00:00:00 Introduction and agenda

Thanks so much, Jane. We're going to look at a couple of things today. First, to introduce the Template Library, it is a great resource on our website for many use cases, including case management. We will look and make sure that all of you are able to get started using these templates. Finally, we have a couple of different case management templates, so we will give you some ideas about choosing which one to use. Then, we will look at permission schemes and how to customize your database once you've chosen a template. If you decide on ActivityInfo, we will discuss how you choose between services, software, and the Self-managed Server.

First thing though, I'm going to try and launch a poll here to see if this works. I'm just curious about those who are in the audience. We had a couple of hundred people sign up for this webinar, so I'm curious to know what your level of experience with ActivityInfo is. Are you using it right now for case management or for something else?

I see some answers coming in. About half of you have voted. It looks like most of you are using ActivityInfo but maybe not for case management yet, or you're considering it. That's great, so I hope that this will give you some more information. About half of you, 42 percent, are using ActivityInfo not for case management, and another 20 percent are actively using ActivityInfo for case management. For those folks, I'm really curious to hear whether the structure of your database looks like what I'm presenting today or if you have a different setup. I hope you'll share that with us at the end if you do.

00:03:00 The template library

First of all, let's introduce the Template Library. As most of you know, whether you are considering ActivityInfo or already using it, ActivityInfo is a very flexible relational database. We've designed it to meet a wide range of use cases in humanitarian and development programs. Case management is only one of the things that it can do, but these templates are really useful in giving you a starting point so you can see how ActivityInfo can be configured for a specific use case.

You can find this under the Support section on our website and then under Templates. You can see, for example, the first entry is the Case Management Database for Protection, Child Protection, and GBV cases. This is based on one of our users who is actually using ActivityInfo for case management. We took how they set up ActivityInfo and wrapped that up in a template that's easy for others to get started with.

If you click through one of those templates, you'll find the green button "Get started with this template." This is going to allow you to create a copy of the template to create your own database so that you have the freedom to play around with it and make changes to it in your own space. If you don't have an ActivityInfo account, it will prompt you to create one. If you don't have a subscription, this will give you a 30-day evaluation account. If you need more time, just let us know; we're happy to extend it.

00:05:15 Protection case management template

Let's turn to case management. We have three templates that are available right now. The first one, as I mentioned, is for protection. This is for dealing with serious incidents, human rights abuses, child protection, and GBV—those kinds of incidents that need to be addressed among a population of concern and dealt with internally or referred to external support.

Let's switch to my browser. We're going to go to the ActivityInfo website, to Templates, and start with this Case Management Template for Protection and Child Protection. Click on "Try this template" and then we're going to get started. From here, you can enter a database name, which is just maybe the name of your organization or the name of the project you are working on, and then click on "Add database from template."

This is a fairly basic setup. We have one folder for reference data, so only the administrators will be able to see this folder. This has two different folders. It has one on position codes. This will come back to permissions, but the way that this template is based is that the permissions are broken down geographically. You have different geographic areas and then you have a group of caseworkers who work in those areas, and only those caseworkers can see the files in that area.

I'm going to go right ahead and add some position codes here. For example, a North region. I just have to add supervisors first. Let's go to supervisors and add Alex and Jane. Now in positions, I can add these different regions. These might be based on geography, but it could also be thematic areas or specific population groups. We'll just add a Northern area. Let's say that I'm supervising the Northern area. I have a Southern area and Jane is supervising the Southern area. Let's add one more region, the Eastern region, and Jane is supervising that as well.

Armed with that, we can then look at our protection case form here. This is the tracker for all of the different cases. You can enter data on the web. If you're working with a laptop, you can also synchronize this to a tablet or a mobile phone and take that directly into the field with you. Let's assign this case first to North. The protection code is going to be a serial number that's generated for that case. The idea is to have a number that your team can refer to without giving away any personal data.

You can choose a caseworker if you want to assign this to individual caseworkers. Now we have a subform here for confidential bio data. This allows us to enter some confidential information here so that maybe we can further limit who has access to this form. It might be things like contact numbers, personal documents, passports, and those kinds of things which maybe you don't want to give access to everybody.

