The Official Caseworks Blog

The 2012 Version of Caseworks is out and Android is on the horizon

2011-12-23T10:31:00.000-08:00

This is the last Blog of 2011. It seems a good time to take a glimpse at what is coming in 2012.

Caseworks is destined for an exciting time as we start to roll out our Android Product. I thought it was time to lift the covers and give readers a glimpse of what is coming.

We have been much more ambitious with the Android project than we were (or were able to be) with the previous Windows product. This one is not going to be locked into any single function, not even going to be useful only for ASB Casework. By looking at the broad range of functions which our customers will want, we are looking for a completely customisable product which will work for Environmental Issues, Estate Inspections, Estate Scoring, Tenancy Audit and ASB Interview recording.

Readers may be asking why we are investing in new products, when it is clear that we have entered an Austerity Age, which could well last for the next 5 years and will kill Public Sector spending.

We believe, that despite the cuts - and possibly because of them - government will have to keep on investing in the latest technology in order to deliver the same services with less resources. Mobile Technology has the potential to make much better use of staff time, by getting rid of those hard cover note books, and the time spent keying into a computer system in the office. It has to be the way forward, and Tablets (probably not iPads), are bound to become the mobile computer of 2012.

However, we arent stopping at rebuilding our Mobile Application. We are also going to release the next major version of Caseworks during 2012. This will NOT be an upgrade, but a complete rewrite, based on .net technology, more flexible, more customisable, more modular than the current version and potentially not restricted to the principle of "casework" - maybe we will find a niche for it in the Private Sector.

New ideas

2011-12-01T09:41:00.001-08:00

It really is the case, that every new customer - and even those who have decided to re-customise their system, like Lewisham - adds one or two bright new ideas to the Caseworks system. Lewisham is one of the oldest users of the system, but following a complete turnover of staff decided to recustomise the system this year, to better match their organisation and policies.

One of the managers came up with a very neat idea, which was to include a Mail To option, on all pages, so that if a user wanted to draw a Case, or a Page on a Case to the attention of another officer they could easily do so. The button brings up the user's email client, embeds a hyperlink and a summary of the page in the email and allows it to be sent.

The recipient, has only to click on the hyperlink, and wlll be taken to the login screen, and after sign-on will be taken directly to the page in question.

Not complicated, very neat and very useful - it gets my prize for the best idea of 2011.

Congratulations to Contour Homes

2011-11-05T12:36:00.000-07:00

Its always nice when one of our customers wins a prize for their work.

We were thrilled to see Eddie Vickers and his team at Contour pick up the Best Practice Award at the Social Landlords Crime and Nuisance Group Conference for their "Victim Champions" project.

Contour were the first customer to introduce us to the Risk Assessment scheme when they went Live a year ago. Since then, many have followed suite, but I beleive Contour is almost unique in going through the entire assessment over the phone at the point of first contact, requiring us to build it into our data entry form.

Microsoft hits back

2011-10-20T06:52:00.000-07:00

I was fascinated to read the bad tempered (The Times said "bullish") performance of Steve Ballmer (Microsoft CE) in the Web 2.0 summit this morning in which he chose to criticise the Android operating system compared to his new Windows 7 Mobile. I expect some people reading this have never even seen a Windows 7 mobile phone, which says it all. I have yet to see a single advert for a commercial product supported by a Windows 7 app, always they say "download apps for the iPhone and Android", sometimes Blackberry gets a mention.

I wonder if Steve realises how much developer good-will he threw away, when he decided to scrap Windows Mobile 6.5 and rewrite the operating system without any backward compatibility or any compatibility with the main Microsoft development language - .net. Like many - probably most - developers, HUBSolutions has abandoned the company which first abandoned us and we have gone over to writing Android apps for our customers.

Our conclusions - the Android operating system is brilliant, much better than Windows 6.5, and now we are really not interested in anything Steve might do with Windows 7. Also, if Steveis reading this, I am not interested in a phone which can only synchronise with my Outlook, via hotmail, and none of our customers would be either. More than that, there is an issue of principle, and standing up against the naked commercialism of Apple and Microsoft, who have tried to control the app market with their exclusive online stores, whereas Android is an Open System, and will always have a much more vibrant development community as a result.

Steve also praises Bing as being every bit as good as Google, and perhaps it is. Has he tried looking up almost any of the multitude of issues which users have with Office 2010, and found that Google is actually far better than the built-in Microsoft Help? I don't even bother to click the F1 button anymore, just copy and paste the error message into Google, or type in "where is xxx in Word 2010".

