2024 Data Standards
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      2022 Data Services Change Log and Known Issues

      Data Analytics Maintenance

      Starting Sunday, December 18, 2022, and continuing each Sunday, Bitfocus engineers will perform maintenance on the Looker system from 6 AM - 7 AM PST (9 am - 10 am ET). To ensure the best performance possible for Looker, we are making necessary improvements to the infrastructure of the Clarity Looker configuration. The Looker application may be unavailable to customers during that period of time. Standalone, embedded, and API Looker functions may be unavailable for 1 hour. Looks and Dashboards scheduled for 6-7am Pacific Time on Sundays may not run and should be changed from this time. Please avoid scheduling any new looks or dashboards from 6 am - 7 am Pacific time on Sundays. No action from customers is required.

      Known Issues

      We use Looker as our analytics tool. There are some issues that are vendor specific issues and require support from Looker engineers. Our Data Services engineers work with Looker engineers for investigation, troubleshooting and fixes. 

      Here is a list of the current known issues:  Known Looker Issues

      Change Log

      • 12/23/2022 - (1:20 PM PST) Short unexpected Looker outage addressing issue with Custom Clarity fields not publishing.
      • 12/22/2022 - Fixed a bug where only enrollment-connected assessments were being brought into the HMIS performance explore. Enrollment-connected assessments and non-enrollment-connected assessments are now viewable in the HMIS performance explore.
      • 12/21/2022 -  Fixed an error in one of the looks on the CE Configuration and System Review Lookml Dashboard.
      • 12/20/2022 - Corrected some issues in the Chronic Homeless views that caused errors and/or unexpected behavior. 
      • 12/07/2022 - The description for the field "Added Date" has been updated for "Entry Screen", "Followup Screen", "Status Update Screen", "Update/Exit Screen". 
        • A bug was fixed in the "Homeless Occurrences: Length of Time Homeless" field where Night-By-Night shelter bednights were being counted as one night when multiple nights should have been counted. 
        • Refactored "Interacting CoC" field in the Outreach model to reflect the CoC of the User that entered the record.
      • 12/06/2022 - The `household_move_in_date` table has been refactored for optimization and address where there may be multiple Household Move-in Dates.
        • Updated rebuild trigger on Inbound Recidivism to run once a day.
        • Changes were made to the query logic underlying assessment-connected enrollments in the HMIS Performance model to improve performance.
      • 12/05/2022 - Updated rebuild trigger on Inbound Recidivism
      • 11/23/2022 - Refactored how Encampment Stays are calculated to account for where Location Filter is set to “Encampment” instead of the Location Filter Criteria.
      • 11/18/2022 - Obscured the Client Age data in Age Tier so the Tier field can be used in public-facing views. (Client Age data is still restricted.)This affects all views with Client data.
      • 11/18/2022 - Fixed a bug where the “Number of Encampment Stays” measure in the Encampment Occurrences view of the Outreach model was not counting active encampment stays. “Number of Encampment Stays” now accurately counts active encampment stays.
      • 11/17/2022 - Removed deleted services from the calculation for “Is Latest Service Based On Enrollment”. Only non-deleted services and non-deleted enrollments will be included in calculating this field. This will affect the Client Model, Coordinated Entry Model, and the HMIS Performance Model.
      • 11/15/2022 - Upgraded Looker from 20.16 to 20.18.
      • 11/14/2022 - As part of the Coordinated Entry Events refactor the Date of Result field label was changed to Result Date.
      • 11/07/2022 - Updated the client_service_programs join in the HMIS Performance Model to prevent restored services from being filtered out. 
      • 11/01/2022 - Made changes to the "Count Households" measure on the entry screen view, fixing a bug that prevented users from combining this measure with custom filters from other views. 
      • Changed the "Is First Enrollment In System" and "Is Last Enrollment In System" fields to allow tie-breakers for enrollments on the same date.
      • 10/27/2022 - Added deleted checks in the Assessing Programs join in the Coordinated Entry Model to remove deleted records.
      • Updated the deleted checks for inbound and outbound recidivism  in the HMIS Performance Model to allow restored records to be included.
      • 10/20/2022 - The following updates were made to Lookml Dashboards:
        • Data Quality Summary - Current Living Situation look updated to allow for drilldown functionality.
        • LSA Cleanup Funding Source and Configuration - Housing Programs with no Active Bed inventory Look was updated to ensure agencies with 0 bed inventories were accurately accounted for.
        • LSA Cleanup Utilization and LOS - Updated to filter out deleted bed and inventories from all utilization looks.
      • 10/07/2022 - Refactored the Inbound Recidivism table to improve performance. This affects the HMIS Performance and Population Over Time models. No action required.
      • 09/29/2022 - Fixed an issue that caused "Full Geolocation" fields to be hidden from the UI.
      • 09/20/2022 - Reverted Chronically Homeless at PIT changes listed in 9/20/2022 Release Notes.
      • 09/19/2022 - Updates made to SPM measure 3 to account for changes to the active method in the HUD Reporting Glossary.
      • Updated SPM 4 income changes to include assessments at 30 days from project start anniversary date.
      • The universe of programs used for Spm4 measures are internally filtered by some project types and some funding sources. The internal funding source filter has been expanded to include the "HUD:CoC - Safe Haven" funding.
      • 09/15/2022 - Switched the email server for the Looker application and conducted a minor upgrade to enable the switching of Looker's SMTP service.
      • 09/13/2022 - Bed and Unit Inventory History: Calculation Status field was causing an error and has been removed.
      • Made improvements to the "Is Latest Enrollment by date/project type (Yes/No)?" so that enrollments of different types with the same enrollment date are not incorrectly flagged as the most recent enrollment.
      •  "Age at Project Start" field in the Data Quality model showed the age at each annual assessment. The field was corrected and now shows the client's age at project start correctly.
      • 09/02/2022 - Returned the "Chronically Homeless at PIT" data-type to "yesno."
      • 08/30/2022 - The "Entry Screen - Chronically Homeless at PIT/Current Date - Individual (Yes/No)" field has been update to show a null when the project type is not a valid project type (1,4,8) for CH PIT
      • 08/29/2022 - Added hidden constant dimension to facilitate in constant bug diagnosis and correction.
      • 08/29/2022 - Refactored the "Client Currently on Specific Queue (Yes / No)" and  "Client Ever on Specific Queue (Yes / No)" fields in the Coordinated Entry model for accuracy.
      • 08/23/2022 - Added a hidden dimension to aid with fixing broken content when custom fields are removed.
      • 08/12/2022 - Building, Site, Unit, and Unit Configuration Custom fields are now available in the Project Descriptor and Inventory models.
      • 08/10/2022 - Updated the Referrals: Date dimension to fix an issue in downloads.
      • 08/05/2022 - Fixed a bug where some group labels and links were not populating correctly in the looker interface.
      • 08/02/2022 - Fixed a bug related to table joins in the Project Descriptor model.
      • 07/26/2022 - Released partial Looker BT-59 Changes:

