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Data Direct module – New Enhancement
We look at the benefits of adding the Data Direct module for your Evaluations and Outcomes to your system. We’re also excited to announce a new improvement to the module – which can help you get even more detail from your service users.
What Is the Data Direct module For And Is It Right For Me?
Having the ability to send your evaluation forms and outcome diagnostic tools electronically can help you reach out further and at a time that works for your service users.
The Data Direct module makes this possible: Your evaluation forms and outcomes measures can be sent to your service users online and become accessible to them on their computers, tablets, and phones so that they can respond wherever they are. Their responses return directly into your Lamplight system ready to be viewed and reported on.
We know that your face-to-face interactions are invaluable in the work you do but we hope that the ability to reach people no matter the situation is an additional layer of outreach that can help you as you make the difference you want to make.
Evaluations
Data Direct can extend the reach of your evaluation feedback and is an inclusive way of inviting the voice of multiple service users remotely. Evaluations can be made anonymous for general evaluation feedback or can be personalised to show in the profile of the respondent. You can invite the responses of any number of people in one campaign which can save you a lot of time!
This data will support your understanding of what your service users think of your service and ensure that their views are taken into consideration as you develop and evolve. NPC provide some helpful examples of the types of questions you might include in such surveys:
Do people enjoy the service? Rate it? Find it useful?
Would they recommend it to someone else?
What aspects do people rate the best/least?
What is the quality of relationship you establish with them?
How could the service be improved?
Outcomes
Here’s the new improvement!
Data Direct now enables you to send out multiple diagnostic tools in a single campaign. This way service users can respond to the range of outcome measures which are relevant to them and may include any combination of measures you use to track their development and tailor support.
Here you may be using bespoke measures or those from Triangle Outcome Stars which have versions of the Star tailored to the needs of your sector and the service users you support.
Try The Module Free For One Month
As with all our modules you can trial the Data Direct Module free for one month and it will cost £5 (+VAT) per month if you choose to keep it. To start a free trial, go to system admin > your account > add or remove modules or projects > and tick the data direct module box. You’ll then have access to help resources showing you how to use the module, so once switched on in your system, visit The Hub for resources and tutorials.
Want To Make Your Reporting More Effective?
Master meaningful work record reporting on our full-day, online deep dive course which equips you with the skills you need to run your output reports with confidence.
What Will I Learn?
Lamplight has the tools to achieve streamlined, relevant work record reporting but it’s just as important that you have the skills to know how to make that happen. There’s a best way to achieve this and we want to share the process with you right from data entry through to running the exact reports you need. By looking at the process in depth, you’ll achieve greater understanding of where in Lamplight you will find the answers that you need and you’ll gain clarity on the parts played by lists and data views.
Equipped with the knowledge you’ll learn across a full day, you will enjoy the benefit of having an effective work record reporting process that is fully adaptable to the evolving needs of your organisation. Successful work record reporting is particularly far reaching as work records are one of the main record types in Lamplight – The ability to analyse all things connected to work records is therefore highly important.
What Will The Day Involve?
You’ll spend the day with colleagues from across the sector and there will be time to discover independently, time to reflect, opportunities to actively participate and scope to create important connections with fellow participants. We’ll consider a variety of reporting scenarios from query searches to statistical reports to enhance your repertoire and reinforce your confidence.
Course Content:
- Understanding data entry of work records
- Viewing work records and creating activity templates
- Creating lists based on work records
- Creating data views based on work records
- Running work record reports
- Troubleshooting work record data
- Enabling efficiency savings
- Carrying out quality checks
What Will It Cost?
We’re pleased to be able to offer the Introductory price of £240 plus VAT per person which includes a 30 minute follow up session where you’ll have the chance to revisit your new skills 1:1 with a member of our team.
How Do I Book?
See below for dates for forthcoming courses, and email training@lamplightdb.co.uk to book. Please be aware that places are limited to ensure that you get the best learning experience.
View list of activities for Members of a Group
We just added a new feature to Lamplight that lets you view the listing of activity records (work, referral, outcomes etc) filtered for who’s listed on those records. Select the group/list or waiting list with the profiles you’re interested in, and the activities listed will have at least one profile from the group.
To use this, go to activity > view on the main menu and in the filters you’ll see a drop down to select the group or waiting list you want to use.
This doesn’t update the group/list first, though, so you may need to view the members first if you’re using an auto or merge group/list. We may change this if we hear from you that it’s something you’d like.
Free Information Security Tools from The National Cyber Security Centre
The National Cyber Security Centre is doing some great work to make information security topics more accessible. As information security can be a complex topic, the people-focused approach taken in these resources mean that they are very user friendly. We’d like to share a few resources we feel are highly beneficial for the small to medium charities that we work with.
1. Online learning to help your staff get to grips with cyber security
The training is suitable for small organisations and provides a good grounding in information security for all your staff. It highlights the actions you can take to reduce the likelihood of you becoming a victim of the most common cyber-attacks and actively involves your staff in answering questions, identifying possible issues, and making suggestions for how to prevent, and tackle common cyber security challenges. We used it as part of our induction last summer and feedback from our team members was positive.
2. New alert service to help detect cyber threats
The Early Warning service notifies you early if they detect online attacks targeting your network. It’s free, it’s very quick and easy to sign up, and it provides another layer of information security for your organisation. The service will send you notifications if an issue arises. As time is a priority in these cases, being warned as soon as possible is an integral part of rectifying and solving the issue.