While I am on a roll, Steve will find numerous references on Google to the instability of Access 2010 compared to earlier versions, leading to the latest crass Microsoft error message "Microsoft Access has stopped working" which is followed by an automatic backup of an obviously corrupt file. A sort of electronic version of locking the stable door after the horse has bolted (and died).

Looking at the Microsoft Web Site (http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;2625046) I see this is a "known fault for which a fix is promised in October 2011 - well that leaves 9 more days. Looking at the Wikipaedia website, I see that Office 2010 was released on 15 June 2010, and as of July 2011, more than 100m copies had been sold. Elsewhere on the web, it is quoted that Microsoft earned a staggering 10.8bn dollars from sales of Office. OK Steve, so why has it taken over 12 months to come up with a fix to such a critical problem? As a software developer, I cannot imagine making my customers wait that long for a crucial fix. Of course, my customers have a choice, and because of that margins are low, and turnaround on issues is very fast. There used to be a choice for Windows PC Databases, called Foxpro, but Microsoft bought the company and closed it down, many years ago.

Finally, just a comment on the sales tactics of this US giant. Almost every PC which is sold these days, comes with a "free", but time-limited version of MS Office. With posters all over the place suggesting that Office costs only £90, no doubt some customers leave the shop thinking they have got a bargain. When their Office dies on their PC (after they have had fun creating all sorts of Powerpoints, Excel graphs and newletters), they will find that unless they are a bonafide student, the actual price is between £240 and £430, depending on the version they buy. Given that you can by a PC in TESCO for this price, I wonder how many customers realise they will be paying the same again to Microsoft within 90 days. In addition, if they buy the "unlock code" to revitalise their dead software, they only get ONE license, so cannot re-install the software on their next PC. It will only last as long as the PC, which for many laptops is about 2 years. I doubt if many customers realise that for just an extra £20, they could have bought a boxed disk which gave them THREE licenses.

All this coercion to buy a Microsoft product, when there is a completely free alternative, called Open Office, which would meet all the needs of the vast majority of customers and produces files which are completely compatible with Office. Of course, retailers are not going to tell customers about Open Office, because they make money out of selling MS Office. It is an irony, that in our so called "free" market economy, nothing can be free, because then there is then no money to pay for marketing and retailing!

Gang Culture

2011-08-15T13:40:00.000-07:00

Pressure of work has stopped me writing a blog entry for a few months, but I am sure I am not alone in finding myself motivated to express some comment on the extraordinary events of recent days, which seems directly related to Anti Social Behaviour.

Our team has been working hard in Woolwich, setting up the ASB Module for London Borough of Greenwich. It is impossible not to feel horror and outrage at seeing the Weatherspoons pub which we have several times visited reduced to a burnt out hulk after the inferno shown in this picture.

However, much self ritious disgust has been expressed by one and all into the effects of the riots, and now the debate has moved on to why, and what next.

Before all this happened, a prospective employee suggested to me that a "Gang Module" might be a good addition to the database, as there is a need to monitor the members of Gangs, whether or not they have been linked to ASB and work with them to get them out of this evil culture. Her remarks seem all too prophetic and Mr Cameron's speech that he is going to "Wage War on Gangs" made me think that there might be mileage in such a product.

Unfortunately I then read the rest of his speech today, and learned that Mr Cameron was going to "fix 120,000 problem families" (not families with problems), by 1. Giving all 16 year olds some sort of Community Service sentence, whether or not they engage in criminal activity 2. Further restrictions on Benefits for the jobless 3. Ending the "chilling effect" of human rights and Health and Safety legislation 4. Reforms of school discipline.

Mr Cameron might have taken the time to read the other reports in the same papers which showed that the Met had arrested 1,580 people of which only 330 were juveniles. It may be that much of the problem is dishonest adults who are leading our children astray. It may be, we should take more time to understand the problem.

Microsoft

2011-05-08T03:30:00.000-07:00

I am not sure whether it is me getting older, or Microsoft being past its peak, but it really feels that every new piece of software which Microsoft brings out is "almost as good as the thing it replaced". I thought I would share a few frustrations with readers, in the hope that it will be of use.

I have recently bought a Windows 7 laptop, running IE8 and installed Office 2010 finally replacing my Windows XP machine running IE6 and Office 2003. Well obviously the graphics are better, and maybe it loads faster (though that could be just the effect of a new machine).

