Release Rollout Begins: March 6, 2017

Release Final: March 15, 2017

Release Highlights

In addition to general tweaks and enhancements, this release comes with new and improved features in the following categories:

• Coordinated Entry: Support for Sharing Groups
• Bed Inventory: Multiple Seasonal Inventories
• Enhanced Public Listing Based on Sharing Groups
• Enabled Non-Federal Funding Source to Be Tied to Projects
• Custom Assessment Process Functionality (Beta Phase-1)
• Data Analysis Library: Dashboards and Looks Publishing for Users

Details for each update are provided below.

Coordinated Entry: Support for Sharing Groups

To add flexibility for implementations with complex sharing requirements, Clarity Human Services users can now structure Coordinated Entry features around sharing groups. This alternative to the traditional CoC-based model allows customers to use the Community Queue and associated referral features with locally defined groups of participating agencies and programs.

Bed Inventory: Multiple Seasonal Inventories

This update allows clients to have more than one Bed Inventory with the same characteristics (CoC, Household Type, Availability, etc.). The update also allows different inventories listed as projects to change or reflect the different seasonal years of inventory. Inventories with the same characteristics can’t have overlapping dates.

Enhanced Public Listing Based on Sharing Groups 

We’ve made an update that allows group sharing settings to override Public Listing settings—while still allowing the agency to receive referrals from agencies outside the sharing group, and maintain privacy requirements.

Example: 

There are 10 agencies in a CoC. Agency A has a sharing group in which their program data is shared with only 5 out of 10 agencies within the CoC. Agency A also wants to list their program on the Eligibility Determination List so that they receive referrals to their program. In order to do this, Agency A needs to enable Public Listing for their program.

Prior to this update, enabling Public Listing would then make Agency A’s program visible to all 10 agencies, instead of just the 5 agencies in their sharing group—the Public Listing setting would override the group sharing settings. However, if Agency A were to disable Public Listing, Agency A’s program would no longer be able to receive referrals. 

With this update, group sharing settings will override Public Listing settings while still allowing Agency A to receive referrals. Agency A will now be able to receive referrals while maintaining the privacy of the other 5 agencies not participating in the sharing group.

Enabled Non-Federal Funding Source to Be Tied to Projects

Currently, the federal sources defined in the HUD Data Standards are the only funding sources that can be assigned to projects. This update adds the ability to tie a locally-defined funding source to projects where funding sources are provided by non-federal resources.

Data Analysis: Publishing Dashboards and Looks for Users

This release includes significant improvements to the Data Analysis tools built into Clarity Human Services. A major update to the Data Analysis tab allows users to save and revisit their ad-hoc Data Analysis (Looker) reports from within the Clarity Human Services application. Users can choose from five different data models to create these reports and save them within their agency’s private folder.

1. HMIS Performance
2. HMIS Population Over Time
3. Services Model
4. Coordinated Entry
5. Project Descriptor

Coming Soon: Custom Assessment Process Functionality

We’re excited to announce that this release includes an early beta version of our new custom assessment processors. Custom score processing gives communities incredible flexibility when developing and refining their intake and assessment tools. The feature allows administrators to define scoring formulas for custom assessments within Clarity Human Services and use these scores for coordinated entry prioritization or reporting purposes.

This feature is currently in Beta Phase-1 development, and documentation will be made available as it proceeds in later sprint cycles.