Recording Contacts (Administrator guide)
Contents
Recording Contacts
Recording contacts is the heart of the Charitylog system. When users record contacts, two things are happening;
- Users get a way to log a "case history" and assign work to themselves or others, now or at a later date
- These contacts, and associated information, are recorded for producing reports.
This double-sided approach is key to the implementation of your Charitylog system, and is the reason that Charitylog is intended to be used by everyone in the office, every day - including volunteers, handypeople, and so on! The more people there are making use of the office functionality, the more information is going in for reporting. It is very difficult to have good reporting if there is no benefit in it for the end users. If you were to ask a whole organisation to start logging everything they do, they would rightly complain that it would be far too much work! Charitylog allows the process of logging data to be entirely linked with the process of day-to-day work, so the users of the system benefit by using it.
Recording Contacts is done using the "Record A Contact" screen, shown here. This shows a relatively normal Record a Contact screen, as there are various different options which can be turned on or off, depending on the needs of the organisation and/or the Project. In the detailed explanations later in this guide, the Record a Contact screen will be shown with every possible option switched on.
How to use the Record a Contact screen is dealt with in the Recording Contacts section of the user manual.
Section 1: What has been done
This section is for the user to enter what has been done. Once saved, this information will be stored in the system, and can be viewed from the History, Summary and Project tabs of the Client Details screen. It will also be saved for reporting.
Date and time
Here the user can enter the date and time that the action was done. The Charitylog system does not prevent you inputting a date in the past or the future, so it is perfectly possible to "write up" a series of visits from a week, for example. However, it is always best if users fill in the actions at the time they are done, or immediately afterwards - this generally results in better data and less wasted paper.
Dates and times are entered in Standard Charitylog date and time formats.
Referred by
Here the user can enter a Referrer. They need to pick from a list of Referrers which is already on the system, set up by the administrators. When you have a brand new Charitylog system, this list will have been set up for you according to your Pre-Implementation Spreadsheets. If you want to change or add to this list, see this section: Referrers - administrator guide.
There are two ways of entering data in this field; start typing, and after three letters the system will give a drop-down list of matching Referrers; or click the button to the right of the field (shown as a group of yellow people). This will show a pop-up window with all Referrers in, which the user can pick from. The user can also add to this list using a link which will be shown in the pop-up window. Generally, we try and discourage users from adding entries to the list of referrers without checking with administrators first.
Represented By
This text box allows the user to enter data if the client in question is being represented by someone else. A common occurrence is that an elderly person may be represented by a family member. Using this text box allows the user to record details of the actual client in question and also the fact that they were represented by someone else. This box is a plain text box and has no associated preset list, but the option to use it is switched on and off in Operational Rules.
Contact Method
Here the user can record the contact method used. This list is driven by a drop-down list that you can edit if you need to add more entries or re-order the list: Communication Methods.
Contact Type
Here the user can add a contact type, if you are using them. Contact types are an extra way to categorise activity. The list is driven by a drop-down lists that you can edit or add to: Contact Types. You will also need to turn on the ability to enter Contact Types for the projects you want them to be available to: Contact Types (project setting).
Where Did Client Hear About Us?
Here the user can record where the client first heard about the services that the organisation provides. This is driven by a list which you can set up and add to: Setting up referral sources, and the ability to enter these reasons needs to be turned on for each project you want to use them with: Referral Sources.
Details of contact
This text box is for the user to record what has actually happened. This is a plain text box so it cannot be reported on/counted, which is why other aspects of the contact like the contact method and the source of the referral are recorded separately. The user can use this text box to record general information, which will form part of the "case history" for the client which is stored on the Charitylog system. The entry in this text box will also be shown to whoever does the next action, if there is one, so it is good to bear this in mind when filling the box in.
Done By
Here the user can select who the action was done by. Most of the time, this will be the user that is using this page, so the drop-down list defaults to that person. This drop-down list is driven by the list of users on your system.
Project Subcategory
Here the user can enter a subcategory for this referral. Project subcategories are used to classify activity across an organisation, and also across Projects. For more information, see this page: Project Subcategories. The ability to enter project subcategories is set on the "System Access" tab of the User Details screen: click here for more details. This setting is left as "No" by default, so if you want to make use of Project Subcategories you will need to change it to "Yes" for all the relevant users.
