A record breaking year

This is the last Blog for 2010. This is the time to look back at the year and see how Caseworks has developed in just 12 months.

Here is a summary of our achievements.

Four new customers signed up
A new DV module
A new Gateway Module
A new Supported Housing Module
A new Tenancy Support Module
A new Estate Management Mobile application
A new ASB mobile web site

In addition, numerous new fields and new pages in the existing modules have been added and many customers have commissioned new reports, full or partial upgrades and new correspondence.

Several milestones have been passed. We passed the 1.5 million case pages earlier in the year and are now very close to 100,000 cases entered by our 3,000 registered users. Behind the scenes we are also breaking records. The number of database tables is nudging 500, the number of customisation records has passed 50,000 and the number of Lookups has now passed 1,000.

Perhaps the most visual demonstration of the size and scope of the system is the amazing number of Transaction buttons - now numbering 570 between all of the modules.

Christmas is a time for playing with new toys, so I used my new iPad to create this Blog, and to put together a combo of some of the Transaction Buttons in the system. Have a good New Year!

A Winter Show

The Northern Housing Consortium, describes itself as "The Voice of Housing in the North" and at their conference in York in December, it certainly lived up to that label. Below is the sight which greeted exhibitors and delegates in York on 1st December.

Inside was warm and hospitable, food was excellent. Surprisingly, plenty of delegates turned up for the conferences and to see the stands. On the right is the new HUBSolutions stand, boasting "more functions than your iphone" .


Some people reading that boast may think it is a little over-the-top, but as we near the end of 2010 the rate of development of the Caseworks product has never been greater. In this year alone, we have created the Domestic Violence Module (live in Portsmouth), the Gateway Module (testing almost complete in Portsmouth), the Supported Housing Module (testing almost completed at Riverside Housing Group), the Tenancy Support Module (testing almost complete at East Durham Homes and Leeds City Council), the ASB Mobile (testing about to begin at Solihull) and a new flagship product, the Estate Management Mobile (commissioned by East Durham Homes, Hyndburn Homes and Riverside Housing Group).

The SLCNG Conference 2010

I have just returned from, what we thought was a very good SLCNG Conference this year.

Good, because it was well attended by enthusiastic delegates keen to participate, many of whom use Caseworks. Two of our customers where up for awards. Congratulations to Amanda Fulcher from East Durham Homes and Vickie King-Lowe from Gloucester City Homes for making the effort, sadly neither won the award for which they were nominated.

Good, also because the Conference was very informative. We heard a speech from the new Crime Prevention Minister, which went some way to answer the questions which most of us must have had about the future of Anti Social Behaviour Legislation in this country. I think that there was some re assurance that, while there might be a bonfire of the old tools, there will be new powers to deal with ASB and during this period of consultation and review we were not expected to give up on the current legislation. I was slightly surprised by how long this process of review was going to take. We were told that we are currently in informal consultation, formal consultation would start in the new year, and primary legislation would not be put before the House until the middle of next year, and this might take a further 12 months to become law. A long time to wait, and, of course, what wasn't mentioned was that during this time Local Authorities, the Police, the Home Office and Voluntary bodies are all being scaled back substantially. All families with children are going to be put under greater financial stress, parents who are looking after them are going to be compelled to get full time work and youth facilities are going to be under financial pressure, doubtless many will close.

The obvious concern to me is, that the knowledge that the main piece of legislation - the ASBO - will probably be scrapped, will undermine those working in ASB and their attempts to retain the resources they currently have. I also feel constantly uneasy about the assertions from ministers that ASB is a crime, when some is, but some is not. I fear for the re-definition of ASB and the elimination of large elements of it from the realm of requiring intervention.

Moving on, I also attended a Workshop on Domestic Violence - the MARAC process - hosted by delegates from the Peabody Trust which was excellent, and informed me about further enhancements to make to the DV Module.

Finally, I must say that the venue was excellent, and the interest in HUBSolutions was impressive, the more so because everyone was a bit depressed about the economic situation. And on that note, the distribution of Inside Housing with a headline about the death of Social Housing did seem to create an atmosphere of "we are all in this together ... fighting the forces of darkness".