You see that there are different subforms for different kinds of incidents. A single individual might have multiple types of incidents. The details can be added here. For example, under General Protection, we can register an incident. The type of incident would be destruction of personal property. There is another form here for referrals. If we need to add some actions to be taken, maybe we need a follow-up on general protection and we need to refer this individual to a counseling appointment to make sure that they get some psychosocial support.

If I go to Database Settings and then User Management, I can go ahead and add a user. Depending on the role that I select for her, I may have to also select the position code. For example, you could choose North or East here so that that caseworker can only see the cases that are in their region.

00:10:45 Intensive multi-team case management template

We also added a template recently on Intensive Case Management. This is a template for when you're in an organization where you're providing multiple services to the same group of people on a long-term basis. This can be a great way to make sure that each team is able to work independently and keep information compartmentalized so that you don't overshare information on your clients, but that you do keep things nicely referenced together.

I have created that here in my sandbox account under Intensive Case Management. In this case, we have one central registry for cases. I'm going to register a new person here. Let's say I was born in the 2000s. I'm going to choose my date of registration as today, put in my phone number, and save this basic information. This form serves as a central registry for everybody involved in your program.

The next step in your workflow might be an assessment where you can provide a detailed assessment of the individual and their needs. Here I have some really simple fields. Let's say we did the assessment today. Alex needs a new apartment; his has been destroyed and he needs help managing his children's education.

Then you may have a situation where you have different teams that are providing different services to this group of people. For example, here I set up a goods distribution. When that team is doing it, they can link it to the case number. In this case, we just have one. They choose the date of the service provision, the kind of material that was provided—maybe it was a school kit or a food package—and any notes on this. This gives that team an overview of the information while still keeping it linked to the individual case.

Another team might be managing or tracking educational enrollment. For example, if I want to track that Alex needs to get back into the formal school system, you can even record details about the classes that they're attending. You might also have medical care where you're tracking appointments. Again, this is linked to the case number so that makes it easy to keep all of this information together, especially for reporting later on.

When I go to invite users this time, I'm going to add Jane to this database and I'm going to assign her as a caseworker, but I'm going to choose which form she has access to. For example, if there is some sensitive information that you want to keep compartmentalized by team, then you may choose to only give her access to the Case and the Goods Distribution forms. They can see the basic information about the person or family but they won't have access to records on medical care or educational enrollment.

00:14:20 Blank case management template

I just want to mention the third option here is to simply click on "Add database" and choose the Case Management Database. This is a blank case management database where it has the permissions pre-configured for case management, but the form is really quite empty. It just has the case number and the caseworker.

If I go here to User Management, I can add Jane as a supervisor and then maybe somebody else as a caseworker. Then you can choose their supervisor. That way Jane will have access to Tess's cases, but Tess will only have access to theirs. If I add a new case, I can assign that to Jane or to Tess, and both Jane and Tess will be able to see these cases.

00:15:30 Permission schemes

Just briefly, I want to mention that there are really many different kinds of permission schemes that we see. ActivityInfo is very flexible, so you can set it up for just about any logic or rules that you need. Here are three of the most common permission schemes that we see.

The first is Caseworkers and Supervisors. In this example, you would assign an individual case to an individual caseworker, and then only that caseworker and their supervisor are allowed to see it. I do have one question here from Derek: "Can you transfer cases from one user to another in the database?" Yes, an administrator or supervisor can edit the record and change the assigned caseworker from Tess to Jane. That works quite well. One downside of assigning caseworkers directly to a case is that if that caseworker leaves and they're replaced, then you will need to reassign each of their cases to somebody else. If you have hundreds of cases, that might not be something that you want to do.

One of the other approaches we see is the Area-based approach, where you might split up a population of concern into different geographic areas between field offices, countries, or provinces. Then, you only allow the individuals to see the cases in their area. If I'm assigned to the Northern area, then I only get to see cases in the North. That makes it a little bit easier to manage if you have a high turnover in your caseworker staff; you can just assign somebody new to the area and they'll be able to get started with all the cases that are running there.

Finally, as exemplified in the intensive case management template, you have the Team-based approach. You might have different people providing different services to the same group of people, and here you can link all of those different efforts to the central case registry while still keeping them separate and keeping those permissions separate.

00:18:00 Customizing the database

The next thing that I want to look at is customizing your database. As I mentioned in the beginning, ActivityInfo is very flexible. Let's take a look at how we can get started with customizing some of these templates.

