OBJECTIVE
After you complete this training course you will have a comprehensive understanding on:
- the most common types of referrals saved in your call reports
- how each type of referral is reflected in Statistics charts, specifically in the 'Needs by Taxonomy and Agency' and 'Needs by Taxonomy, Agency, and Program' charts
- why the number of 'Total Distinct Calls' differs from the totals calculated within these charts
- how this all applies to your call report data
AUDIENCE
The audience of this blog is intended for anyone who uses an iCarol system, meeting the following criteria:
- documents Call Reports (Contact Records), AND
- uses the iCarol AIRS Taxonomy Tools, AND
- uses the Needs by Taxonomy Charts and Excel files (reports) in Statistics
ESTIMATED TIME
30-45 minutes for completion, depending on your current level of understanding.
This course is meant to be completed in its entirety, as opposed to being completed in multiple sessions. So, before beginning you should make sure you allow yourself enough time to complete the course.
INTRODUCTION
In Contact Records, you can save referrals to resources and needs in several different ways, and you can also report on those needs and referrals in several different ways, depending on what your organization is looking to report on. Before completing this course, the help article 'Understanding the Statistics Charts: Caller Needs based on Taxonomy'.
The information in that help article is difficult to understand in theory and is easiest to understand if you put the theory into action, so the following steps are going to take you through documenting different scenarios of ways to save referrals. Then we will analyze how the different scenarios are reflected in Statistics, giving you a comprehensive understanding of how the referrals to needs and resources made in your contact records translate into the 'Needs by Taxonomy' reports in Statistics.
Step 1: Submit Test Calls & Analyze Corresponding Statistics
There are five different scenarios we'll be reviewing for how you can save a referral in a call report. During this part of the course you will submit test call reports and analyze how each individual call report is reflected in Statistics, by completing the following steps:
Scenario 1: Submit a call report with one referral, to one resource with one Met Need (ex. save a referral to 'ABC Program' with the Met Need of 'Food Pantries')
- Submit this call report but change the 'Date' to a date in the past, before your organization started using iCarol; it's important to remember the date you choose here because we'll need to choose it later in Statistics. It's also important to choose a date before your organization started using iCarol because we'll need to isolate this one specific contact record later in Statistics
- After you submit the call report, before moving onto the next scenario, go to the Statistics area of iCarol and complete the following steps so you can see exactly how this scenario is reflected in Statistics
- Select the Chart Type 'Needs by Taxonomy and Agency' or 'Needs by Taxonomy, Agency, and Program'
- Change your Time Frame filter so the date range only includes today's date
- Click Update Chart
- You'll see Total Distinct Calls = 1, and when you download the related Excel sheet you'll see the one resource name, associated to the Taxonomy term the referral was made to, with the Count of Need column showing 1. In other words, this report shows a referral was saved one time to this resource, for this need.
Scenario 2: Submit a call report with more than one referral, to more than one resource all with the same Met Need (ex. save a referral to 'ABC Program', '123 Program', and 'The Food Pantry Program', all with the Met Need of 'Food Pantries')
- Submit this call report with a date selected using one date prior to the date you chose in scenario 1; this step is important because it will allow you to see the specific scenario you just documented, separate from the previous scenario
- After you submit the call report, before moving onto the next scenario, go to the Statistics area of iCarol and complete the following steps so you can see exactly how this scenario is reflected in Statistics
- Select the Chart Type 'Needs by Taxonomy and Agency' or 'Needs by Taxonomy, Agency, and Program'
- Change your Time Frame filter so the date range only includes yesterday's date; again, this step is important because it will allow you to see the specific scenario you just documented, separate from the previous scenario
- Click Update Chart
- You'll see Total Distinct Calls = 1, but when you download the related Excel sheet you'll see all the resource names listed on separate rows, each individually associated to the Taxonomy term the referral was made to, with the Count of Need column for each row of resources showing 1. In other words, this report shows multiple referrals saved, to different resources, all with the same need.
Scenario 3: Submit a call report with more than one referral, to one resource with multiple Met Needs (ex. save a referral to 'ABC Program' with the Met Needs of 'Food Pantries' and 'Diapers'; both of these Taxonomy terms need to be categorized to the same resource)
- Submit this call report with a date selected using one date prior to the date you chose in scenario 2
- After you submit the call report, before moving onto the next scenario, go to the Statistics area of iCarol and complete the following steps so you can see exactly how this scenario is reflected in Statistics
- Select the Chart Type 'Needs by Taxonomy and Agency' or 'Needs by Taxonomy, Agency, and Program'
- Change your Time Frame filter so the date range only includes the day before yesterday's date; again, this step is important because it will allow you to see the specific scenario you just documented, separate from the previous scenario
- Click Update Chart
- You'll see Total Distinct Calls = 1, but when you download the related Excel sheet you'll see all the resource names listed on separate rows, each individually associated to the Taxonomy term the referral was made to, with the Count of Need column for each row of resources showing 1. In other words, this report shows multiple referrals saved, to the same resource, all with different needs.
