for which you can change the options available. Clicking the link will show you the available Data Dictionary Fields.

Clicking on the name of one will let you enter new options. If you want to delete an option, blank out the line in question and click "Save Details".

Disabilities

This is the list of disabilities available on your system for logging clients and other people. This will be set up according to your pre-implementation spreadsheet, or with a default list if you do not provide a list. Commonly the list of disabilities used by voluntary organisations is one set at regional or national level to help reports from different organisations match one another.

Districts

Together with Towns and Counties, Districts help categorise people according to where they live. Districts are slightly different to Towns and Counties in that there is no set way to use them (Town and County are usually pretty obvious, and trying to use them in a way that is non-standard can confuse clients and users). They are used differently according to the needs of different organisations, and often organisations based in cities use them differently to organisations based outside major towns/cities.

They are often used to categorise clients' locations by broad or vague areas. For example, an organisation based in a city might use them as shown below:

Note the "Out of our funded area" option - some organisations are only funded to work within certain areas and using Districts in this way can help you report on specific areas, and make sure that you are not doing too much work in a non-funded area.

Ethnic Origins

This is the list of ethnic origins available on your system for categorising clients and other people. This will be set up according to your pre-implementation spreadsheet.

Living Arrangements

Living Arrangements can be used to categorise organisations and people.

Marital Status

Marital Status is used to categorise organisations and people.

Membership/Skills Groups

This list is a list of the groups, committees, skill areas, or interests which carers, staff, volunteers and trustees may either belong to or have. They are usually referred to as "Groups and Skills". There are many places that they can be used in the system, and so the list you enter here may be quite diverse - there's nothing wrong with this. A common set of Groups and Skills might be set up to do with the various volunteer roles that your organisation might need. Creating Groups and Skills for volunteers such as "Befrienders", "Gardeners" and so on will enable users to look within these categories when assigning volunteers to clients.

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Organisation and People Categories

These are reporting categories used for Organisations and People. You can use any list of categories you want - it simply depends on what you want to report on. For instance, if it would be useful to know "how many referrals we have had over the year from GP surgeries", you would need a category called "Surgeries" that you put all of the GP surgeries into. The categories can also cross other divides - for example, you could have a category of "Health Groups" which includes voluntary organisations, paid-for health clubs and classes, gyms, and so on. These categories are usually used to categorise Organisations and Referrers, but you can also use them to categorise Staff, Volunteers and Suppliers.

Referral Sources

Referral Sources are separate to Referrers themselves - rather, they are used to capture data about where somebody heard about the services of the organisation. Users can enter a Referral Source (as well as a Referrer) on the Record a Contact screen. If you want this to happen, you need to enable it in the setup of each Project.

Relationships

Relationships has options for Personal Relationships and Carer Relationships. They are used in two places - from the Relationships screen, and as part of Carer Assignments.

When entering new matching relationships, remember that you need to enter the relationship in both directions - for example, if you enter a "Husband" relationship, you will also need to enter a "Wife" relationship to be used for the other person.

Religions

The list of religions available on your system for logging people's details.

Service User Groups

Service User Group is intended for grouping people together for reporting purposes - beyond that there are no specific ways you "should" use Service User Groups, so you can use them for anything you need.

Sexual Orientations

The list of sexual orientations available on your system.

Status

Like Service User Group, Status is a flexible field that you can use for anything you need.

Termination Reasons

These are the reasons you can attach when you terminate a client's involvement with a Project. For more details about "Clients In Project" and Termination, see this page.

Unless you are certain that you need to make use of it, it is better to ignore the concept of Clients In Project and Termination.

Town Lookup Edit

Town Lookup Edit provides a way to fill out the Town, County and Postal District fields quickly and easily. You can set up Towns, and for each Town, associate a County and a District. Users can then select the correct Town when entering information to the system, and the County and District fields will automatically be filled in.

If you are using Postcode Anywhere, this will override Town Lookup Edit.