For those who came to our stand and socialised or made enquiries, many thanks. For those who didnt see our newly revamped stand, this is our picture of it.

New customers bring new ideas

It always seems to be the case, that new customers bring new inspiration to the system. Our latest customer - Contour Housing Group - are no exception.

Contour use a Vulnerability Assessment to determine the priority of the case. The outcome of the assessment determines whether the case goes to the specialist Community Safety Team or to the Local Housing Office. This seems a pretty good response to the Pilkington Case, as in fairness, determining the priority of the case purely by the type of Incident makes no allowance for the impact of small, persistent abuses to a victim who may be isolated and have problems of their own.

I am pleased to say, that we were yet again able to rise to our "customisation workshop challenge" - you tell us what you want, and we will include it overnight. Contour went through their need on a Friday morning, and by Monday morning we were able to demo the first prototype, by Tuesday morning we had a fully working system with redirection of cases included.

Here is a screen shot of the new Vulnerability Record included in a "Coloured Red" case.

Budget Cuts - you heard it first on the Caseworks Blog

I am going to allow myself a little self-congratulation this week. Ardent readers of this Blog, will have seen my suggestion that a great deal of public money could be saved if Councils and Government Departments gave up the rat race to install and upgrade Microsoft Office, at great expense, and adopted Open Office as their standard instead.


Scroll down a little bit, and look at my entry of the 30th June, entitled "Budget Cuts - a painless idea".


Now click on this hyperlink from the Guardian Technology Blog

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/blog/2010/aug/26/local-government-spending-open-standards-saving enititled "Councils 'could save at least £51m' with shift to ODF and open source" and you will see that Charles Arthur has had the same idea (8 weeks later). Interestingly, he has been able to put some figures on the saving by comparing UK IT costs with those of Spain, and come up with a figure of £51m, or, if you want to work it out for your own Authority, £200 per desktop per year. Now if you are reading this in your air conditioned open plan office just count the PCs and laptops and see much money could be saved. Multiply that for every section in every department, and every Local Authority, Housing Association and Government Department and £51m looks quite conservative.


My only criticism of his blog, is that it gives the impression that Open Office is incompatible with Microsoft Office, and therefore every major application which interfaces with Office would have to be re-written. He argues, that the Government should tell software companies to do just that.


Actually it is far from incompatible, and in my Local Government experience, many major systems don't really inteface with MS Office anyway. Caseworks is an exception in having an interface with both Word and Excel.


I have tested both. Word would be no problem, our mailmerge correspondence will open just as well in Open Office. We manipulate Rich Text Files on the server directly, we dont use Office to do that.

Excel Lists are no problem, they can also be read perfectly well in Open Office.


Excel Pivot Tables are a small problem, though not insurmountable. Open Office has a function which is the equivalent of Pivot Tables called Data Pilot. When you first open your Pivot Table in Open Office it appears to only do Drill Down, but when you read their Help, and do what it says - Data - DataPilot - Refresh - there is some magic and you get a DataPilot table out of your Pivot Table with all the functionality you would expect. Here is the proof - an Excel Pivot Report, live in Open Office... (I created the chart in Open Office, by the way)



If I am honest, I havent yet gone over to Open Office and abandoned my MS Office, but if it was a choice between this and cutting staff or services, I would do it tomorrow.

I would also argue, don't stop at Open Office. There is an abundance of free software out there which you could be using. I am currently reading up on MySQL, which appears to be a perfectly sound database option as an alternative to SQL Server and the horrendously expensive Oracle.

Now, to be honest, the conversion to MySQL would be much more onerous.


Readers will know, I am also sold on free maps (see Blog before last), and now I am looking at free GIS software - infact I am going to a conference about that in a weeks time and I will report back in this blog - so keep reading...

Another landmark

Today was a special day for Caseworks.

Our customers created the 1,500,000th case page today.

Just thought I would mention it!

If you are interested in statistics, people are adding a page every three minutes during working hours, and have so far entered 85,000 cases.

In addition, nearly 225,000 "Notification Records" have been added to Notify and Respond / Estate Mananagement.

