HIFIS Improvement Ideas
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A source of income is updated to have an end date in the future. If someone adds a new source of income with a start date also in the future, then the total income amount and accompanying chart updates incorrectly. The total income should only be the current amount that doesn't end for a few more months. However, in 60.5 the Total income shows up as both incomes added together, which is incorrect. See image for an example.
I can't believe I don't already have something on this ideas board about this! Here's the idea, in more detail:
In a perfect world, we have 100% complete housing-related data about all clients at all times. But we do not live in a perfect world, and there are frequently gaps in each client's history. For example: a client books out of shelter on Tuesday and back into shelter on Thursday, and staff may not remember to/get a chance to/prioritize asking them where they were for the one missing night…
When a client reaches the Minimum Age of Consent, the "Inherited Consent" should expire automatically.
In the HIFIS_ServiceTypes table, the list of values is as follows: (NameE, ActiveYN)
Stay Y
Emergency N
Transition N
Non-Shelter N
Goods and Services Y
Storage N
Reservations Y
Turnaways N
Housing Y
Food Bank Y
Other N
Case Management Y
SPDAT Y
Housing Subsidy Y
VAT Y
Group Activities Y
Housing Loss Prevention Y
Diversion Y
However, of these, several do not do anything: Emergency, Transition, Non-Shelter, and Other. All four of these are currently set to "ActiveYN" = "N"
Additionally, Storage and Turnaways are also…
In some cases, staff have added a service to Client A when it should have been attached to Client B. It would be useful to be able to detatch a service from one client and re-assign it to a different client.
To some extent, merging the client files can address this, in the case of duplicates, but that doesn't solve all problems - what if we really do have two different clients with a similar name and I accidentally open a case file for the wrong John Smith? The current required workaround is to d…
Let's re-imagine Case Management. Right now, you can add Sessions, Comments, and Documents to it.
However, a point of ongoing debate is when to add a Service as in Goods & Services, and when to add a Case Session. They have similar but different fields and are stored differently in the database. Here's a radical idea: get rid of Sessions entirely and modify the Services so that they can be added either as part of a Case file or as an independent, non-associated Service. It would also be great i…
Each time I create a new Diversion record and select a Caseworker, a Failed to Save error message appears in the top right corner of the screen. In some cases, the Caseworker name is still saved. In other cases, the Caseworker selection does not save.
My current assessment is that the Diversion module may not be handling custom Reason for Service values correctly.
Test 1 – Used a Standard Lookup Value
I created a Diversion record using a standard Reason for Service lookup option. When I added a Good or Service through the Diversion record, the same Reason for Service value auto-populated into the Good/Service record.
Result: Worked as expected.
Test 2 – Used a Custom Lookup Value
I created a Diversion record using one of our custom Reason for Serv…
My solution has three parts:
Implement an "unknown gap threshold."
Introduce a new table (or alternatively, you could repurpose the "Risk of Homelessness" table) that includes a bunch of date-stamped housing values. This would contain values like "on Thursday, Client Y was Homeless" or "on Saturday, Client Z was Housed." This is a date-stamp value as opposed to a date-range, so it does not have a duration. You're not asking for a start or end date. You're just saying they were or were not homeless…
In Housing Placements, the Search Ended Date field shows the latest of:
Final Follow Up
Final Attempt
Move-In Date
But Follow Ups happen, by definition, after the search has ended, so adding a Follow Up should not affect the Search Ended Date
Communities often want to know what service provider created a record. By default, most if not all HIFIS records have the following columns:
Created By (User ID)
Created Date (Datetime)
Last Updated By (User ID)
Last Updated Date (Datetime)
But they're missing a record of what Service Provider the user was logged into at the time. It would be helpful to include this information for all records.
Veteran Summary is missing Created By, Created Date, Last Updated By, Last Updated Date
When updating a waitlist status, if you accidentally forget to change the status date, the only way to correctly change the date of the status is to change the status again to something else, then change it back with the correct date.
For example, if you were wanting to change the status from "Referred" to "Active", if you set it to "Active" and hit save, then went oops! and updated the date, that status date will remain the same and it will ignore the new date you set.