But I quickly discovered that so many pieces of software didn't actually work, and far from being "simpler" as the adverts claim, almost everything is more complex due to an added security layer.

Two really vital tips which should come with the instruction manual

1. If you want all of your Office programmes to run as they did before, you must run them as "Administrator". This is not always obvious - click on Properties for the Office Application and select "Compatibility" as in this picture and tick the box for "run this programme as an administrator". Macros / vb code may not run normally otherwise.

2. If you want to run software not intended for Windows 7 - particularly establishing VPN links - you must run the "Virtual XP software" which, amazingly, brings back your Windows XP and IE6 as a window on your machine. The download link is
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/virtual-pc/download.aspx

If you are using Office 2007 or 2010 for the first time, you won't know where any of your tools are - just put your problem into Google - loads of other people have had the same problem, and it is much quicker than the Microsoft help.

ALSO, remember that some of the people you send emails to may still have Office 2003 and they wont be able to read your Office 2007 or 2010 documents. Always use Save As and save as 2000-2003 version if you are emailing out.

Office 2010 is more impressive, but from my point of view, all of the gains are wiped out by the fact that auto-complete of email addresses isn't working on Outlook. Also, there is still no indexed search facility on Outlook, making text searches of emails painfully slow and the Contacts section is still a load of rubbish, giving no way of easily copying and pasting full contact details out of Outlook.

AND FINALLY, and actually what has prompted this Blog, is that I received a phone call today from an acquaintance who has recently purchased a Windows 7 Mobile, and discovered, that as a matter of policy, there is no Active Sync and no way to synchronise with Outlook and other documents on your PC. You are intended to use "Zume" for media, and hot mail for emails / contacts etc. We now have a situation where you would be better off buying an iPhone or Android phone if you want to synchronise with a Windows application - but Windows 7 does sync with XBox!

Overall, there is a common thread to all of this, and that is that since Bill Gates' departure, Microsoft has been taken over by the Media department and the Finance Department and is no longer the technology driven company it once was.

In these difficult financial times, all of us, especially Local Authorities should be looking to migrate to Open Source software - Open Office and Android -rather than paying more money to US corporations.

Royal Wedding and Royal Borough

2011-04-30T13:24:00.000-07:00

A title which seems to have no connection with Caseworks, but wait!

This is the email I sent to half a dozen customers who make extensive use of our KPI facility:-

"I have added the Royal Wedding to the Caseworks Calendar and advanced all KPIs so they allow for it.
This will let you relax and enjoy the event, without the fear that your KPIs are expiring!"

Well, I hope they did enjoyed the wedding! This is my favourite picture from the event...

And the Royal Borough?
This is a quote from Greenwich.co.uk

"The London Borough of Greenwich will join an elite group of “Royal Boroughs” as part of HM The Queen’s Diamond Jubilee, it has been announced.

The Queen’s gracious decision to bestow this rare honour on Greenwich was announced today by Lord Mandelson in the House of Lords. It will come into effect from 2012 – the year that marks Elizabeth II’s 60th year as Queen."

This website has the good news, that if you are enjoying these extra holidays, another one is coming our way "Lord Mandelson also announced today that there will be an extra public holiday in 2012 to mark the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee."

And the connection with Caseworks, is that the Greenwich project is my current big project, which has probably been the biggest implementation of any we have done. Greewnich has worked out in fine detail the fields needed to match their procedures, and as a result, the system now fully provides for RIPA, Surveillance, for preliminary stages of ABC and ASBO and - probably useful to many - we now have the ability to create correspondence from all Action pages - including the ability to send correspondence to each subject and involved agencies. Here is a sample of the Action Buttons on a Case History screen.

It has been a massive task, not yet complete, and if it were our only project it would be demanding enough. Infact it is far from the only project as we are also half way through an implementation at Westminster and an add-on for East Durham Homes and still finishing off a complete recustomisation at Leeds. And the sheer pressure of so many overlapping projects has been the main reason for the lack of a Blog entry for four months - just not enough hours in the day.
So maybe a little Royal nonsense has been a welcome break!

A record breaking year

2010-12-30T03:36:00.001-08:00

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

2010-12-15T07:17:00.000-08:00

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

2010-11-07T01:13:00.000-07:00

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

2010-11-01T09:37:00.001-07:00

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

2010-08-29T10:44:00.000-07:00

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

2010-08-09T10:23:00.001-07:00

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

2010-07-29T13:44:00.000-07:00

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.