Referral Reasons
Here the user can enter a Referral Reason - another way to categorise activity. To see how to manage the list click here; to see how to turn it on for a particular Project click here.
Section 2: What needs to be done
This section is for recording what needs to be done as a result of the action/activity that has happened. Whether the user enters anything in this section will decide whether an outstanding action is created for themselves or another user, to appear on their Action List, or not. If nothing is entered in section 2, the system assumes that there is no more action to be done on this referral, and will close it accordingly.
Further Action Needed
Here the user can enter details of the action which needs to be done. This is a text box so cannot be counted/reported on, but it will be shown to the person carrying out the outstanding action. This might be the person logging the current action, or it might be someone else, but either way some description will be necessary. The text entered in this box will also be stored on the Client Details screen and will form part of the "case history" of the client.
Priority Rating
If the user wants the outstanding action to be flagged as high priority, this can be set here. If your organisation is going to use priority ratings, it will be useful to decide beforehand what constitutes "high priority".
Response Method
Here the user can set what the response method needs to be. The list of available response methods is set up here.
When By?
Here the user can specify when the outstanding action needs to be done by - date and time. Date entry is compulsory but time entry is optional. The time and date are entered using Standard Charitylog date and time formats.
Who By?
The person the outstanding action is to be done by. This list is the list of users on your Charitylog system.
Classification Codes button
Here the user can add classification codes, if you are using them. You can set up your own classification codes system, if required:
- For details of how to set up codes, click here.
- To allow code entry for a project, and to force code entry if required, click here.
Section 3: Options
This section allows the user to enter extra information which relates to the referral, and also to retrieve information which the client might need. Clicking any of these links will open a popup window.
Record time & Travel
Here the user can record staff time and travel spent in order to carry out the contact. They can add the time spent on the contact, the time spent travelling, and the mileage and transport method if appropriate. Filling these in can be made compulsory, but this should only be done if you really need to report on this. (For example, if using the Support Worker module, this will handle mileage separately.)
To see how to make time/travel entry compulsory, click here.
Signposting and External Referrals
If the user signposts the client to another organisation, as part of the contact, they can record this here. To record this, the organisation being referred to needs to be set up as an Organisation on your Charitylog system. The user can click the yellow button and pick from the resulting list. If they select to follow up this referral, by changing the "Follow Up?" drop-down to "Yes", this will create an outstanding action for the specified date, as well as any outstanding action set up in the bottom half of the "Record a Contact" screen.
Using Signposting and External Referrals is dealt with in the User Manual here: Signposting and External Referrals.
Information Links to Organisations
Information Links is similar to External Referrals but gives the user extra functionality to find the right organisation to signpost to. Basically, "Signposting and External Referrals" is to be used when the user already knows where to signpost the client; "Information Links to Organisations" allows the user to filter the organisations on the system by category in order to find the right one. They can also use it to create letters to the organisations on behalf of the client.
How to use Information Links is dealt with in this section of the User Manual: Information Links.
For Information Links to work properly, Organisations on your system need to be categorised appropriately first. See this section of the Administrator Manual for details: Information Links.
Provide Publications
If the user has provided the client with a standard publication that your organisation gives out, they can record what has been given out here. For users to log these publications, the publications need to be set up on the system first. Click here to see details of how to do this.
Conflict of Interest
If the subject of the activity has any conflict of interest, this can be recorded here.
For this option to be available to users it needs to be turned on in Project Set Up.
Consent Information
Here, the user can take consent from the client to make contact with third parties on their behalf, and/or to include their information in an audit. This section is not for the general recording of consent obtained to store and use their data in general - you should have an organisation-wide process for this and there is a field on the "Client Details" screen for recording that consent has been obtained. Rather, this section is for specific consent relating to this referral.
For this option to be available to users it needs to be turned on in Project Set Up.
Assign Volunteer/Carer/Staff
The user can use this option to assign a volunteer to the client, or sometimes a staff member or a carer. This is for Charitylog's Volunteers functionality, and will create a job card detailing the work that needs doing. For administrator setup of the Volunteers module please see the following page: Volunteers (Administrator Guide).
Section 4: Choosing where to go next
This section of the page allows the user to decide what they want to do next, after this contact is saved. See this page in the End User Manual for details.