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Equipment

This menu item lets you set up pieces of equipment which can then be logged as loaned out to people. It is useful if your organisation provides equipment like laptops, accessible hardware and so on. You can also use it to log equipment that is provided to staff. Assignments can be made by way of the "Equipment" link which shows at the bottom of a Client's Details screen (ditto any other person type).

Equipment History

This is a report to show what equipment assignments were made and when. You can specify a date range, enter part/all of the name of the piece of equipment if you want to report on something specific. You can then opt to show the results on screen (Display/Print) or download an Excel spreadsheet to your computer (Export).

Extended Orgs & People List

The Extended Orgs & People List is an Administrator-only search, which searches all of the Organisations and People on your Charitylog system at the same time. This is the only search where this is possible; all of the searches that end users can carry out are limited to one Type. A series of options for narrowing the search are available, as shown. If you wish, you can search only one Type.

There are some particularly useful features to this search. In the results, you can set Organisations' Info Links by clicking the "Info Links" button.

The search also shows on the results which Type(s) is/are associated with each Person or Organisation. Clicking on the name of one of the results will let you see the list of available Types in one column, with the option to select as many as required.

Information Links Headings

This menu item will let you set up and manage the Information Links heading structure. Users can use Information Links to signpost clients to external organisations from the Record a Contact screen. The External Referrals feature also allows this, but using the "Signposting and External Referrals" link only lets the user pick from a list of organisations. Using Information Links, users can use a category/subcategory system to find the best organisation, even if they do not personally know all of the organisations that you signpost to. This diagram shows the difference between the External Referral process and the Information Links process.

This menu lets you set up and manage your categories and subcategories. First you will need to decide on a category structure - an example structure is shown below (for an organisation signposting to local tradespeople):

• Building (internal)
  • Plumbers
  • Painters
  • Plasterers
  • Electrical
• Building (external)
  • Roofing
  • Groundwork
  • Windows
  • Gardening

Organisations can be tagged with more than one category, so in the above example, you might well want to put a general building firm into most of these categories.

Clicking the menu item will take you to a display of existing headings, if there are any. Click "Create New Heading" to make a new one, then once created, click the "Edit Subheadings" button to create the subheadings.

LSOA Areas and Wards

Super Output Areas (SOAs) are a national geography created by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) for collecting, aggregating and reporting statistics. Using this feature in Charitylog, you can have postcodes "drive" selection of MSOA, LSOA, Ward, Locality and Local Authority. You would not want to set this up from scratch, as the list of postcodes even for a small geographical area would be very large. Rather, if you want to use SOAs, you will probably already have a strategy for getting the SOAs that cover your area. You can then provide a spreadsheet to Charitylog with all of these postcodes and associated SOAs, which can then be added to reports. Note that the LSOA and MSOA are not stored on the client record, but when you export a report with SOA data attached, the system puts together the client's postcode with the SOA table and adds the SOA data to the exported spreadsheet.

We do have a feature in development to enable postcodes to drive selection of everything else - ward, postal district, county and so on. This would replace/incorporate the functionality of Town Lookup Edit, Postcode Anywhere, and SOAs. This system is likely to take a while to develop, but please give us a ring on 01989 763 691 if you would like to discuss this proposed feature, and/or feed into the development discussion.

Projects and Referral Entries

Projects are a fundamental concept within the Charitylog system. They are covered in a separate chapter: Projects.

Referral Reasons

Referral Reasons are a set of reasons that can be attached to referrals. The unique aspect of Referral Reasons is that you have control over which Projects they are used for, so each Project can have their own set, if required. Optionally, users can also enter multiple reasons. Clicking the menu item will show you the list of Referral Reasons set up on your system, if there are any, along with the Projects they are associated with.

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Clicking on the name of the reason, or clicking the "Create New Reason" button, will let you edit the name of the reason and which Projects it is available to.

If you want to classify your referrals with more details than Referral Reasons will allow, you might like to consider using Classification Codes.

