Sessions & Actions is one of In-Form’s most popular features – but how well do you know it?
We thought it would be a good opportunity to take a dive into some tips and tricks to help you get the most out of the functionality.
The basics
Sessions & Actions is the part of In-Form that allows you to log group activities and client involvement.
A session is an interaction with multiple clients, such as group work, house meetings, day centre, or night shelter. But this isn’t an exhaustive list, and can be customised to your project.
Actions help us to log client involvement. This could be which clients came to a particular session or service, or those who were invited but didn’t turn up. Again though, this can be customised to your particular project.
Above we can see the screen where you can search for the clients by attendance at a previous session or the project they are working with.
On the second row, is a search box where you can search based on different criteria and you can select which fields to search by. For example, gender, date of birth, city, etc., to narrow down the search of clients to add to the session.
Below we can see the standard view of the system where three clients have attended the day centre – as they have action records. From here you can update their participation records and notes.
Tips when creating actions
This first tip is to remember there’s a help button available to you. When you first start to create your action once you’ve pressed “create actions for multiple clients”, the help button at the top right can guide you through the page you see, telling you what each section of the screen can do.
Secondly, when you’re logging actions, you can add a new client from this screen. There’s a handy ‘create new client’ button that allows you to create a new client record in a new browser window, so you can add their details without losing your place and moving away from what you’re currently doing.
Filters and search
When searching, you can edit the search fields to help you find the information you need. Hit the edit pencil and select the filters that are most relevant to your current search (maximum five at once).
Also, if there’s a search criteria that you can’t already see in your list - for example, refugee status - you can ask the In-Form team to include this in your system.
Actions table
When you’ve selected your clients that you want to add as having been involved in the session, these will display as ‘draft actions’. Although in draft form, they are saved automatically. So if you want to leave the page and come back later to edit or add more, what you have done will be saved. This is the same for if a colleague logs in, they too will also be able to see your progress.
Two of the columns you can see below are editable. You can add or change the details in both the entry date/time and the notes, post event. This allows you to tweak the date or time of entry and quickly make notes whilst you’re checking people in. And as mentioned before, there’s no risk of losing edits and your progress if you suddenly have to step away, as they system saves changes as you make them.
You can also edit the columns that are displayed on the table. You can have a maximum of 12 columns and again, the names of theses columns can be configured so they better match the terminology you use and the project/s you are running.
What’s handy too: the system will also remember your specific preferences as a user.
Editing multiple actions
You can easily save time and edit multiple actions by checking them and then hitting edit.
More detail on how to use Sessions & Actions
These are just some of our tips and things to remember when using Sessions & Actions. If you’d like to see how the functionality works in full, you can watch a recording of our webinar below:
Help and support
If you’d like a demo of Sessions & Actions or would like to see the rest of In-Form, please get in touch.
If you already have In-Form and would like to use Sessions & Actions and/or would like some customisations, please hit the “Contact In-Form support” button from your In-Form system.
