Welcome to our CLASS News for July 2018. As the end of year reporting deadline is approaching, we want to encourage you to use the full range of reports that are now available through CLASS. Although we are confident that the available reports will meet the requirements of the NPA, we remain mindful that they may not meet the requirements of other funders.
Available Reporting
Service Count by (selected) Funding Category including level 3 categories: Report S05 – Service by Funding Category has been improved and now counts the totalsYou can now produce service count reports, client and service counts by office of outreach and filtering by specific demographic groups including the following reports:
- Client or Service counts by Office or Outreach Location: Many existing, and new, client count reports and service count reports, can now filter by Catchment.
More information in this video
- Filtering by specific demographic groups when report Client counts by NPA priority groups: New report C03 – Clients by Priority Group (Custom) allows you to filter by demographic information as well as date range and catchment.
More information available in this video
Detailed information available here
Although these new reports open a whole new range of reporting, there are still some important limitations you should be aware of including:
- Many demographic filters are available for client counts, but not for service counts.
- Some custom fields are able to be included in list searches (see below) but are not yet available in reports
Enhanced Geolocation
The CLASS team is currently testing and working closely with the developers to finalise the enhanced geolocation module.
Once this is available, centres will be able to track and report on client and service delivery using factors such as postcode, electoral divisions (from Commonwealth to local government), ABS statistical areas (e.g SA1s & SA2s etc), and remoteness.
Preparation
We are hoping this module will be available in the last week in July so would encourage you to not run any reports that might be benefit from these updates until then. We will keep you updated about when it will be available.
The first step is to run a process to tag services with geolocation information so that they are then able to be reported on. All services since CLASS was introduced will be tagged as part of this process.
The tagging process will be run shortly and it’s important that any active clients have correct current addresses so that services are tagged correctly. Please ensure that your records are current.
Using Custom Fields
We understand that every centre has different reporting requirements and many use custom fields. It is now possible for CLASS Administrators to include most custom fields in list searches. Please note that this won’t work for every custom field, but does help with most.
The following steps show how to find or add your custom field into a column on your Client or Service Search
1. Determine if your custom field is located within the Client information or the Service information.
2. First check to see if the field is already available but hidden in Search pages. Go to the CLASS Search Service or Search Client Page, to locate service related or client related custom fields respectively.
3. Click on Customise, then Customise Columns, in the top right hand corner of the listview. A Column chooser popup will appear in the bottom right corner of your page. Search through the Column chooser list to see if your Custom field is there, if it is, drag and drop the field box into your header row of your search between the columns you wish to see it. (Similarly, you can hide columns you don’t use by dragging them back you your Column chooser.) If your custom field is not in the Column chooser box, continue with the steps below
4. If your custom field is located on a Client page, to open any Client Front Page. If a Service custom field open any Service front page. Click on Customise in the top right hand corner, then Customise View.
5. Select the Custom Fields tab.
6. Locate the custom field name you want to be reporting on. Depending on how many custom fields your centre has, there may be multiple pages to work through to find your custom field. Make certain it is the field title you are selecting, not a similarly named filed option. Click the title.
7. On the right hand side in the Box called ‘Additional Information’ there is a tick box called ‘Show in List View’. Tick this box. In the top right corner of the box click ‘Save and Close’
8. This field is now able to have its own column in Search Clients or Search Services. Use the customise columns option in Search Clients or Search services to add this column in. If the option doesn’t appear in the column selector list you may need to log out and log back in, or clear your cache.
9. Drag this column into your search page and create a search.
While it is possible to then export the results to Excel or similar, please be very mindful handling confidential legal information outside of CLASS. Only save or transport such data using the highest possible security standards. Failure to do so could place users in breach of their legal practice obligations.
Please contact the Help Desk if you need further help with any of the above steps.
Some Reporting Not Yet Available
We know that some centres need to report on things such as: Client languages, Disability and many Custom Fields, and are still not able to do so.
The CLASS team have been working hard with the developers to bring you this reporting functionality before the end of July. Over the last 2 months we have tested 2 versions of the Build Your Own Report but unfortunately it is not in good enough shape to deliver to you in time for the end of July. We know this is disappointing. The good news is that they are continually improving and we are hoping will be available by end of September.
Additional Training Available
As always, we host regular online training sessions for all CLASS users.
For the next few weeks, we are providing additional Reporting Training sessions to assist during the end of financial year reporting period.
As there is a lot of new reporting functionality (but known limitations), we are strongly encouraging all Centres to register for the additional Reporting Training to make sure that CLASS will meet all your reporting needs.
This training is designed to assist you to run all the reports that you need for the end of the financial year.
We ask that you do this training before calling the Help Desk for any questions about reporting.
Click here for easy registration to the training sessions. If there is not a session available at a time that suits you, please contact the Help Desk.
New Training Platform
The CLASS team will also be trialling a new webinar and conferencing platform called Redback to improve user experience during July and August.
All training sessions as listed on our calendar have now been added to the new platform and future WebEx training sessions have been disabled.
Please follow the instructions here to register for future training sessions. Please note that unlike Webex, there is no application to download; you will just use your web browser.
Tip: Using Services for the Community – Projects and Project Services
CLASS Helpdesk has had a number of enquiries about using the Community module and under-reporting of Community Project Services.
These Services for the Community must be created as Project Services and grouped under Projects in the Community module. Projects can be thought of as the theme, and Project Services as an activity, event, publication or meeting that has been produced for the purpose of the project.
Just as multiple services can be attached to a client, multiple Project Services can be created under a Project. Service types include, CLE Activities; CLE Resources; Stakeholder Engagement; Community Education; and Law and Legal Services Reform. It is these services that will be counted on the S11 and N3.2 reports.
However, note that S11 and N3.2 do not report on Projects, only the Project Services within a Project. So, unless a Project Service is created within a given Project, the data entered in the Project will not be counted for reporting purposes.
An example of correct data entry might be:
1. Project: Family Violence Awareness.
a. Project Service: Developing an information brochure (CLE Resources).
b. Project Service: Handing out brochure during a community event (CLE Activities).
For more information and guidance, register for the online training session here and check out our Community manual here
Additional Support
We continue to work closely with State Program Managers, Commonwealth AGD and PMC to ensure they are up to date.We also understand that different centres report to other funding bodies as well. Please contact the Help Desk with the details if you want CLCs Australia to contact a particular funder on your behalf.
This table here that tells you what the CLSIS report is now called in CLASS.
We’ve also put together this Summary Advice with some background information about CLASS Data and Reports.
We again provide a letter for you to give to a non-NPA funder if there is a specific report that is still not available in CLASS. You can view / download the letter here. If you require any changes to this letter, please contact Fran.Bowron@naclc.org.au
If there is any other way that CLCs Australia can support you while you do not have access to the full range of reporting, please let us know. We will keep you updated on the progress and timeline as soon as further information is available.
Need Help?
Call Helpdesk: 1300 484 498
Email Helpdesk: naclc@classhelp.org.au
(As always please include your name, centre, state and contact details, so we can get back to you.)