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Security

Classification Codes

Charitylog's classification codes system was originally built for AgeUK, but soon expanded into a customisable system that any organisation can use. The coding system is a way of classifying activity. It is a hierarchical structure, so selecting a certain option in level 1 then gives sub-options in level 2, and sometimes there is a third level, a fourth, and so on. This diagram shows an example, using AgeUK's Residential Care code grouping. Each option picked has an associated code, which is automatically added to the referral. When the user has selected an option in each level, the final code output is created and added to the details of the referral.

The arrows show the available paths to take. The red arrow shows the path actually taken, down to the final code creation: 2B5, which actually means "Personal Expenses Allowance, within the Payment and Charging section of Residential Care".

You can create your own code groupings like this - use the "Create New Code Grouping" button to make a new system.

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...and once you have created your new code grouping, click "Edit" to be taken to the main codes entry screen.

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Once a main code is created, you can then create further sub-codes within it, with the "Go To Sub-Code" button....

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...and you can add further sub-codes within that sub-code...

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...and so on.

Note that you can give your own code system as many levels as you need, but consider how easy (or otherwise) it will be for day-to-day users to enter the codes. It's best to keep any coding system as streamlined as possible.

Questions attached to codes

At each level of the classification coding system, you have the option to add a question if a certain option is picked. When the users selects that option, a field will appear for entry of an answer to a question.

Click on the name of a sub-code:

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Then click the "Save and Enter Questions" button.

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You can now enter a question to associate with the code. In this case, a question has been added to a "Bus Timetables" code, which will ask the client for the date they started using the bus in preference to a car. Click "Save Details" when complete.

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You will now be returned to the question display screen, with your new question shown.

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When a user picks this code, a date entry box will appear below it for an answer to be entered.

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When to use codes

• Using classification codes is good when you want a hierarchical structure. It is particularly useful if you have a large amount of possible codes that you want to use - breaking them down into levels like this means it is easy for end users to select from even a very large list of codes, without actually having to know the codes in the first place. They can simply pick the appropriate code in level 1, then pick the most appropriate code from level 2, and so on.
• Codes are also useful because you can log several codes against each contact, and therefore against each referral. In a project where you discuss a wide range of issues with a client at one visit, this can be a useful way to log all of these at once. This would not be allowed by Referral Reasons etc.
• Finally, code entry can be optional or forced - so forcing code entry will ensure that something is entered against each referral.

When not to use codes

Against the above points, you should balance the following -

• Forcing code entry puts in another step to the process of recording contacts. Codes can be very useful, but using them when they are not really needed can add unnecessary hassle to an end user's day-to-day work.
• Only use codes if you have a general reporting need for that level of detail. If you do not need great detail, you may be able to use Referral Reasons, Project Subcategories or an Extension Database on referral entries.

Anonymise Clients

The "Anonymise Clients" menu item is a specific search used, as the name suggests, for wiping personal data from details of clients who will have no more dealings with your organisation. You might choose to anonymise clients for various reasons - if they have died, moved away etc. More likely, it is because that individual has had no dealings with your organisation for a predefined period - for example, 7 years - and your data protection policy requires you to turn their data into a form which cannot identify individuals and where identification is not likely to take place. The "Anonymise Clients" feature allows you to do this, whilst retaining important data for your historical reports.

Clicking on the "Anonymise Clients" menu item will show you a search form:

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This search will only show clients who are not active, and have had all their involvement with Projects terminated. Once you have found the clients you need, you can anonymise them.

For more details about active and non-active Clients, click here. For more details about terminating a Client's involvement with a Project, click here.

Backup

The "Backup" menu item has two functions.

Backup of your database

This will allow you to download a complete copy of your data from the system. You do not need to use this in day-to-day activity, as all data is securely backed up by the data centre. This menu item is to be used in the event of your system becoming unsupported. We have a copy of our source code held by a solicitor. In the event of Charitylog becoming unsupported, you will be able to obtain a copy of our source code. By putting this together with a backup from your system, you will be able to restore your data and carry on working.

This backup cannot be used without the source code. If you need to get figures and data out of your Charitylog system for reporting purposes, you can do so using the Reports menu item.