This resource is specifically for small charities to help them improve their information security and to feel better-equipped in the face of challenges that can come with rapid technological advancement. It covers a range of valuable topics from ‘backing up your data’ to ‘using passwords to protect your data’ and is super simple to download.
Related post: Why It’s Important To Review Your Operator Security Policies
Introducing The New Audit Module
The Audit Module is a dependable way of knowing that you can retrieve reliable data about all events that occur within your Lamplight system. Having a log of all activity in Lamplight means that when needed, you and your team can confirm the exact dates and times that views or updates have been made in your system and by whom.
What is the Audit Module used for and is it right for me?
This module has been created based on the feedback and requirement needs of charities we work with. When managing sensitive data alongside multiple system operators, we know that charities like yours:
- May have information security requirements to log all activity within your system
- Could need additional reassurance about data confidentiality
- Might require a full log of operator activity to help you comply with quality standards
- Would find it useful to retrace activity to catch unexpected errors or accidental deleted records
The Audit Module logs the detail of all activity on a read-only, searchable register that can be viewed at any time by those with system administrator access. It will detail every action carried out within your Lamplight system including the log in times, views or edits to records and it will list any instances of deleted items.
Providing you with clear records
When you view the logs recorded by the Audit Module you’ll see the most recent actions that have taken place in your system. This is listed by time, operator, subject and ID (if relevant). You can search these logs in the usual way in Lamplight – by using the ‘filter’ function. You can search by:
- Time and date of the action
- Type of record or action involved
- Related system operator
- Record ID
Try the module free for one month
As with all our modules you can trial the Audit Module free for one month and it will cost £5 (+VAT) per month if you choose to keep it. To start a free trial, go to system admin > your account > add or remove modules or projects > and tick the audit module box. You’ll then immediately start recording your system’s activity, and will have access to help resources showing you how to use the module as well as full details of how the log data is stored, so once switched on in your system, visit The Hub for resources and tutorials.
Questions about the module?
Speak with our team at hello@lamplight.co.uk
Have you subscribed yet?
We’ve got a lot of goals for 2022, and our first priority is making sure you’re getting the most out of your system. To do this we’re aiming to provide top tier support and resources to help you level up your Lamplight skills. So you don’t miss anything – please make sure you and your colleagues are subscribed to our mailing list.
You can expect the following news in your inbox:
- The latest training dates and courses
- New modules and services
- Help resources (including video tutorials and written guides)
- Updates to the system
- Partner and customer opportunities
newly discovered software flaw doesn’t affect Lamplight
You may be reading reports in the news of a new software vulnerability nicknamed ‘Log4Shell’. It affects a software component, Log4j2 that manages logging for Java applications. Lamplight isn’t written in Java and so does not use this application directly; and the version on our servers (used by some server management tools) is not affected by the issue.
Lamplight servers update themselves daily with the latest updates. The strong advice is to make sure your machines, software and devices are too, at home and at work. Apparently this ‘Log4Shell’ vulnerability is present in Minecraft, and your machine can be taken over by someone sending you an in-game chat message.
System Update – Printing Diaries
We’ve added a new personal setting to allow you to customise the information shown when you print a diary from the home page or a profile. Your print version can now show more or less info, depending on what you need.
In personal settings scroll down to ‘Template to use when printing diary items’
Here you can use the same template strings as the main diary. For example:
‘{start_time} – {end_time} in {location}. {SUMMARY} with {staff_names}’ – or whatever you need to see on the printed diary.
System Update 5/10/21 – Mobile, Fonts & Fixes
Improvements on small screens
We’ve made some small changes to the layout on smaller screens (phones and smaller tablets). Form items now align to the width of the screen, so there’s less sideways scrolling. Tables also switch, so that columns become rows, again to fit to the width of a smaller screen. You can create work records directly from diaries too now.
New font choice including Open Dyslexia font
At the foot of the screen you’ve been able to change font sizes for a while: you can now also select a font too, including the Open Dyslexia font that has been designed to be easier to read for people with dyslexia – find out more at opendyslexic.org.
Tweaks and fixes
- you’ll see the profile type (person, organisation etc.) and role (user, staff etc) next to profile names
- the ‘add to group’ in profiles is back for manual groups (it wasn’t showing if you didn’t have the waiting list module)
- activity records using deleted workareas will display the workarea when viewing the records in tables
- two-tier custom fields can be used as filters
- data direct records save sub-workareas for new campaigns
- saved table layout used when viewing details of a data direct campaign
- removing categories on media items save
- an issue creating charging module rules has been fixed
No more Internet Explorer; Change to reporting and groups in multi-project systems
Internet Explorer no longer supported
Internet Explorer is being retired: Microsoft is in the process of ending support for it now. We’ve decided to stop supporting Internet Explorer because its support for modern cryptography standards is weak. Supporting Internet Explorer means our servers need to be able to communicate in less secure ways than they can with modern browsers like Edge, Chrome, Firefox and others. Specifically, we’ve stopped supporting TLS1.0 and TLS1.1.
Reports and groups of shared activities
The way that Lamplight treats activity records which have been shared with other projects has changed. Previously when creating groups, data views, or reports, activities that had been shared with the current project would be excluded. Feedback was that this was not what you’d intuitively expect or need. We’ve now changed this so that shared records will be taken into account.