TracCloud: Case Management

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Case Management

TracCloud's Case Management feature allows for quick and effective tracking of user-submitted incidents, maintenance requests, concerns, and more. Different case types and subtypes can be used to ask the right questions during and after submission to ensure your team has all the information you need for the case at hand. Cases can be submitted by students, staff, faculty, or anonymously depending on the case type configuration.

The overall structure of case management can be seen below. The Case is the overall incident, request, or referral which contains Activity Reports that represent actions or follow-ups within the case.

Case types can be configured in a number of different ways depending on your intended workflow. In their most simple form, you may have a case that simply needs to be reviewed and approved by staff, where a typical timeline may look like this:

Or you may have a case with multiple statuses and actions being completed throughout. You can leverage activity reports to record "steps" throughout the process, automatically notifying relevant parties as needed.

If your case has multiple branching actions taking place at once, you can have multiple concurrent activity reports (each with their own statues) tracking all the details until the case is eventually resolved. Regardless of what kind of case you have in mind, this article will explain how you can build case types to fit your needs.

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Case Management Configuration

Learn how to create case types, activity report types, configure automated email notifications, and more.

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Categories

Every case type must be linked to a category. When creating a case, the available types will be grouped by category to allow you to easily locate the case type you're trying to submit.

Other > Modules > Case Management > Categories

To create a new category, click the hamburger menu and select "New Case Category." Enter the name of the category and describe its purpose. The next section of this article will explain how case types can be linked to these categories.

The above example would display like this during case creation. Clicking the button would then show the available case types within the category.

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Case Type Configuration

Case types represent the various types of incidents, referrals, or issues that may need to be reported. For example, you may have a case type for maintenance requests, another for policy violations, and another for safety issues. To create a new case type, go to the hamburger menu > New Case Type.

Other > Modules > Case Management > Types

Basic Case Type Info

This tab contains general settings for the case type, including its name, description, subtypes, and who is allowed to submit these cases.

• Inactive

If a case type is no longer being used, it can be deactivated. If your case type has linked cases, it should always be deactivated instead of deleted to prevent data loss.

• Allow all students/Staff/Instructors to Open/Report

Choose which user types are allowed to create cases of this type.

• Category

Select the category (as configured above) that this type should be a part of.

• Name

This is the name of the case type.

• Button Title

This will be the name of the button shown to start creating this case.

• Description / Instructions

This text appears beside the button above when beginning to create a case of this type as well as on the case creation screen.

• Issue Name

Choose your preferred wording for the type of case this is. For example, 'Case,' 'Incident,' or 'Report.'

• Auto-Choose if it's the only type in the category

If this case type is the only case type in its category, it will be automatically chosen when clicking the category during case creation.

• Ask for a Subtype for the Case Type

If enabled, an additional "Sub-type" field will be added to the case. Your list can be provided as a menu field (drop-down list), radio choices, or a list (scrollable list).

• Ask for Contact Info on Report

If enabled, during case creation the reporter will be asked if they can be contacted and for their contact information.

• Ask for Location and Description/Notes when Opened

Both of these options toggle on or off these fields in the case entry screen.

• Hide Incident Date Time

If checked, the separate "Incident On" and "[Case] Reported on" fields will be replaced with a single "[Case] Opened" date field.

• [Case] is always for One Person

If enabled, a "[case] for" field will be enabled allowing for a Student, Staff, or Faculty (you can restrict user types if needed) to be selected as the primary/target individual for this case. Optionally, you can configure the type so that the individual creating the case is automatically linked as this person. You can also prevent each person from having more than one case of this type, such as for financial aid requests.

• Replace In Progress with Status(es)

Cases always have an "Open" and "Closed" status, and by default they also have a generic "In Progress" status. This option allows you to override that last status, allowing for different or multiple statuses between open and closed.

• Opening a new case: auto display and create activity report

By selecting an activity report here (explained in the next section), that report will display during case creation rather than requiring the user go back into the case after the fact to create the first activity report.

Activity Report Preferences

Activity Reports allow you to append additional information and actions to cases, as well as specify the parties involved with a particular case. For example, you may have a report for data gathering at the start of a case, possibly multiple for different stages throughout the case as progress is made, and another for the resolution of the case. This isn't a requirement by any means, you can structure these activity reports to best fit your needs. Click Add Report Type to begin.

These are the available activity report settings.

• Report Type Name

This will be the name of the activity report. Students, Staff, and/or Faculty will select this in order to begin the process of adding the report.

