Client Reminders
Client Reminders are simple dated messages added to the client to remind that some action is due (eg. a case review, court case or some other event).
Reminders come in two flavours, Manual Reminders and Automatic Reminders.
Manual Reminders as the name suggests are added to the client manually at any stage whereas Automatic Reminders are set in Preferences to be automatically generated when the client is Activated.
Manual Reminders
Adding a Manual Reminder
At the bottom of the Client Details page is a highlighted blue box which shows any Future Reminders that have been added to the client. To add a new reminder simply click the Add Reminder button and you will get a small dialog where you simply add the reminder date and some text to explain what the reminder is for.
Once the reminder has been added it will be displayed in one of two places. If the Reminder Date is in the future then it will be displayed as a Future Reminder in a list in the blue box near the bottom of the page. However if the reminder is for the current date or for a date in the past then it will be displayed as an Active Reminder in a red box at the top of the page.
Note
The red Active Reminders box remains visible at the top of the page no matter which Client Tab is active. This is to ensure that it is not missed and the the reminder is acted upon.
Deleting the Manual Reminder
A manual reminder can simply be deleted by clicking the Delete button next to the reminder in either the Active Reminders or the Future Reminders box.
Resetting the Manual Reminder
If the manual reminder has a date less than a week in the future a second button will be available next to the manual reminder enabling the manual reminder to be Reset.
If you click this button the you are shown a Reset Reminder dialog where you can reset the date of the manual reminder and click Reset to save it.
Active Reminders
Clients that have one or more Active Reminders are highlighted in red in the Client List page.
Note
The highlighting of Active Reminders only applies to clients prior to Exit. Once a client is exited then it will not be highlighted even if there is an Active Reminder. This is to avoid cluttering the screen with too many reminders. If you have no use for reminders once a client is exited then you can set the preference Delete reminders on exit to ensure that they are automatically cleared up when you exit the client.
There is also an Active Reminders option on the main Client Management menu. This option by default shows all reminders that have a reminder date from seven days in the past until seven days in the future.
Active Reminders, that is ones with reminder dates that are today or earlier, appear in red at the top of the list while Future Reminders with future dates appear in blue further down the list.
You can easily filter this list by changing the numbers of days in the past and the future or by specifying a Programme or a Worker.
Clicking on the reminder in the list will open the client record.
Tip
You can do more complicated searching for reminders by using the standard Client Search functionality. Expand the Date Range set of search options and use the Reminder Date From and Reminder Date To to select which clients to list.
Note
Reminders up to one week in the future are automatically listed at the top of the My Clients page.
Automatic Reminders
Automatic Reminders are reminders that are generated automatically when you activate a client. The reminder will have its date set to a specified number of days after the client activation date. This number of days, and also the text of the reminder is specified in the preferences.
Any time after seven days before the reminder date the reminder can be Reset which means that the reminder date will be reset by adding on the specified interval of days to the existing reminder date.
When the client is exited the automatic reminders will be automatically deleted.
Enabling Automatic Reminders
Automatic reminders are enabled from the Enable Optional Features tab of the Preferences.
The automatic reminder parameters are fairly self explanatory.
Enable Auto Reminders simply enables the reminders to happen.
Auto Reminder Interval determines the time interval in days after activation the the reminder date will be set.
Auto Reminder Text specifies what the text of the reminder will be.
That is all that needs to be done to enable automatic reminders. However, if the parameters need to be different for some programmes, or indeed if they are to be disabled for some programmes then you need to follow the instructions below for overriding the default global settings.
Overriding Automatic Reminders parameters at Programme Level
If Automatic Reminders have been enabled in preferences then there will be some extra reminder related fields that appear on the Programmes page in Dropdown Maintenance.
If you don’t want reminders at all for this programme then you simply check the Disable Auto Reminders check box.
If you still want the reminders but at a different interval or with different text then simply enter the interval and text that you want for this programme and that will override the setting in preferences, but only for this programme.
Resetting Automatic Reminders
Resetting Automatic Reminders is exactly the same as Manual Reminders you simply click the Reset button which becomes available 7 days before the existing reminder date.
Deleting Automatic Reminders
Automatic Reminders are deleted in the same way as Manual Reminders with the exception that this function is only available to the Admin class of users.