Backup of uploaded documents

You can also download a compressed copy of all of the Uploaded Documents that have been stored on your Charitylog system.

Customisable Tab Settings

This menu item allows you to control which data fields are shown on the General Details and Personal Details tabs of Organisation/People records. Using these, you can decide exactly what data will be shown, field by field.

• This can be put together with the following features to gain fine control of data visibility.
  • User Settings - Personal Tab Access and Project Visibility
  • User Generated Org/People Types

If you need help configuring these parts of the system, please speak to your Implementation Consultant, or call our support line on 01989 763 691.

Delete Referrals

To be used when users have entered incorrect data, or entered data twice.

Use with extreme caution - in case of double entry, make sure all data to be kept has been transferred to the Referral which will survive. We advise that you only use the Delete Referrals feature under specific guidance from us.

Extension Databases

Extension Databases provide a way of adding to your Charitylog system, if you find that the standard setup doesn't quite do what you want. They can be used in all sorts of different ways - you can create them:

• To appear on every Client Details screen (or indeed on any Details screen required)
• To appear on the Client Personal Details tab (so you can restrict view access to them if required)
• To appear on a Club or Clinic Details screen
• To appear after recording a contact - either once per chain of actions, or after every action in the chain

You can use them in the following ways:

• Store extra data about organisations or people
• Store extra data about clubs or clinics
• Run reports on them using Extension Database Reports
• Include them with other reports as part of the KPI Report Designer
• and more!

Extension Databases are covered in their own chapter: Extension Databases.

External Referral Settings

This menu option related to the Referral Portals Module.

Help

The Help section contains the following.

FAQs

Frequently Asked Questions about the Charitylog system.

Documentation and Guides

Downloadable help documentation. In time, this will be replaced by this manual.

System Updates

Updates that have been made to your Charitylog system, along with details of new features etc.

Support

The Support Ticket feature is under development. It allows you to generate a support ticket to be sent to us, and also allows you to generate a key so that a Charitylog help team member can share your screen to solve problems.

Input Field Rules

Input Field Rules are an important way to streamline data input to your Charitylog system.

Standard Input Field Rules

Users should always start the process of recording a contact with a search for the person in question (usually a Client). This is to make sure that the person in question is not already entered to the system (and remember that because the whole organisation is sharing a data pool, it is quite possible that the person in question has been entered by a different service within the organisation). If the person is already on the system, they can check the History tab, see if the referral is already started, and if so, carry on from there. If the person is not on the system, they can then use a "Create New" button to make a new client/volunteer/etc.

At this point, they are taken to a blank record for editing. In the case of a Client, the blank record looks like this.

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As you can see, there are a lot of fields available (and there are actually twice as many as shown, because there is a Personal Details tab available too). Seeing this amount of data entry can easily put off an end user. Furthermore, the user has no way of knowing what the organisation's policy is on data capture - so some staff members may take down a lot of details, while others only record a name.

Input Field Rules solves this problem. You can set up a set of rules for a general, organisation-wide minimum data set. This will create a new button on a client search result, "Record a Contact for a New Client".

Rather than go to a full client record for editing, this will take a user to a screen with a data entry form which will be driven by the Standard Input Field Rules. So if the Standard Input Field Rules are set to require a (sur)name, forename(s) and a postcode, the data entry screen you will see will look like this:

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This is much more palatable to an end user than a full, blank client record.

The system-wide (Standard) Input Field Rules are set up by clicking the "Input Field Rules" menu item, then the "Edit Rules" link:

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This will take you to a screen where you can set any of the data to be stored with one of four options -

• No Rules
• Show on entry screen (but allow to be left empty)
• Warning if not filled in
• Must be filled in

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Use "Warning if not filled in" with caution. Setting a field to this option will show the box in yellow on the data entry screen, and if the user tries to save details without entering any data in that box, they will be shown a popup warning for that box. If there are several boxes set as "Warning if not filled in", the user will be shown several warning popups, which can be quite cumbersome.