Templates
As well as simply recording contacts using the "Record a Contact" screen, Charitylog allows you to use templates to fill in information on the "Record a Contact" screen automatically, so users don't have to spend so long doing data entry. You can also take templates a step further and use multi-status templates, which allow your users to pick a progress stage from a drop-down list; the selected status then brings in entries to text boxes, date fields etc.
Setting up a single-stage referral template
Open the Cog menu, then the Projects and Referrals submenu, and click the "Referral templates" link.
This will show you the existing templates which are set up on your system, if there are any. Click the "Enter New Templates" button to create a new one.
From this screen you can enter data for the template;
- Name
- Description (shown on the list of templates)
- Project
- Project subcategory
- Whether or not you want the template to be available on the "Record a Contact" screen
- Whether to always force a Status to be entered. For simple templates, leave this set to "no". (more on Statuses later)
- Whether the template is active.
The bottom half of the page then allows you to enter the information that will carry over to the "Record a Contact" screen. Have a look at the image below;
This template will now carry the following information into the "Record a Contact" screen when used:
- The client came into the office for information
- The contact was a self referral
- The contact method was an office visit
- The client needs calling back within 7 days by whoever used the template to enter the information
Saving the template with the name "Office enquiry" for the Information and Advice project will mean that the template is displayed on the project selection page when recording a contact.
The resulting "Record a Contact" screen would look like this:
Note that the information the template enters on the "Record a Contact" screen is still fully editable - the text is just filled in to make data entry easier, so there is nothing wrong with setting up a template with "best guesses" in. Single stage templates like this are ideal for front desk staff, who will have a lot of contacts with clients, and don't want to fill in the "Record a Contact" screen from scratch every time. You might want to set up a series of templates for the desk staff, with the most common scenarios - for example;
- Client came in for information, information was given, no further action needed.
- Client telephoned for information, information was given, no further action needed.
- Anonymous client came in and took away a leaflet
...and so on.
Remember that these templates are contacts like any other, and as such they must be logged against a Project, so the templates must be set up under the relevant Projects; you cannot move a referral from one project to another once it has begun. Consider the previous scenario where the front desk staff are using templates to speed up data entry. If they are just giving out information, it would be reasonable to log the activity in the Information and Advice Project. However, perhaps the front desk staff also make appointments for other projects to have meetings with clients - befriending, benefits advice, and so on. In that case, one template will be needed in each Project for the front desk staff to use.
Multi-Status Templates
It may be that you want to set up several statuses within a template. This would be used to mirror a chain of actions which are always broadly similar. The two most common scenario is an eligibility process for clients before they access a service. Let's look at a befriending service, and set up a template to make the recording of the initial contacts quicker.
The process that clients go through might go something like this:
To set up the statuses within a template you may like to consider who usually does the work and how long there should be between each action. Here's the flow chart again with these added;
With this information you can now set up the template. Click the "Referral Templates" menu item again (in Administration > Projects and Referral Entries).
Click the "Enter New Templates" button to create a new template. This time, you will need to give the template a name, but leave the bottom half of this screen blank; the text to be added to the "Record a Contact" screen will be added by individual statuses. Note that the "Always force a Status to be entered" option is now set to "Yes".
Once you have entered the name of your template and the Project, click the "Save and Edit Progress Statuses" button.
You have the option here to copy in a set of Statuses from another template, but for a new set of Statuses click the "Enter New Progress Status" button.
You can now enter details of the Status.
- The top section is for the Status name (we suggest numbering your Statuses), a description of the Status, display order, and whether this status is active.
- The middle section will be carried into "what has been done" on the Record a Contact screen.
- The lower section will be carried into "what needs to be done" on the Record a Contact screen.
You can see that the outstanding action is set up to be carried out by Kiersten Denmann, the Befriending Service Manager.
The next two Statuses will be set up in the same way; Status 2 for after the callback has been completed, and Status 3 for after the first befriending appointment has been done.
Status 3 does not need outstanding actions, as the next action to be taken will vary according to the needs of the client. For example, the user might set up a reminder to call the client and befriender again in three months to check how things are going. Alternatively, an outstanding action may not be needed at all.
Once both these Statuses are saved, you will be returned to the Statuses page with your completed Statuses, as shown.
