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Most communities considering using HIFIS 4 are not starting from scratch. The truth is, in a pre-HIFIS 4 world, communities did something to get data for reporting, and in a lot of cases, they don't want to lose all of that prior data.

This situation leads many communities to consider what to do with their previous data, when they switch to HIFIS 4. If you're having these conversations, you're not alone! There are lots of other communities struggling with the same question.

What are the Opti…

Here's the situation: one of the agencies within your community wants to use HIFIS 4. Everything seems to be going pretty well until they casually mention that they have a lot of volunteers, or students, or temps, and they typically just create one user account for all of these people to use.  No big deal, right?  

Well, actually, it is a big deal. 

Within the IT world, it is very strongly recommended that user accounts are NEVER shared.  There are several really important reasons why this is an i…

Communities ask me all the time about the Geographic Region field on the Client Vitals screen.  All. The. Time. Not sure what I'm talking about?  There it is below, when you add a new Client.

There are really two questions I get asked:

1. Why does it say things like "This Community" and "This Region"?

2. What exactly are we supposed to select?

In summary, you're expected to modify the Geographic Region drop-down menu to include relevant regions for your local area. Then, when you add a client, select the …

What Data do you Want to Collect?

The first step to answering a question like "how are we going to record data" is first answering a different question: "what data do we need?"

Imagine one drop-in cent…

Communities often ask about the best way to record shelter diversion in HIFIS 4.  This is another area where there is no clear answer.  There are a few good options, each with their own strengths and weaknesses.  But first, let's talk about what diversion means in your community.

What is diversion?

Consider this definition from the National Alliance to End Homelessness:

Diversion is a strategy that prevents homelessness for people seeking shelter by helping them identify immediate alternate h…

One of the pillars of protecting client information is making sure that the only people accessing a client's information are the people that need that information to be able to serve the client.  A previous article discussed limiting user access to files via attestation, but that's not the only tool in your toolbox.

Service Provider Visibility Settings 

A shelter that only serves adult men does not need to be able to access client files for women and children, and they probably don't need to a…

Attestation

One of the privacy issues in HIFIS 4 has been reporting. You could set up your user rights templates to be as limited as you wanted, but when it came to reports, it was all or nothing.

If you gave a user permission to run reports, they could run all reports, and the reports could be designed to pull data from anywhere. So reports acted as a bit of a loophole. Maybe I want to share some case management information but not other information, so I'll make a report, and now even users that don't ha…

Not all of the drop-down menus in HIFIS (any version) are going to meet every community's needs. One community might really like the available Reasons for (Service) Restrictions, while other communities might find its options limited. Most communities want to change the options in the Geographic Region drop-down menu, and many want to update the Goods and/or Services menus to better reflect the services they offer.

Look-up Tables

You can customize values in these drop-down menus. They're refer…