Quick Batch Simple Services, Courtesy of the Children’s Advocacy Centers of Mississippi
Customization is always a key part of implementing Collaborate for a new organization. After all, no two social services agencies are exactly alike.
So when the Children’s Advocacy Centers of Mississippi (CACM) signed on to bring our Collaborate for Networks software to all of the CACs in their state, we knew to count on them to bring some interesting requirements to the table. What we didn’t anticipate was that in the end, Mississippi would inspire us to create a brand new feature that will be a huge time saver for so many advocacy centers - both inside and outside of their state.
How We Created Quick Batch Simple Services, With CACM’s Help
Children’s Advocacy Centers of Mississippi had one major request for their tailored Collaborate implementation: they needed to quickly add several Client Services to a batch process all at once. The folks focused on Family Advocacy brought up the requirement, but it seemed everyone in the network would benefit from using it. They also wanted to be able to copy these Services to other associated persons, all from one compact form.
We call the new feature Quick Batch Simple Services.
Now, Users can simply type a keyword and get suggested Services to add to a batch. With some quick clicks, several Services can then be added to the batch at once. All along the way, the long list of items stays confined to a manageable, scrollable content box.
A traditional drop-down list of Client Services wouldn’t have cut it, due to the sheer size of CACM’s highly descriptive list. Our solution was to break the Services up into categories, make them searchable, and allow rapid additions of multiple Services to the batch. We think the results speak for themselves.
Collaborate Training Was A Great Success
Plied with breakfast pastries, coffee, and a beautiful training room (thanks to Canopy Children’s Services) we were now ready to train 80 Users over 2 days in Jackson, MS.
Training began by untraining them on the way they were forced to handle data in their legacy system, and explaining how the underlying concepts of Collaborate would allow them to not only save time and effort (avoiding unnecessary duplication of effort at every turn), but also actually enable them to report on their efforts - accurately.
The “Bad Way” details how in CACM’s legacy system, Parents, illustrated as P1, required duplicate data entry for every Client, illustrated at C1 and C2, they were related to, and then that data was subsequently “orphaned” while also being counted incorrectly. In contrast, the “Good Way” is an example of how relationships are correctly managed within Collaborate, so not only is it easier and much faster to use - it’s also properly reportable.
Users were brought up to speed on how to use Collaborate to make their day-to-day easier and more efficient, and of course we reviewed the new Quick Batch Simple Services feature.
“The Network Ninja team is always willing to come up with innovative solutions to meet our individual needs. They created customized features that make it easy to document the vast array of support provided to families on a single visit. This will save the CACs time and resources while giving a full picture of the number of Services provided for grant reports.”
Karla Steckler
Children’s Advocacy Centers of Mississippi
Mississippi Uses Collaborate for Networks
From the beginning, Mississippi’s state agency took a proactive approach to making sure Collaborate worked for them. In doing so, they helped us create a new feature that hundreds of other CACs and other agencies will benefit from as well.
All eleven Children’s Advocacy Centers in Mississippi will soon use Collaborate to handle all aspects of their case management needs, and we couldn’t be prouder of our joint effort.
Schedule a demo to see how Collaborate can work for you.
