Clarity Human Services Feature Updates
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      Clarity Human Services: June 2024 Feature Updates

      This month's release includes automatic recalculation of program goals and a new tool for changing a client's Personal ID.

      Release Schedule: 

      • All Training Sites: Tuesday, June 4, 2024

      • All Production Sites: Tuesday, June 18, 2024

      Highlights of this month’s updates:

      Note: 

      The updates described in this article will be deployed in the early morning hours on scheduled release days. During release, the Clarity Human Services application may experience performance delays. We recommend clearing your cache at the initial login if experiencing difficulty.

      The Data Analysis update will follow the same feature release schedule dates. There may be a slight delay when accessing Looker after the release as the system updates are being applied. Data Analysis release notes will arrive in a separate communication. 

      Updated: Automatic Recalculation of Program Goals

      Client program goals will now be automatically recalculated after any of the following actions:

      • Adding, removing, or restoring a service.
      • Changing data on an enrollment screen.
      • Adding, deleting, or editing data on an assessment (status, annual, current living situation, or follow-up).
      • Restoring an assessment (status, annual, current living situation, or follow-up).
      • Entering or editing data on an exit screen.

      Required Action: None.

      Updated: Ability to Type Dates in Report Date Range

      Before this update, users running a report from the Report Library could only enter a date for the Report Date Range and other date prompts by selecting the date from a calendar. With this update, users can type the dates into the date fields if desired.


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      Required Action: None.

      Updated: Screen Audit Logs

      This update applies to the behavior of the Audit Log when a system administrator updates an active screen (for example, to add, remove, or modify a field, constraint, or calculation)

      Before this update, the Audit Log for the screen would include not just the update by the administrator but also an “Auto-Published” record for each time a user saved that updated screen in the client record. 

      With this update, the screen's Audit Log will no longer include these “Auto-Published” records. It will only track changes made to the screen setup by a system administrator.

      Existing Auto-Published records will be removed from the Audit Log.

      Required Action: None. 

      Updated: Description for Value 9 in Custom Multi-Select Fields

      To align with the HUD Data Standards, the description for Value 9 in custom multi-select fields is being updated from “Client refused” to “Client prefers not to answer.”

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      Existing custom multi-select fields will be updated to change “Client refused” to “Client prefers not to answer.” 

      Required Action: Update any fields or filters in Looker that have Value 9 hardcoded as "Client refused" to “Client prefers not to answer.”

      Updated: Data Cascading Disabled on Certain Core Fields

      Data cascading has been disabled for the following core fields on all system screens:

      • Total Monthly Income for Individual (income_individual)
      • High Risk of Long Term Homelessness (vi_y_spdat_q32_v2)
      • Are you 17 years of age or younger? (vi_y_spdat_q24_v2)
      • PR-VI-SPDAT Percent of that owed (pr_vispdat_calc2)

      In certain circumstances, when fields are set to read-only, data cascading may override display constraints, resulting in incorrect data. We disabled data cascading to ensure that does not happen with these fields on system screens. To learn more about data cascading, check out Data Cascading in the Help Center.

      Required Action: To ensure data is not cascading when you don’t intend it to, please review all custom screens that include fields that are 1) set to read-only, 2) have display constraints, and 3) have data cascading enabled. Enable the Disable Data Cascade toggle on any fields where data should not cascade.

      New: Link/Unlink Tool

      A “Link/Unlink” function is now available for system administrators to change a client’s Personal ID:

      • “Linking” = changing the Personal ID of client record(s) to match the Personal ID of another record.
      • “Unlinking” = changing the Personal ID of a client record so that it no longer matches the Personal ID of another record.

      Personal IDs that are manually changed using the Link/Unlink tool will be excluded from the deduplication function described in our March and May Feature Update articles.

      Refer to our Link/Unlink Tool article for instructions on using this new feature.

      Required Action: None.

      Data Analysis Update: The new field "Personal ID Manually Updated" has been added in the "Clients" view, in the Client Model, HMIS Performance Model, Coordinated Entry Model, and Data Quality Model.  This new field answers whether or not a client's "Personal ID" has been updated manually.

      For more information please refer to the Data Analysis Release Notes here.

      Data Analysis Required Action: None.

       

       

      Notes:

      • Following the FY24 Data Dictionary, the HMIS Data Elements R6.A EmploymentType and R6.B NotEmployedReason now import as NULL when responses of ‘99’ (Data not collected) are submitted via the DIT for these two data elements. A non-blocking warning is also logged when ‘99’ values are submitted for these two data elements. DIT handling for these two elements is now consistent with other HMIS data elements that allow ‘99’ (Data not collected) in the HMIS CSV/XML but not in the Data Dictionary.
      • Our May Feature Updates article stated that DIT validation would begin to require that “DateUpdated metadata should always be equal to or after DateCreated.” That specific validation will no longer occur, but the other validations listed in that article will continue to be released as documented.

      • The heading ‘ClientUID’ replaces the mislabeled ‘PersonID’ in the DIT import logs in an upcoming update. The changed heading is visible after successfully importing CSV or XML with the Data Import Tool, and then clicking the “Show Results” button, which appears in the subsequent screen (or by clicking the edit/pencil icon next to any log entry).

       


      We Welcome Your Ideas

      We encourage you to suggest improvements and new features for our products. You can create feature suggestions or vote, watch, and comment on existing suggestions at ideas.bitfocus.com. Refer to our Feature Suggestions article for additional details. 

      New and Updated Help Center Content

       We’ve either updated or created the following articles in response to this Clarity Human Services update. 

      Updated Pages New Pages
      How Do I Manage Program Goals? The Link/Unlink Tool
      Creating and Editing Screens  
      Personal ID  


      Published: 05/28/2024