Equality, diversity and inclusion (EDI) aren’t just important to us at In-Form, they’re a big part of Homeless Link's strategy, which is why we want to help you to use In-Form in a way that suits you to track and log your data to meet EDI best practice.
As part of Homeless Link, our values are; ambition, boldness, curiosity, diversity, empowerment. To us, EDI is defined as:
“On our journey towards equity, we advocate and strive for diversity and proactive inclusion to improve collaboration and connections within our organisation, our work and our sector.”
For us, this translates to two main approaches for In-Form:
- Recording data
- Accessing In-Form
In recording data, we consider the protected characteristics of age, disability, sex, pregnancy / maternity, religion / belief, gender reassignment, marriage / civil partnership, and race. Then, in accessing In-Form, we think about different accessibility needs from impairments to neurodivergence.
Within In-Form there are a number of features you can use that exist within your device, or that are Salesforce (the platform In-Form is built on) standard functionality.
We’ve summarised some of the key features that are currently available.
Recording data
When it comes to recording data there are lots of things that you can do to ensure that your clients can accurately represent themselves in your system, and also to make sure you’re supporting them appropriately and consistently.
Picklist values are a great way to capture data where there are a set number of values, such as gender or race. These can be customised to add the values you think your clients will want to use.
Where there are more possible values, you can use freedom of expression fields to elaborate on a picklist, or to give clients more options to tell you exactly what they want to.
Tracking this data unlocks a whole host of reports and dashboards. These can help you to evidence your impact, and make sure your clients are getting the support they need.
Accessibility
Accessing In-Form is also a point at which you can consider inclusion, as not everyone will be able to use the ‘standard’ view, or may feel more comfortable with some adaptations made to the view.
To support this, you can use Salesforce-native, In-Form-built, or third-party functionality; there are lots of things you can do to make using In-Form adapted to user needs.
You can add help text to clarify the field or the options within the field, to help understanding of what is expected to be entered into the field. As well as helping people to use the system more effectively without feeling excluded, it will also improve the data captured.
You can also adapt icons within the system to make their purpose clearer.
A good example of this is the previous traffic light system on risk assessments which was small and not always very clear.
When demonstrating risk we now have differing shapes and sizes. It’s possible to increase the size of the icons, plus we can also change the
shapes and colours and give them a label
and we can also include the score in text format too.
Plus, there’s a key as well to make it clear what each one means.
It can be useful to include explanatory help text to clarify what is required from a section of the system too. You can see here when hovered over with the mouse, it elaborates what this section is about.
The Outcome Star’s TM can also be customised to make it easier to read for users. The line colour and weight can be changed, as well as making the star grayscale.
Existing functionality
To improve visibility you can zoom in on In-Form to make the font etc. bigger on the page you’re looking at. You can also use your PC to change the contrast for you too, from low to high.
Another useful tool is that you can switch the display between comfy and compact, which either condenses or expands the information to create more white space on the page and moves the fields around to you can better see their attributions.
Dashboards can be made easier to read with light and dark mode too:
Plus there’s a whole host of colour palettes available to suit an individual user’s needs:
These palettes can impact how reports are viewed too, taking a pastel chart to one with a set of vibrant colours.
Finally, speech to text is a great tool, it's Microsoft 365's dictation tool, in that it can transcribe what you say. Speech to text can be used in In-Form on any text box and to formulate documents and emails – particularly useful for mobile users on the go.
Third-party
There are a wide range of specialised websites with their own tools, extensions for your web browser, and items on the AppExchange app store that can help you too. Some are free, some have their own licensing costs.
How do I get these features?
Where it’s a Salesforce or PC standard, these will already be available on your device/s. If it’s within In-Form there’s a chance it exists already and you just need to know how to activate it. Hit ‘contact In-Form’ from within your In-Form system and our team will be able to help you.
There’s also a great webinar from our recent conference that gives more details on everything covered in this blog.