        In the Project Descriptor model, the Inventory - Building Units Status, Offline Reason, and Offline Description fields have been moved to a separate Unit Status view. The offline start and end dates have been removed.

        Other Looker BT-59 releases were not released as focus was on addressing Looker performance. Full release date is TBD.
      • 07/25/2022 - Fixed issue with "Income Cash" fields.
      • 07/23/2022 - Increased Looker server resources by 33%.
      • 07/12/2022 - Due to a sporadic but system wide Looker issue, engineers have done an emergency upgrade from 22.4 to 22.10
      • 07/06/2022 - Updated the LOS measure for SPM 1b to improve accuracy.
      • 06/30/2022 - Added logic to check if an exit screen has been reopened (NULL Information Date) before including the data in the Last Screen.
      • 06/23/2022 - Removed persistence from the SPM measure 1 derived table to correct a cacheing error. 
      • 06/15/2022 - Refactored the Join relationship of Program Openings to correct how custom measures are counted.
      •  06/13/2022 - Made updates to public access restrictions to fix issues with published Looks in the Client model.
      • 06/08/2022 - Refactored outbound recidivism to improve accuracy.
      • 06/06/2022 - Looker infrastructure resource allocation adjustment to address "504 Gateway" error.
      • 06/05/2022 - Updated Looker certificate.
      • 05/27/2022 - Refactored Staff "Last Visited Date Time" and "Added Date Time" fields in the Project Descriptor models to return correct time instead of date.
      • 05/24/2022 - Updated Household view to improve performance.
      • 05/20/2022 - Refactored exit counts to fix accuracy issues and maintainability.
      • 05/17/2022 - Updated the description for the user updating field in the Program Openings view in CE model to be more accurate.
      • 05/06/2022 - Dimensions for Is First Assessment (Filter Dependent) and Is Last Assessment (Filter Dependent) have been updated to be more performant.
      • Refactored the Annual Assessment Status table to fix reporting on enrollments that have ended before the anniversary date. Some changes have been made to the available statuses. Please see more information about the changes here.
      • 05/04/2022 - Leavers missing the income source information record or having a Don't Know/Refused/Data Not Collected value at enrollment screen are now excluded from the universe of clients for SPM 4 measure.
      • The dimension for 'Status Update Screen: CoC Code of Client's HoH at Latest Project Update' has been updated to improve accuracy and performance.
      • 05/03/2022 - Update to Client model permissions to take account of user attributes for standalone users.
      • 05/02/2022 - We have identified an issue with our certificate authority and Google Chrome.   We are working to resolve it.  In the mean time, you can get around this issue by using a browser other than Google Chrome such as Firefox or Safari 
      • Made updates to address a certificate error.  There may have been some intermittent connection issues while we were identifying the issue. We apologize for the inconvenience.
      • 04/28/2022 - Made an update to the previous implementation to correct an issue.
      • 04/27/2022 - Implemented  performance improvements  for the Enrollment Household Filter in the HMIS Performance model. 
      • 04/20/2022 - Refactored "Is First Enrollment per Agency" in HMIS Perf, Data Quality and Client models to improve performance.
      • 04/14/2022 - Update to Overlapping Residential Stays view in the Data Quality model to improve runtime.
      • 04/13/2022 - Further updates to address an issue with "Project End Date Error" dimension in the Data Quality model.
      • The Data Services team upgraded Looker to version 22.2 on 04/01/2022.  This release has several bugs which greatly impact our customers.  After consulting with Looker support, we are being assured upgrading again should address these bugs.  We will be executing an upgrade on the morning of 04/07/2022 to Looker 22.4 in hopes to address these issues. We sincerely apologize for the short notice.
