Blog

What's the difference between the Unique Identifier List and the Coordinated Access module?

Communities are often confused about the Unique Identifier List (UIL) which is found in the HIFIS Reports section of the Report Manager, and the Coordinated Access module, which is labeled as the Coordinated Access - Unique Identifier List and can be accessed through the Front Desk > Coordinated Access.

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Making the most of Transitional housing status

As of HIFIS version 4.0.59, there's a new feature that identifies the client's Housing Status.

The Housing Status is derived from a combination of both the client's Housing History and their Admissions, and can be one of 5 statuses:

  1. Housed
  2. Homeless
  3. Chronically Homeless
  4. Unknown
  5. Transitional

You can look up the Housing Types that belong to the Housed, Homeless, and Transitional categories in Administration > Housing Continuum by looking up the Reaching Home Continuum. A client is Chroni…

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Activity and Inactivity

Inactivity Threshold

One of the new features of HIFIS 4.0.59 is an automated client inactivity function. This makes use of a pre-existing field called Client State/Status, which used to only be able to be updated manually, and now adds an automation.

Previously, a client would have one of three statues: Active, Inactive, or Deceased. A user would manually change the value of the field if they wanted to mark a client as Deceased or Inactive. Of course, since it was a manual process, staff would hardly ever mark a cl…

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Takeaways from #CAEH22

And that's a wrap on #CAEH22. It was so great to see so many faces that have only been Zoom personalities for the past three years.

  1. We need to get better at getting out of the way of indigenous-led housing programs that are doing a great job @Celest Hayward @Fran Hunt-Jinnouchi
  2. New Zealand is dealing with many of the same challenges we are in Canada @Ali Hamlin-Paenga
  3. We can't just bulldoze an encampment and assume that'll solve the problem. We've got to work on understanding the root cause…

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Homelessness Data Self-Assessment

 We've done Crystal Reports training with a number of students, and we find that while some students take to the materials (relatively) easily, others find it a struggle. But here's the thing - if you find it a struggle during the training, you're probably still going to be struggling when it becomes your job to write new reports for your community. So maybe learning to manipulate data through Crystal Reports isn't a good fit for your skill set. So maybe you shouldn't have taken the training aft…

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HIFIS 4 Deployment Options in British Columbia

Communities in British Columbia have been caught between a rock and a hard place, HIFIS-wise, with BC Housing holding a provincial license but only utilizing it for their own funded programs, and Designated Communities now being required under Reaching Home to adopt HIFIS and Coordinated Access locally.

ACRE Consulting was hired by Employment and Skills Development Canada (now Housing, Infrastructure and Communities Canada) to identify viable options for HIFIS deployment across British Columbia, …

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My Initial Thoughts on the Ontario HPP Program

As of April 1, 2022, Ontario communities now have new funding requirements through the HPP program. There's a lot to take in here, so many communities are rightly concerned about what this means for them. In particular, those using HIFIS are wondering how they should start recording data so that they can pull it out at the end of the year.

I'm afraid that I don't have all the answers yet, but since so many people are thinking about this right now, I thought it would be good to start a discussio…

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Supportive Housing in HIFIS 4: Recommendations Report

In the spring of 2021, the Canadian Alliance to End Homelessness and ACRE Consulting, having recently submitted a proposal for a new shelter diversion module in HIFIS, decided to turn their attention to the issue of housing in HIFIS 4. This attention was spurred by several factors: 
  • The fact that Reaching Home-funded agencies will soon be required to use HIFIS 4, and that some eligible activities do not clearly align with the available HIFIS modules (including transitional housing and permane…

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Passwords & Account Security

brute-strength-password

Several years ago, we wrote about a new feature (new in version 4.0.52!) that allowed for more secure passwords in HIFIS, with more options for customizing.

Internet security has evolved, so we thought it was time to revisit our old discussion. HIFIS has several features that allow you to configure some things, but how should you configure them?

Password Expiry

One thing that has been examined recently is policies that force a user to create a new password every so often (typically 90 days). …

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New Feature: Clone Users

In HIFIS 4.0.59.5 (December 2021), there's a new feature that allows you to clone an existing user. (If this sounds familiar, that's because we posted about the idea recently!)

What this option does is copies all the configuration from one user to a brand new user account: this includes the Roles, Service Providers they have access to, default Service Provider, and Rights for each Service Provider.

It's super simple to use. When you want to clone a user, just click on the new Clone User button…

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