Free maps are better maps

The last Blog entry looked at Open Office, as a means of saving public sector cash. Since then, scarcely a day has gone by when the Coalition Government has not threatened more cuts, or abolished another body or another raft of Labour legislation. Right now Anti Social Behaviour Legislation is looking very vulnerable, and doubtless that will raise questions over the need for ASB units in Local Authorities.

My next money-saving idea, is a very serious one, and one we will definitely be implementing. As a result of the media profile which Google and Microsoft enjoy, most people will imagine that these are the only two mapping systems on the web, and that they are both free and there for our entertainment. Actually, none of these statements are true. There are other options, and nothing multi-national corporates do will be free, or even cheap, and if they are fun to use - which they are - this is part of the marketing lure. Bing and Google are looking to create advertising revenue from their products, so we all pay in all the products and services we buy, if we or others use online maps to find them. Where there is no advertising opportunity, both companies want to make a hefty charge, and, surprise surprise, the same hefty charge.

By contrast "OpenStreetMap" is an internet mapping system entirely built by volunteers in the tradition of Wikipedia. They are adding more detail all the time. The Open Street Map Foundation is not-for-profit. It ploughed a lot of its very small resources into helping out in Gaza and Haiti, where lack of maps (due to lack of commercial potential) hampers the aid process. I had the opportunity to attend their annual conference "State of the Map" in Girona, Spain and caught some of the infectious enthusiasm of the people who have built a great product from nothing in just four years.

I came back full of enthusiasm to see if we could use it in Caseworks, and today, my developer, Krish produced a brilliant conversion of our former facilty.

Login to their website and look at your own home area: http://www.openstreetmap.org/

This is an example of the open street map generated from the Case Screen

And the popup...

But readers, will be wondering if being free means it is rubbish. Absolutely not. The dedication of volunteers has guaranteed an immense amount of valuable details. I thought I would compare an area I know well, Alexandra Park in North London.

You decide!

This is Open Street Map

This is Google ............................................................And this is Virtual Earth

Budget Cuts - a painless idea

Nothing to do with Caseworks this time - but addressing an issue which will be taxing Caseworks Managers for at least the next 5 years. How to make a painless budget cut.

How about this for an idea? Stop paying license fees to Microsoft every time you buy a new PC. Dont upgrade to Office 2007 or 2010. Scrap the lot and download "OpenOffice" instead. Its free, its compatible and at least in some respects it is better. None of the users will mind, if they realise that this "cut" is instead of cutting the service they provide.

I have downloaded the whole suite to my PC from http://www.openoffice.org/ and spent time playing about with it. My verdict

• It really is compatible with Office, you can open Word, Excel and Powerpoint files and edit them and save them as Office files very easily


• There is MUCH less of a learning curve going from Office 2003 to OpenOffice than there would be going to Office 2007. I am still scanning the numerous "ribbon menus" trying to work out where Microsoft has put things.


• It does pretty much everything Office does, and a few things Office 2003 didnt do, like exporting to PDF.


• I still havent come to terms with the new Access 2007. The Open Office Database was a pleasurable throwback to the old Access look and feel which I have lost.


• Open Office Drawing programme offers you a version of Visio.

That's my idea for now. Share your ideas with our community for painless cuts by commenting or by emailing caseworker@hubsolutions.co.uk

Caseworks on an IPad

Like many others, especially those from the Microsoft tradition, I was more than sceptical about the value of the IPAD format. Too big for your pocket, and no keyboard, was my initial reaction to the media hype.


However, 10 minutes in the Apple Store in Brent Cross shopping centre, logging onto our new ASB Mobile and I am converted. It is a real pleasure to use; bright, crystal clear, the two-finger zoom control adds so much, and unlike so many other mobile browsers everything works really well.

Remember, all of these pictures were taken by my mobile phone, in less than perfect conditions, but the crispness and clarity of the images are striking. The picture on the right, shows the neat way that the browser handles pick lists.

The image on the left shows the visually pleasing curves on buttons and input fields, while the one on the right, shows the Calendar Control. This control doesn't display properly on Windows Mobile or Blackberry, and will as a result have to be rewritten.

