Referral Status

Referral Status

What is the ‘Referral Status’ Feature?

The ‘Referral Status’ feature allows you to collect data about each referral made during your interactions in contact records and can be used with or without the ‘Needs Status’. This feature is intended to allow you to collect data related to “closed loop referrals”, which can be thought of as the outcome if a help seeker contacted or received services.
Your organization may find this feature useful if you:
  1. Complete warm transfers for help seekers to homeless shelters in your community and need to track if each homeless shelter answers the phone when you try completing the warm transfer
  2. Provide referrals to resources and follow-up with help seekers afterwards to see if they connected with the referrals and received services
  3. Want to track outcomes of referrals in any way

How to Enable the ‘Referral Status’ Feature

Admin level users at your organization can enable the 'Referral Status' feature in one or more Contact Record Versions in your system by completing the steps below. When enabling this feature, consider the following notes:
  1. Using the ‘Contact Records’ drop-down list in the instructions below, the statuses are customizable for each individual contact form or the statuses can be shared among all the contact forms in that system
  2. The feature is only supported in Report Version 5; if your organization is still using Report Version 4, please have a designated support contact from your organization submit a case to the iCarol Support Team to evaluate if your contact records can be upgraded
  3. Once enabled, the ‘Referral Status’ drop-down list will appear (1) when searching for referrals in a contact record and you view the ‘Details’ of a resource, and (2) on the Resources tab on the contact record after a referral is made.
  4. In addition to the two areas above, the ‘Referral Status’ drop-down list can also be set to appear on the search results page by completing the steps below. If your organization wishes to set the ‘Referral Status’ drop-down list to appear on the search results page, and if your organization is also subscribed to the iCarol AIRS Taxonomy Features, read this help article, ‘Evaluate Your Data Collection: Do we currently have the ‘Make Referral’ button hidden on the resource search results page?’, to decide whether or not you should adjust this setting
  5. Once enabled, the 'Referral Status' is required to be selected for every referral made
To enable the 'Referral Status' feature, complete the following steps:
  1. Access the Overall Settings page for the Contact Form Version you wish to edit
  2. Under the Referrals section, click the link to 'Edit Referral Status List', or skip to step 7 if you wish to use the default selections
  3. The page reload with features to customize your Referral Status List
  4. To add a new status to the list, click the 'Create New' link at the top of the page and the page will refresh with fields to add a status to the Referral List
  5. Notice on the page where you add a new status, you have the following fields to set:
    1. The ‘Contact Report’ you’re editing is selected by default from this drop-down list; leave the default choice selected, or click the drop-down list and select ‘All Contact Records’
    2. Enter the ‘Name’ of the status you wish to add
    3. Set the 'Order in Lists' to control where the status appears in the list
    4. Note, since 'Referral Status' is required on all referrals made, you may wish to add an "N/A" option depending on your organizations processes
  6. Click ‘Save’ and the page reloads with the features to customize your Referral Status List 
  7. Add as many new statuses as you wish, or click the 'Edit' or 'Delete' links to update existing statuses
  8. Once you're finished customizing your Referral Status list, click the 'Overall settings for this call report form' link at the top of the page and the Overall Settings page will reload
  9. Under the Resources section, select the checkbox next to the setting ‘Referral Status’
    1. Note, if you don’t complete the steps above to customize your ‘Referral Status’ list, the following options are available by default when this setting is enabled: Please select, Successful, and Unsuccessful
  10. Finish making any changes to the settings on this page and click the 'Save Settings' button at the bottom of the page. After you save the changes, when making referrals to resources with a need in your contact records, you'll be able to select a ‘Referral Status’ for each referral made in a contact record; read this help article to learn more
To set the referral status drop-down list to appear in the resource search results page, complete the following steps:
  1. Click ‘Admin Tools’ in your left side menu
  2. On the default ‘Resources’ tab, scroll down to the Referrals section and deselect the checkbox next to the 'Hide the make referral button on the search results page' setting
  3. Click the ‘Save Settings’ button at the top of the page, and the ‘Make Referral’ button and ‘Referral Status’ drop-down list will appear on the search results page when searching for referrals in contact records

How to Document ‘Referral Status’ in Contact Records

Once the ‘Referral Status’ feature is enabled in a contact form version, when a user makes a referral to a resource, a ‘Referral Status’ can be selected for each referral made.

The ‘Referral Status’ list will appear in two or three areas of the contact record, depending on the settings configured in your system. A separate ‘Referral Status’ can be selected for each referral made, and depending on your organizations processes, you can set the ‘Referral Status’ in the following areas, by completing the following steps. Note, the set of steps for each area are slightly different and it’s up to your organization to determine which to use:

A. View the ‘Details’ of a resource when searching for referrals in a contact record
  1. Click the ‘Referral Status’ drop-down list that appears at the top of the page
  2. Select the appropriate status from the drop-down list
  3. Click the ‘Make Referral’ button within the resource details
B. On the Resources tab in a contact record after you make a referral
  1. Click the ‘Referral Status’ drop-down list that appears to the right of each referral
  2. Select the appropriate status from the drop-down list
C. If configured in your system, on the search results page when searching for referrals
  1. Click the ‘Referral Status’ drop-down list that appears below each resource
  2. Select the appropriate status from the drop-down list
  3. Click the ‘Make Referral’ button on the search results page
After you click ‘Submit’, the ‘Referral Status’ selected for each referral will be available for reporting in Statistics reports and Contact Record Data Export files.

How to Report on ‘Referral Status’

Once ‘Referral Status’ is documented for referrals in contact records, you can access reporting for this data in Statistics reports and the Contact Record Data Export files, as follows:
  1. Statistics: in the Analysis area, the Chart Type 'Count of referral status' displays the top 10 statuses in a graphic and you can click the icon at the bottom of the page to export all the Referral Status data to a .CSV file
  2. Data Export: the Contact Records data export file named 'CallReportReferrals' includes a column for Referral Status

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