Speed trebled for hosted Caseworks sites

HUBSolutions is pleased to announce implementation of a new server and new network for our seven customers for whom we provide a hosted service.

Conversion was done smoothly and without any service down time over a weekend. The new server is more than twice as fast, the new bandwidth is an order of magnitude greater than before and several aspects of security are also greatly improved.

The need for this has been caused by several customers increasing the number of users - in two cases by 100% - and several customers also requesting new facilities - mapping etc - which will make greater demands of the system.

The upgrade has been achieved in partnership with Netbenefit (UK) Ltd (www.netbenefit.com), a local London company, with many public sector clients, and who have bent over backwards to assist HUBSolutions staff in the conversion process.

Two new customers

Two new customers signed up for the Caseworks ASB Module this October.

Contour Housing Group is already halfway through the customisation process and the London Borough of Greenwich has broken through a mountain of bureaucracy to get a signed contract.

Both customers look set to make significant additions to the Caseworks specification, and also have some new parallel requirements - Colour Coding of cases - now part of the core system.

A new Tenancy Support User Group

HUBSolutions policy of full involvement of customers in the design and building of new modules, has resulted in the creation of another specialist User Group - for Housing Tenancy Support.

On 15/10/2010, the Tenancy Sustainment Service of East Durham Homes and the Tenancy Support Services of each of the ALMOs and the TMO in Leeds City Council met at Leeds to review the development of the new module - now nearing completion. A very constructive group meeting facilitated the exchange of ideas about the service provided, the system required and methods of working.

The Group agreed to exchange emails and keep in constant contact in the final period of development and testing.

Portsmouth Goes Live with the Domestic Abuse Module

Portsmouth City Council Early Intervention Department has gone live with the new Caseworks Module for tackling Domestic Abuse.

The new module allows cases to be set up with ease, using a customised wizard, then added to as work on the case progresses. A key element is the Risk Assessment page, comprising 24 risk elements and various supplementary questions, from which a score is automatically calculated and tracked throughout the history of the case. Cases are automatically coloured based upon the score providing visually appealing prioritisation of cases.

The module also allows the user to do MARAC referrals, referrals to Social Services, Community Alarms etc - all of which pull existing data from the Case and allow the user to create a printed output form at the click of a button.

Initial reaction from users has been very positive. The team has several times expressed a view that other DV Units would be interested in this programme, and they are looking forward to being the Reference Site and showing it off. 

Gloucester City Homes buys Caseworks ASB Module

The latest customer for the Caseworks ASB Module is Gloucester City Homes. As with the last three implementations, HUBSolutions adopted its highly successful "blitz" approach to customisation. After four days on-site liaison with the whole team, led by ASB Manager, Vickie King-Lowe, the team left users with a working test system. Everything is on target for a Go-Live date of 1st February, just six weeks after the first liaison meeting.

Gloucester will be the first site to go live with the "New Look and Feel". HUBSolutions was able to geo-code all of their addresses, in order to facilitate mapping for the implementation.