Project-Specific Input Field Rules

Standard Input Field rules are effective, but they are not enough to deal with the varying data capture needs of a whole organisation. More often than not, the different projects within one organisation will have different requirements, for example -

• As well as standard data, the Information service needs to know clients' telephone number, email address, and preferred method of communication.
• As well as standard data, the Housing Support service needs to know clients' living arrangements, employment status and whether they have a disability.

...and so on. Incorporating all of these requirements into the Standard Input Field Rules would be tiresome, and would mean that each Project has to capture data for the sake of other Projects. This will lead to increased workload and pressure on staff, so must be avoided. Instead, you can use Project-Specific Input Field Rules to deal with these requirements. Click on the "Input Field Rules" menu item. At the bottom of the page are the Input Field Rules for each Project.

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Click "Create Rules" next to the Project you want to set the Input Field Rules for. You will see a similar screen to that which is displayed for standard rules.

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Shown above is the example scenario for the Information project, requiring "Preferred Method of Communication", "Main Telephone No." and "Email Address (Main)" to be filled in. These Input Field Rules are added to the standard rules, so you do not need to set "Surname", "Forename" and "Postcode" as required in the project specific rules - they will be carried over from the standard rules.

If you now use "Record a Contact for a New Client", and enter the required (Standard) details...

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...and click "Save Details", you can then pick the Project to be used, in the usual way. In this case, "Information" is selected. The system then checks the Project specific Input Field Rules, and if there is data not yet stored on this client, you will be prompted for it.

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In this way, each Project can require its own data set, without burdening all other Projects with its requirements.

User Group Specific Input Field Rules

You can also apply a set of Input Field Rules to any User Group set up on your system.

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Just like Project-specific Input Field Rules, these are added to the Standard (and Project if used) Input Field Rules. You cannot use Group-specific Input Field Rules to allow groups to enter less data than standard, only more.

Applying Standard Input Field Rules to the Client Record

There is another place that Input Field Rules appear - in Operational Rules. There is a field which lets you set your system to apply the standard Input Field Rules to the Client Record itself. Use with caution, as it can slow/frustrate data entry, but if you want your users to be prompted frequently to preserve the data you store for clients, it's there if you need it.

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Input Field Rules for anonymous contacts

Recording anonymous contacts has a slightly different relationship to Input Field Rules - namely that recording of anonymous contacts will not function until you have set up some Input Field Rules to suit. To create some Input Field Rules, click the "Create Anon. Rules" link as shown:

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Even if you don't enter a requirement for the "Name" field, it will appear on anonymous contacts anyway. Although it seems a bit silly to require a name from an anonymous contact, this field is important for two reasons:

• Recording an anonymous contact doesn't just "lose" the person; rather, it does create a client on the system, and that client is named "Anonymous Client". Over time, a lot of anonymous contacts will create a lot of clients with the same name. This isn't ideal, but it does mean that if a client who was previously anonymous comes back to have some work done with your organisation, you at least have some chance of finding the relevant anonymous contacts and merging the client records. Creating a new client each time also means that your reports for "how many client contacts have we had" will have the correct numbers in.
• This field, when used for Recording an Anonymous Contact, allows the end user to look up surnames on the system and check that the client is not, in fact, already on the system. This commonly happens when clients have involvement with one project more than others - they may not realise that everyone is using the same database.

Integrated Add-on Software

eziTracker Settings

Postcode Anywhere Settings

Text Anywhere Settings

Make Assessment Forms

Assessments is covered in its own chapter: Assessments.

Operational Rules

Client Record Rules

Use People/Organisation ID as Account Code

Setting this to "yes" will carry someone's unique Charitylog ID number into their Accounts Code field on the "Client Details" screen, in order to create invoices for them from the Accounts Module. You may be given accounts codes by your funders, or you may already have them created - but if not, using Charitylog IDs to do so is a neat solution.

If using this option, it will not simply go through the system and fill all boxes in - you will need to go to each record and manually re-save it (using a "Save Details" button or the equivalent). This will create the code.