Readers who are more interested in the IPad than Caseworks might be wondering if I looked at any of the apps and other facilities on this new toy. I did actually, and this image of the Transport for London App seemed the most visually appealing to include in my blog.

My verdict - if you want a portable device to browse the Internet, read emails, and show off your photos, buy it. It will compliment your fixed PC or laptop.

Caseworks on a Blackberry and IPhone

Caseworks on a Blackberry?

Yes it works!

But is it just me, or do other Blackberry users suffer from eye-strain to read such small text. HUBSolutions has just acquired its first Blackberry - the very latest version - 9700 - and I find that so often, when using it, the text is at the limit of what I can read.

I think we can make the text bigger, and that is going to be Selvi's next task on this project, but really this seems to me to be a big problem with the BB. Comments welcome from Adicts and Fans alike.

By contrast, we have also tried it on the iPhone, and what a joy that is to use. The text is large and so easily enlarged. Smooth rounded input boxes and buttons. Best of all, pick lists are converted automatically . If anybody reading this, hasnt seen the iphone pick list facility - I have copied it on the right. This isn't Caseworks - to be honest I am not a mac user, and I am really not sure how to screen dump from an iphone, but it does work just like this in Caseworks.

I dont own an iphone, but have effectively sold it to several friends, just by comparing it with my own phone!

The Wow Factor

I've said it before, but it is always good to get a bit of positive feedback, and few customers can match our East Durham ASB Manager, Amanda Fulcher, for a vivacious response.

I did this small report for her, and this was the response:-

"WOW thank’s Peter

The report is great.

Amanda"

First Impressions

The Caseworks Report Writer was deployed on a customer site for the first time this week, and first impressions where favourable.


Eileen from Riverside Housing Group emailed me


"Thanks for this [the Report Writer User Manual] – have had a quick go and it is really easy to use. I can see this being of great use to our Managers when they need to do reporting."


The report writer was mentioned in the last Blog, but here are a few more screen shots from the User Manual.




















Interested? Email caseworker@hubsolutions.co.uk for the full manual and more details

Three months of exciting developments

It has been a long time since the last Blog. Why? Overwork! The whole team has been working flat out adding functionality to the system and meeting customer needs. My own thing has been the Domestic Abuse Module for Portmouth and the Supported Housing Module for Riverside, but I may save them for a later blog. I want to dedicate this blog to the amazing achievements of my developers, who have all expanded the system in different directions and stretched their own skills to the limit.

A Generic Report Writer

One of the clearest benefits of beginning the process of converting the system to ".net" has been the availability of third party products which we can manipulate and add to the system. The new Report Writer, integrated into the system by Krish in an amazingly short period of time is one example. Here is a combination of screen shots.

This new tool answers the problem of an entirely new report request, not fully covered by any of our library of Excel Pivot Tables. The user can select any field from any table to list, select and sort. The output can be written to Excel or Adobe. The system - Easy Query - really is easy to use. Completely intuitive with all of the selection options appearing as pick lists.

A hot mapping product

The next invention, with truly breathtaking potential is a hot-spotting "addin" for Microsoft Mappoint.

It genuinely turns this £300 package into a serious tool rivalling its more expensive rivals.

The screen shot opposite is data imported into mappoint. It isnt strictly a hotspot map.

Below it is the same data automatically converted to "hot spot" squares where the shading indicates the number of points in the sqaure. This is Prathibha's work, and it doesnt stop there. She has created a facility to draw your own boundaries, label them and then automatically shade them according to the number of imported points within the boundary.

The ASB Module goes Mobile

Selvi, meanwhile has been developing a mobile version of the ASB Module. The latest "touch phones" with powerful browser facilites, really make the use of the system in the street, on a mobile, a real option. We could have just left it at that, and told customers that it is 100% web based, browse away on your matchbox size window. However, any mobile user will tell you that there is a world of difference between the BBC web site which is actually designed for mobile use and most others where you are scrolling around a screen three times bigger than your mobile.

I think the results of Selvi's efforts are quite stunning - at first site it looks more like an "app", so beloved of iphone users, than a web site.