Scenario 4: Submit a call report with an 'Unmet Need' not associated to any referral (ex. add the Need 'Food Pantries' and select the Unmet Reason being 'Client Refused Referral')
- Submit this call report with a date selected using one date prior to the date you chose in scenario 3
- After you submit the call report, before moving onto the next scenario, go to the Statistics area of iCarol and complete the following steps so you can see exactly how this scenario is reflected in Statistics
- Select the Chart Type 'Needs by Taxonomy and Agency' or 'Needs by Taxonomy, Agency, and Program'
- Change your Time Frame filter so the date range only includes the date from 3 days ago; this step is important because it will allow you to see the specific scenario you just documented, separate from the previous scenario
- Click Update Chart
- You'll see Total Distinct Calls = 1, but this time when you download the related Excel sheet you won’t see any data. This is expected because the Unmet Need you saved in this call report wasn’t related to any resource referral. The reason you’re still seeing ‘Total Distinct Calls = 1’ is because that number reflects the number of call reports submitted, meeting the criteria of the selected Filters and Call Content Filters.
Scenario 5: Submit a call report with one referral, to one resource with an 'Unmet Need' selected (ex. save a referral to 'ABC Program' to the Need 'Food Pantries' with the Unmet Reason being 'Client Refused Referral')
- Submit this call report with a date selected using one date prior to the date you chose in scenario 4
- After you submit the call report, before moving onto the next scenario, go to the Statistics area of iCarol and complete the following steps so you can see exactly how this scenario is reflected in Statistics
- Select the Chart Type 'Needs by Taxonomy and Agency' or 'Needs by Taxonomy, Agency, and Program'
- Change your Time Frame filter so the date range only includes the date from 4 days ago; this step is important because it will allow you to see the specific scenario you just documented, separate from the previous scenario
- Click Update Chart
- You'll see Total Distinct Calls = 1, and when you download the related Excel sheet you'll see the one resource name, associated to the Taxonomy term the referral was made to, with the Count of Need column showing 1. In other words, this report shows a referral was saved one time to this resource, for this need.
One important thing to notice, and keep in mind about these reports is if you document unmet needs directly to a resource (scenario 5) there is no way to filter out the unmet needs using this report. So if you want to use these reports and only have them include Met Needs, you need to train your users to only document Unmet Needs directly to the Need, instead of to the resource. You can read this help article, Document Unmet Needs By Taxonomy, to learn more about the differences.
Note, the only scenario this course doesn't cover is when an 'Out of Database' referral is saved.
Step 2: Analyze Statistics Reports
The reports we’ve run so far have been limited to only include 1 call report per report, because we’ve been analyzing the specific corresponding data. This step of the training course is to run and analyze Statistic Reports that include all 5 test call reports we submitted during this training course. Use what you learned from the previous steps of this course test your understanding, and see if you can analyze the data that appears in the 'Needs by Taxonomy and Agency' and 'Needs by Taxonomy, Agency, and Program' reports when your Time Frame filters are set to include all 5 test calls.
Step 3: Analyze Your Real Call Report Data
As you're reviewing your real call report data, ask yourself some questions like:
- Do I understand how to my users are saving referrals to resources in call reports? If the answer to this is "no", then you may want to consider training your users on the processes you want them to follow.
- Do I understand what the data is reflecting, in terms of met and unmet needs?
- Do I understand what the data is reflecting in terms of referrals to an Agency vs referrals to a Program? If you're unsure which level of the resource your users have permission to save referrals to, an Admin level user can review these permissions by clicking 'Admin Tools' in your left side menu, and on the 'Resources' tab review the selections for the setting named 'Referrals can be made to these resource record types:'
- Do I understand the difference between referrals made to a resource vs needs designated in a call report?
- Do I understand why there is a difference in the 'Total Distinct Calls' vs the total numbers being calculated in each selected chart?
With the information you've learned in this training course, you should be able to answer all the questions above, having met the learning objectives stated at the beginning of this training course. You may want to consider working with your team to develop processes about how to save referrals in your call reports, specifically those related to unmet needs, and how to use the Statistics charts for reporting, based on the needs of your individual organization.