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

2010-06-30T13:34:00.000-07:00

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

2010-06-12T12:28:00.000-07:00

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

2010-05-16T08:52:00.000-07:00

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

2010-04-30T07:17:00.001-07:00

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

2010-04-28T00:45:00.000-07:00

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

2010-04-07T14:06:00.000-07:00

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.

Dashboard Version 2 - last blog of 2009

2009-12-31T13:13:00.001-08:00

On the last day of 2009, and getting close to the last hour, I thought I would do a "first" and publish two blogs on the same day. Why? Mainly to give due credit to my colleague Krish, who carried on working until 9pm on New Years Eve to work out the best dashboard option for Caseworks. Version 1 (the previous blog) looked nice, but the underlying software was going to be a severe limitation for future enhancements. Krish started again at lunch time today, and worked on achieving the same result by a completely different route. Nine hours later, I think it is a pretty good prototype, and bodes well for an exciting New Year for Caseworks.

All of us wish our customers all the best for 2010.

A new dashboard for Caseworks

2009-12-31T02:57:00.000-08:00

Those who received The Christmas Caseworker Newsletter, will know that we are continuing to work on the system over the holiday period. As the final Blog of 2009, I thought I would share a prototype with users, of something which will become a big development in the 2010 release.

Having, perhaps, been a bit late into the "Dashboard" concept we are using our new toolset to catch up and create a better facility than anyone else. Below is a first prototype of what will be one of many Dashboards, which will be user configurable and user-selectable. There will be User Dashboards and Team Dashboards and the ability to nominate any of them to be the first screen when you log in, or otherwise access them from the new Menu under "My Work" and "My Team". Infact, this is early days, and my resident wizz-kid, Krish is, as I write, experimenting with a variety of options to give the best results for Caseworks Users. So keep logging into the Blog to be at the cutting edge, and dont forget you can add your own comments if you have a bright idea.

Finally, can I wish the people who log into this blog, a very happy New Year.

Happy Christmas and a new Newsletter is out

2009-12-23T02:28:00.000-08:00

The HUBSolutions Team celebrated Christmas in a Malaysian restaurant near London Bridge this year. The restaurant was intimate and exotic, the food and service excellent, and we all had a good time - as this picture, hopefully, shows. Email photos of your ASB Christmas party to caseworker@hubsolutions.co.uk and it will join this one.

The crew around the table is unchanged from last year except for one on holiday and another off sick. Pride of place at the head of the table goes to Kitty, aged 6, daughter of Selvi and Krish who are next around the table. Then there is the author (Peter), Arlene, David and two of the four members of our Revenues and Benefits team - Manish and Kishore.

I feel I should give some positive publicity to the restaurant called "Champor-Champor" in Weston Street, London SE1. It is very accessible from London Bridge station so whether you are visiting London from afar, or live in the London area it is quite accessible and much recommended.

The main news for this Blog, is that we have launched a new e-magazine as the new format for the Caseworks Newsletter. If you havent received a copy, email caseworker@hubsolutions.co.uk for one. There is a competition in this month's issue.

Estate Management User Group

2009-11-21T08:17:00.000-08:00

HUBSolutions had its first ever Estate Management User group meeting on Friday. Topics for discussion included; how people were using the system in different ways, the benefits and difficulties experienced by users at different sites, mobile working, and future developments. It seemed to work very well - much of the thanks for this must go to David Perry at Hyndburn homes for providing the venue and laying on an excellent spread for lunch.

Below you can see a couple of photos from the event; users from Leeds in conversation with Peter, and a display stand that Hyndburn Homes had made that we were delighted to see included our logo!

New Look and Feel on display

2009-10-30T03:04:00.000-07:00

Readers, who have read the last Blog entry, will know that we are re-designing the "Look and Feel" of Caseworks to make it look more modern, more planned and more consistent. As promised I am including screen dumps in the Blog, when we pass a milestone, but the Nat Fed Exhibition will be your first chance to see it for real. Come to stand 18 and ask for a demo.

The good news is, the exhibition is completely FREE whether you register in advance at http://www.itinhousingexhibition.co.uk/ or simply turn up on the day. The website gives the exhibition opening times, and travel information.

Where have we got to with the re-design?

Well we have now done the Details pages - both View and Update - and our ".net specialist" is working on the main menu. This will be a complete rebuild, not just a cosmetic change. Here is our prototype so far:-

This screen has many options opened up, but in the final version, only one at a time will expand.
The intention is that the new menu will be fully user-customisable with user bookmarks and user search screen options.