• Report Description

This is an internal notes field for this activity report, only visible here in this menu.

• Ask for Severity

Choose how users can report the severity of this report. None hides this field, Severity Only provides a drop-down menu of options including Low, Moderate, High and Critical, while Urgency, Impact, and Severity (pictured below) includes all three of those listed fields. If the latter is chosen, Urgency and Impact automatically determine Severity, but Severity can still be overridden manually if needed.

• Ask for Report Status

This adds a drop-down menu of statuses to the activity report. If enabled, you can list the statuses on separate rows beside the checkbox. This can later be used in Notification Preferences to automatically notify individuals if a status is chosen or has remained for an extended period of time.

• Ask for Persons Involved and Witnesses

These add fields to the activity report that allow you to choose who was involved with, affected by, or witnessed the case's topic.

• Ask for Parties Notified

This field (also pictured above) allows you to link an individual to be notified with an email regarding this case. The email can be sent immediately or scheduled to send later (such as a reminder for stalled progress).

• Report Sections / Custom Questions

This is where you can create the custom questions you want to ask inside this activity report. Very similar to custom fields, these can be formatted as text boxes, radio choices, drop-down menus, document uploads, etc. Also similar to custom fields is the "width" value, which determines how much space each field takes up. Multiple fields will fit side-by-side if their widths allow.

Notification Preferences

This tab allows you to configure the email and SMS notifications that may be sent when this case is created or when status conditions are met.

Notifications when [case] is Created/Opened will send as soon as the case is opened. You can have as many messages as you need, and each message can be sent to one or multiple staff members.

Notifications when [case] or Activity Report Status changes can conditionally send based on the case or activity report status. For example, you may send an email after 0 days (i.e., immediately) when the case status is changed to "Closed." Another example would be notifying someone when the status of a particular activity report has been unchanged for a few days, as shown in the screenshot below.

You can have multiple messages with multiple recipients, each with their own timing and status condition. You can either choose a specific staff member to notify or an individual related to the particular case using the arrow button. Case Worker is the individual that has been manually linked to the case, and Case Supervisor is that person's supervisor. Investigator is TBD. Opened By and Reported By will typically refer to the person who created the case.

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Creating and Managing Cases

Learn how to create and follow-up on cases and activity reports.

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Creating a Case

Cases are most often created from the TracCloud dashboard using the button in the navigation bar. Clicking this will open the case category list to begin the submission process.

Clicking on a category will then display its available case types. Optionally, if you only have one case type in the category (and it's been configured to be auto-selected in that scenario), clicking a category may instantly open the available type. The screenshots below show the category list and the type list that appears after choosing a category.

Lastly, after choosing a case type, you can start filling out the details of this case. The options displayed here will differ based on your case configuration. This particular case is configured so that an activity report is immediately shown to be filled out during case creation. This is one of several ways activity reports can be logged in a case, more will be covered in the next section of this article.

Any cases that have been created will be available to review or update later in Other > Modules > Case Management > Cases. Clicking an existing case will open the entry page, like what's shown above. Both the listing and the case entry page allow for creating activity reports on each case, which is covered in the next section of this article.

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Activity Reports

As described in the configuration section of this article, activity reports represent follow-ups, completed actions, or additional details over the course of a case. There are a few ways activity reports can be created within a case:

1. During Case Creation

As described in the section above, you can optionally configure your case to show an initial activity report during creation allowing for an immediate report.

2. From the Cases Listing

The cases listing (Other > Modules > Case Management > Cases) has a column with buttons to create each of the different activity reports for each case's type. If there are 4 or more available activities, they will display in a drop-down menu instead.

3. From Case Entry

By clicking on one of the cases above or otherwise opening a case in the system, you will be able to create or manage activity reports in the tab shown below.

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Activity Report Creation

Regardless of the method used, the process of filling out an activity report will be the same (according to how your case type's activity reports were configured). The screenshot below shows one possible configuration, but your custom questions, urgency fields, and involved parties will look different.

When adding notified parties, you can schedule an email or SMS message to send later to that individual. Alternatively, you can log that an in-person conversation took place at a specific time.

Any activity reports created will be shown under their own tab inside existing cases, or you can view all reports in their own listing in Other > Modules > Case Management > Activity Reports.

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For information on purchasing the Case Management Module, reach out to [email protected]
For Case Management functionality questions, reach out to [email protected]

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See Also:

Report: Cases Listing