You would have to set the s…
Pregnancy isn't just a health issue or a contributing factor, it also affects family size and housing requirements. Although there are ways to record that someone is pregnant in HIFIS (i.e. create a Contributing Factor) it should be handled differently, in a more obvious and integrated way, and connected to the Family module. For example, having the ability to specify the due date of the baby and having an easy way to convert a pregnancy into a new family member.
In Case Management, add a new tab called "Assessments." In that tab, you're going to have sub-tabs (like how if you have multiple Custom Tables, you have a Custom Tables tab and then each Custom Table is it's own sub-tab underneath) for SPDAT, VI-SPDAT, and VAT. If more assessments get added to HIFIS, they would be added here too.
From the Assessments tab, you can add an applicable assessment directly, assuming you have rights.
If you add an assessment from the Front Desk or Client Management, hav…
When indicating that a client didn't show for a reservation, you would normally edit the Reservation, change the status from Pending to anything else, and then save that. However, if you do this, it doesn't save the new value.
https://www.loom.com/share/c4fd8e31b9c04d9abfbd1ff98179cb06
In Client Management > Admissions > Reservation tab, the Edit button leads to the Edit Stay screen instead of the Edit Reservation screen.
Workaround: only edit Reservations from the Front Desk
I found an instance of a client that turned Active twice in a row, with no status change in between. When I further investigated this client, I discovered over a dozen reasons why the client should be currently active. I tried manually triggering the client to become active, and nothing happened. Client seems stuck on inactive status.
Outdated Moment.js library (<2.11.2) with Regular Expression Denial of Service vulnerability (CVSSv3: 6.5, CVSSv2: 7.8)
Error message: String or binary data would be truncated in table 'tempdb.dbo.#BF95A496', column 'CustomTableName'. Truncated value: '[Your_Custom_Table_Name_Here]'.
This occurs in ADO #771042 - Client Merge - clean up older data if any Custom Tables have a name longer than 30 characters.
The Turnaways module asks for Client Name and Family Members, then separately asks for the user to manually enter the number of Adults, which defaults to 1, and the number of Children, which defaults to 0. These fields should be automatically calculated based on the Client Name and Family Members fields. Moreover, on the Add Turnaway screen, these fields could even be hidden to reduce any confusion that may exist (these fields should still be present on the Add Anonymous Turnaway screen).
When a client who has an active Service Restriction is added to the Client field on the screen for a service type that the Service Restriction applies to (i.e. Book-In), there is a pop-up screen which uses the browser’s native pop-up function. This is incongruous with other pop-ups in HIFIS such as the Attestation pop-up or the Expired Consent pop-up, and because of its inconsistency some users misunderstand what it is communicating or miss the pop-up entirely.
It is recommended that the Service …
Basically, for each client, you can block or authorize specific users - either you pick block all except user A, user B, or admit all except user A, user B. Then there's also a setting about whether you hide the name if blocked or not. Seems to cover all the bases. Sure, some service providers could get into trouble with this feature, but they also don't have to use it if they want to avoid trouble.
https://www.acreconsulting.ca/blog/108172-using-conflicts-to-track-prohibited-file
See attached sc…
https://outcomesstar.org/
Of particular note:
Home Star https://outcomesstar.org/home-star/
Tenancy Star https://outcomesstar.org/tenancy-star/
A big gap related to families in HIFIS is the ability to keep track of clients that are part of the family but not currently living together, that would theoretically get reunited when the parents get housed. This could include: children in foster care, children temporarily living with grandparents, or a household that's split up due to shelter capacity issues.
This is commonly handled by communities via custom tables, and there isn't a satisfactory way to do it.
A simple partial fix may be, on th…
Imagine a client with, say, a medical alert (e.g. epilepsy) who also is an intravenous drug user. This is a situation that would logically result in multiple watch concerns or behavioural risk factors. However, the flag currently only shows the presence or absence of any such factors, and the tooltip only indicates that the client has factor(s). This means that the second (and third, and fourth) factors have a tendency to get lost, as users don't notice that a new one was added.
When a client has…
If attempting to use the Contributing Factors module to record a higher number of factors (say, more than 1-3), then it can be tedious as they all need to be added one at a time.
Instead, we suggest that the "Add Contributing Factor" screen have the Contributing Factor drop-down menu be multi-select. We do not suggest a change to the data structure, simply have a way to add multiple Contributing Factors easily at the same time. Each record would be independent from each other after they are added…