      • 04/06/2022 - Released "Global Filters - Include Deleted Data (Yes / No)," which allow all data marked as deleted to be filtered from results.
      • 04/06/2022 - Modified Looker logging parameters.
      • 04/01/2022 - Addressed an issue with "Project End Date Error" dimension where Grant Dates were in the future.
      • 03/24/2022 - Implemented several performance improvements for AssessmentResults in the HUD CSV Export Model.
      • 03/21/2022 - The dimension for Is Last Enrollment Per Agency has been updated to improve performance, Refactored HUD CSV export model EnrollmentCoC table to make it easier to maintain.
      • 03/12/2022 - Updated databases for performance and security.
      • 03/10/2022 - Updated CE Events to use referral reassigned date for referrals from the community queue.
      • 03/10/2022 - Updates to the HUD CSV Export (BETA) Model - 
        • Refactored the AssessmentQuestions so the AssessmentQuestionID aligns with Pentaho results. Advising customers use the "AssessmentDate" as a filter to return assessments within the Reporting Period.
        • Refactored Assessment Results  so each component of the Assessment Score is in it's own row and correctly populates AssessmentResultID, AssessmentResultType, and AssessmentResult. UserID refers to the User who last updated the Assessment.
        • Refactored the table logic underlying Enrollment CoC fields  to match Pentaho report. Revised EnrollmentCoCID, UserID, and DataCollectionStage fields specifically so formats and values align with report as well. Removed non-EnrollmentCoC fields from the view.
      • 03/08/2022 - Updated CSV Export Model to reflect changes to Grant ID in BT-56 by adding `csv_funding_grant_identifier` and changing reference to `grant_id` dimension. This change was made because the BT-56 release called for it.
      • 03/01/2022 - Changed the field that “Is Assessment Active in Agency Settings?” in the Project Descriptor model is looking at. This should not affect Looks already using this field.
      • 02/25/2022 - Update to the program community queues view to resolve an issue.
      • 02/23/2022 - Addressed Looker connectivity issue lasting from 6:22 to 6:48 PM PT.
      • 02/23/2022 - Updated JOIN logic for the Programs table in the HMIS Performance model to exclude data from programs which have been deleted. Further update to the SPM measures (new) to increase accuracy.
      • 02/17/2022 - Update to the SPM measures (new) to account for change in client location during the enrollment.
      • 02/14/2022 - Deleted filters updated to include replaced data (deleted = 0) in the Data Quality model.
      • 02/07/2022 - Is first Current Living Situation updated to improve accuracy for HMIS, CE & Client models. Updated join to the User Recent Reports view in the Project Descriptor model.
      • 02/04/2022 - Addressed responsiveness issue impacting Looker between 6:19 - 7:00 PM PT.
      • 02/02/2022 - Updated Coordinated Entry and Coordinated Entry - No Wrong Door LookML dashboards to improve accuracy.  Updated HUD CSV Export Model - CSV Assessment Questions file to include custom assessments. The temporary table is further limited to only CE assessments.
      • 02/01/2022 - Addressed issue preventing some Looker users from accessing Clarity Looker models.
      • 01/25/2022 -  Updated “Is Latest System Service” to filter out deleted data in the HMIS Performance model.
        Updated labels and descriptions to match 2022 HUD Data Standards.
      • 01/21/2022 - Increased Looker resources for analysts working on LSA.
      • 01/13/2022 - Deleted filters updated to include replaced data (deleted = 0) in SPM views in HMIS Performance Model.
      • 01/06/2022 - Updated the list of valid CoC codes according to latest documentation from HUD.
      • 01/06/2022 - Temporarily increased Looker capacity by 150% to help with after holiday usage spike.