With the latest updates made to OpenProcess in this release, we have now enabled OpenProcess to fully replace legacy document management functions as well as provide the modern capabilities like progress tracking online.
To refresh and for those reviewing the application post all of the changes made recently, the following updates were made in the Spring release in March:
- All new design with:
- Improved reallocation functionality on Supervise Tasks
- New 'Search processes' feature which enables users to search / view any process by process type, by its status e.g. Complete/In Progress and also by 'account'. Account in this context means either from a OneVu (which will be the most common use case for this) or a back office linked account if the EDMS functionality is in place.
- New Service Area function allowing processes, document types and document templates to be linked to specific council departments.
- New Document Types function to enable 'tags' to be added to documents that are uploaded to processes. Multiple document types can be added to a document E.g. you could add Proof of Earnings, Proof of NINO tags to a payslip that is uploaded as a document.
- Now when creating a process there are two new settings on the Details tab:
- Service Area - this allows the process to be linked to a group
- Searchable by Group - this allows this process to be searched for by certain users in a given group in the Search processes function
- Updated design of Start a process function to enable adhoc process creation
- New filter function in both My Tasks and Supervise Tasks to enable:
- Filtering by allocated user
- Filtering by process type
- Sorting by Process Name, Step Name, Step Start Date, Step Due Date
- * Document Templates functionality that provides the ability to build templates to enable automated creation of outgoing correspondence with:
- Custom headers
- Custom content including the use of placeholders i.e. First Name, Surname, Address etc.
- Custom footers
- Custom styling
- * New Document Indexing capability that enables scanned/imported documents to kick off processes
* These are specific to OpenProcess EDMS users
This area below will now walk through the changes we have done in the update at the end of June:
Category Function
It is now possible to set a category against a process. A category provides a way of adding a marker/status that is useful for internal work management. That is to say the status of a process itself is driven by the stages that comprise it.
Categories can allow the internal officers working on the case to know what they're doing or waiting for or be used as a marker relevant to the process in question. However, these can be whatever you like because the list of options for category are controllable by you.
Categories are set at process level and this ensures each process can have it own list of categories and that these do not end up being never ending lists. To add categories to a process you simply need to select the process from the list in the process set up area.
The following shows a process for a new claim with several categories set against it:
As you can see, some of these show status i.e. Pending - Documents Needed. Some show a marker e.g. Low Risk. Some show a combination i.e High Risk - Pending Evidence. The beauty of categories is that they can be whatever you want and therefore used how you want.
When a category is added is enabled by default, however you have the ability to disable it from view if it is subsequently not needed. You also have the ability to reword it:
Once set up these can be added within a process and this is shown in the top right of the screenshot below:
To update the category it is as simple as clicking on the grey pencil icon to the right of the word Category. When clicked the following slide out bar appears for the category to be selected:
The category is able to be seen in the high level 'My Tasks/Supervise Tasks screens'. Meaning it is possible to see the category of any processes outstanding without needing to open the case to drill down:
And it is also possible to filter processes by specific process categories using the filter function too:
Last action date
This enhancement adds a new column on the My Tasks/Supervise Tasks screens with the purpose of making it easier for officers to see, at a glance, which processes need to be looked at next.
This new column is shown below (second from the right):
This column is updated whenever a note or document is added by the officer/citizen. I.e. on the first case a note was added now meaning that its date of last activity was updated to 2nd of July.
It is also possible to sort the processes by this column using the 'Filter' button:
By default this date will populate with the date the process was started and only update when notes/documents are added.
Search by step
Also designed to aid work management, there is now a new search for a step function, which provides a quick way of finding any steps with a certain name that are outstanding.
Below I've searched for any steps with the name 'Reviewing your Report':
We can see on the left that the 5 processes shown all have the same step type. This is particularly useful where one is in Supervise Tasks and there are a lot of processes o/s and certain ones need to be filtered out.
Account Extract - EDMS Users Only
Within this release we have enabled OpenProcess to be able to pull in files from external applications that are used for the purposes of indexing documents/processes.
E.g. a list of all account numbers and property references from a Council Tax system. Or a list of all cases from a Social Care/Licensing system.