Prefix for Account Code (If Using Org IDs)

This relates to the above option. If "Use People/Organisation ID as Account Code" is set to "Yes", this prefix will be added to the automatically created accounts codes.

Miscellaneous Rules

Standard Letter setup

This relates to standard letters and emails:

• Sending Emails: Review Emails Before Sending? If set to "Yes", users creating an email from a Details screen (Client Details etc) will be prompted with a final check of the content of the email before sending. IT can be quite useful to have this set to "Yes", as it isn't always easy for users to realise that the system is actually about to send an email on their behalf - often they're expecting a mailto link of some sort.

• Email Footer (Company Information) Legal Text - this text, if entered, will appear at the bottom of system generated emails under a horizontal rule. It does not override the standard footer set up on that letter template, but appears in addition to it - the standard footer will be above the horizontal rule, and the legal text will be below.

Changing Menu Order

Once you have finished working with Operational Rules, you may notice that there is an extra button across the bottom of the "Operational Rules" screen, "Save Details and go to Menu Order" - as shown:

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The screen which follows allows you to change the order and structure of the main Charitylog menu, which all users see down the left hand side of the page. The most common reason to change the standard menu is to make your most frequently used options accessible, and to make using the system easier.

After clicking the "Save Details and go to Menu Order" button, you will be taken to the "Menu Option Structure" screen.

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The columns show the following:

• The first number is a number associated with that menu item
• Option name - the name of the menu item
• Standard Program Section - where to find the menu item in the default menu setup
• Submenu Of Option Ref. Number - if this menu item is within a submenu, the number of that submenu heading will be shown here. The main menu itself is number 0, and any menu item with a 0 in this column is part of the main menu.
• Option Display Order In Section - the "weight" associated with that menu item. Items with the same weight will be ordered alphabetically.
• Option Help Text - text entered here will become available as a pop-up help text box on the menu.

To demonstrate how to use all these, let's walk through the most common change to make to the menu structure; moving the "clients" link out of the "Organisations and People" submenu, and putting it at the top of the main menu.

This is how the menu looks as standard, with "Clients" located in the "Organisations and People" submenu:

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First we need to find the line associated with the "Organisations And People" submenu heading...

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...and also the one associated with the "Clients" menu item:

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Notice that the "Organisations And People" submenu heading is in section 0, which is the main menu, and has the number 262.

The "Clients" link is in section 262 - that is, in the "Organisations and People" submenu.

We want to take the "Clients" link out of the "Organisations and People" submenu and put it at the top of the main menu. So all we need to do is to change the "Submenu Of Option Ref. Number" entry for "Clients" to 0...

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...and if we want it to always appear at the top of the main menu, we should change the "Option Display Order In Section" entry to 1 (giving the item a "weight" of 1, and making it rise to the top of the menu).

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Now scroll to the very bottom of the page and click "Save Menu Order and Continue"...

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...and you should now see that your new menu order has become active, with "Clients" being displayed at the top of the main menu.

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Making a new menu grouping

Another common alteration to the menu is to create a new submenu, to keep the most commonly used menu items together.

To demonstrate this, let's make a new submenu called "Common Options", and put "Clients" and "Record an Anonymous Contact" in it. At the very bottom of the "Menu Option Structures" screen is a button, "Add New Menu Grouping".

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Clicking this button will take you to a screen where all the standard submenus are displayed. You can now specify what the name of your new group is going to be, and whether it's going to belong in the main menu or within another submenu. We are going to head the new submenu "Common Options", and put it within the main menu.

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Once these are filled in, click "Add New Grouping".

You will be taken back to the "Menu Option Structure" screen, where your new grouping will be displayed. You can now move it, or put other menu items in it, as before. Here's the new "Common Options" submenu, with "Clients" and "Record an Anonymous Contact" in it.

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User Settings

Group Access

The Group Access screen allows administrators to control what each User Group has access to throughout the Charitylog system. It is one of the most powerful tools that administrators have in running the system, and is covered in its own document here: Group Access.