The "everything else" Status
Because you have set the "Always force a Status to be entered" preference to "Yes" - which is a good idea for reporting integrity - there will probably be a point where users have used all of these Statuses and simply want to carry on recording contacts for the referral in the usual way. If you leave the Template as shown, users will find that they still need to keep using the existing Statuses and then deleting the information, which will be irritating and will mean that the reports are confusing. Therefore you should finish by creating an "ongoing work" Status which can cater for everything that happens after the usual chain of actions is done.
Using Multi-Status Templates
Now you can see what these Statuses look like when used for recording contacts.
When recording a contact with a client, Colin (front desk staff) can use the template when picking the Project;
This will display the Record a Contact screen as shown, but with an extra box where the user can pick a Status.
(If the user tries to continue without selecting a Status, an error message will be displayed as shown.)
Once the user picks a Status, the Record a Contact screen will carry in the information from the Status, as shown.
The user will still need to fill in a Referrer for this referral on first contact. Alternatively, you can set a Referrer to be carried in every time the Template is used, but be careful; sometimes this will be OK, but sometimes it is not appropriate...
- For a receptionist using a template to record contacts with people who come into the office, these will almost always be self referrals, so this is safe to be set on the Template.
- For referrals to a project that might come from several different places (doctor, social services, family member etc), it would not be a good idea to set the Referrer as part of the template; doing so will probably lead to misreporting, because users will forget to change the drop-down box for Referrer.
The action created by using this Status will now appear on Kiersten Denmann (the Befriending Service Manager)'s Action List...
...and by using the "Record Contact" button when she has completed the work, she will be taken to the Record a Contact screen where she can select the next Status which will bring in the appropriate entries.
Remember that the entries brought in by the Status are still editable. Users can change or add to them as needed.
Also remember that using Templates and Statuses does not override other Charitylog functionality. You can still use volunteer assignments, information links and so on, as well as the information brought in by the Status. In the above example, Kiersten may well assign a volunteer as well as using Status 2.
If this happens, the system will automatically insert some text into the box for "Details of Contact", which is why you do not need to place text for this in the Status itself.
Progress Interval Reports
Using Statuses has an extra benefit over the normal use of Record a Contact. There is a special report you can run to see how quickly people moved from one Status to the next. This is very useful for assessing whether your services are meeting targets (for example, you could have a target of responding to all befriending enquiries within three days, and use the Progress Interval Report to show whether this is happening. You can also run this report filtered by staff member.
Click on the "Reports" submenu, then the "Referral Reports" submenu, then the "Progress Interval Reports" menu item.
You can now select a date range and narrow the report by Project, and/or by Project Subcategory.
You can also choose -
- Progress Template - choose which template you want to run reports on
- Exclude Clients Who Have Been Terminated? - choose whether or not to include those clients whose involvement with the relevant Project has been terminated
- Print or Export Data? - choose whether to display the results on screen (print) or download an Excel document to your computer (export)
Once you have selected the options you require, click the "Continue to Intervals Selection" button.
You now have four tabs where you can choose what data you would like to be added to the report. You can choose data from more than one tab at once.
Interval Calculations
This tab allows you to choose to report on the time taken for clients to move from one stage to the next. You can select the stages in question. You can also select several stages in either the "from" or "to" sections, so that if you wish you can report on -
- Length of time taken for clients to move from stage 1 to stage 3 - OR
- Length of time taken for clients to move from either stage 1 or stage 2 to either stage 3 or stage 4
And so on. If you tick more that one box in this fashion, you will also need to select whether you want the system to use the earlier or the later of the boxes ticked.
The "from" section includes the initial referral, so if a client is referred but has to wait a while before they are moved onto a template, this can be tracked too.
Clients Currently On A Stage
This tab allows you to choose to show which clients are on a particular stage at the end of the time period specified.
Clients Who Have Been On A Stage
This tab allows you to choose to show clients who have been on this stage during the date range entered, even though they may not be on it now.
Raw Data
Choose to show the raw data behind the results.
Once you have ticked all the relevant boxes, and clicked "Print Report", the report will show the results. The example below only has one person in it - reports from live systems are likely to be much bigger.
This concludes the Recording Contacts section.
Click to go back to the Administrator Manual.
Click to go to the next section, Office Functionality.