Let me go back to this Case Management Database and these protection cases. In the upper right-hand corner, you have the "Form settings" button. If you have the rights—so if you've created this database, you are the owner—you're allowed to make those changes. That opens up the Form Designer. In the Form Designer, you can make as many changes as you need to in order to meet your needs.

For example, here I have a question about "Registered with the organization in which country." You can change these options. Maybe you're working not in the Middle East but around the Horn of Africa, or maybe this question is not relevant for you at all; you can just go ahead and delete that question. You can add new fields. So if there are other pieces of information that are important to you, for example, maybe you want to track their education level. Let's add a single selection here for education and we'll add options for "No schooling," "Some primary schooling," "Completed primary," "Secondary or above."

We can also set relevance rules and calculated fields. If you're used to working with mobile data collection tools, you have all of those similar features, like being able to calculate the age from the birth date or setting relevance rules. For example, "Does the refugee presently have a parent or guardian?" You can show this field only if the age category is "Minor."

If we're looking at the intensive case management, here we're talking about individuals, but you can imagine case management in a broader context. You could be working with farmers to help improve their yields. You might be providing training, distribution, or capital. You can just as easily customize this to not be a case but a "Farm" and have additional information about that farm and what kind of crops they grow. You can add additional forms here for different services. Let's say that we want to track the themes of training. It might be on soil management or pest control. You can add a date field for the date of the training and so on. You can add as much information as needed.

00:21:15 ActivityInfo self-managed server

The last topic that I want to cover, and then I'm going to open it up to questions, is something that's very relevant if you're collecting personal information. We want to make sure that when we collect personal information, especially if it's about something as sensitive as case management, gender-based violence, or medical histories, that it is protected.

One of the big advantages of ActivityInfo is that we provide a complete service. ActivityInfo is mostly offered as Software as a Service (SaaS). That means the vendor—that's us—we're responsible for all aspects of operating the software. We ensure that the servers are secured, that the software is developed with information security in place, and that our networks are secure. We take that out of your hands and the data is stored on computers that we manage.

However, in some organizations, you might have a red line about where you store this kind of sensitive data. You might be in an organization where you're not allowed to trust third parties with this kind of data. That's fine. It's important to have a team in place on your side to manage the security of the servers and the networks. If you have that team in place and those kinds of resources to manage your own software, we also offer a Self-managed version of ActivityInfo that you can download and install on your own machines so that the data never leaves servers that are under your control.

I encourage you to think about it very carefully because it's a big responsibility to take on that management. You can find this on our website under Documentation. All the way down at the bottom, we have information on the Self-managed Server. You can find the administrator's guide. We have really easy packages or installers for Linux, Windows Server, and a Docker container.

00:23:45 Q&A session

I see we have a couple of questions already. I see one from Samir. It seems like quite a detailed one. Samir, why don't you tell us about your question?

Samir: We created the form but we didn't choose the case management template. We tried to do our own case management form. We assigned some accounts as caseworkers and some as supervisors. We added three or four records from my own account. I want to refer these cases to any one of my colleagues. We were trying to do it as a drop-down list, but it was only showing my own name. The second issue is that everyone could see these records, but it should be confidential and only the one who was referred to should see it.

Alex: When you create a database from the Case Management Database, that template comes with these caseworker and supervisor roles. You can see here on the right that they have a "Supervisor" parameter, which means that you choose the supervisor that they're linked to. The other thing here is that you have these extra options, for example: "View where case is assigned to them," "Add records where case is assigned to them," and "Edit records for cases assigned to them."

When you have your case, the next important thing to do is to add a User Field. This will allow you to select a user from the database. That's what the permission rules use to control visibility. For example, if I add a case here for Segun, then only Segun will be able to see this record. It sounds like you maybe have started with a different template that has roles configured slightly differently, but we can set that up for you or copy those roles over to your existing database.

00:26:30 Conclusion

If there are no other questions, we have one more training webinar scheduled for this month. Next week we have a training on Formulas, so please bring your questions for formulas. We'll go over using calculated fields, the ActivityInfo formula language, data validation formulas, reports, and more. Probably towards the beginning of April, we'll announce the next set of webinars for quarter two.

Everybody have a great afternoon and I hope to see you at the next webinar. Bye bye.