What’s New in Release 2021.2

Case Work

Bulk Operations: This release introduces the ability to perform a wide range of bulk operations on all or a selected set of cases that are returned by using the platform’s flexible search features. This eliminates the need to process changes on individual cases where these changes are similar, and drives efficiency in overall case management.

The available bulk operations are as follows:

 Add Assignees: Add one or more assignees to the selected cases.

Export as CSV: Export the cases to a CSV file that can be downloaded in the Reports application.

Category Change: Change the category of the selected cases.

Generate Case Summaries: Generate a summary PDF report of the selected cases.

Remove Assignees: Remove one or more assignees from the selected cases.

Set Follow Up Date: Set a single follow-up date for all of the selected cases.

Status Change: Change the status of the selected cases.

Tag Associated Contacts: Add tags to the contacts associated with the selected cases.

As well as the following that can only be done by Office Administrators:

Delete Cases: Delete the selected cases.

Set Due Date: Set a single due date for the selected cases.

 Sub-Status Support: Prior to this release, overall status tracking was limited to individual cases being open or closed. It is now possible for case office administrators to flexibly configure sub-status options for both open or closed cases, to specify default sub-status values if desired, and to configure whether user selection of a sub-status is mandatory or not when general case status is open or closed.

Source Channel: Tracking data associated with cases has been expanded to include the channel from which the case originated, providing insights on how citizens are choosing to report various types of issues. This information is now accessible from the case work dashboard, and shows whether each issue was entered by staff through the web application, reported in on-line web form, or forwarded by email.

Show Nearby Cases: For case creation in the web application, there is now an option to show other similarly categorized cases in the same vicinity. With “Show Existing Cases” selected, the location of nearby cases will be shown along with a count when there is more than one. Hovering over the icons on the map will display the case ids for other existing cases.

Case Merge:  There may be scenarios where multiple cases for the same underlying issue are created for a contact. For this reason, a case merge feature is now available to simplify searching and selection of duplicate cases, automatically merging and extra information from the duplicate into the primary case, and deleting the duplicate when complete.

Intake Templates: Intake templates can now be used when adding notes on existing cases, both from the Case card and the standard Case View / Edit screen.

Disable Emails to Staff:  For inbound email channels specifically, configurations have been added in case office administration to disable automated emails to staff when cases are created or updated.

Email Templates: The metadata for email templates has been enhanced so that Contact email addresses can be included in dynamically generated case emails.

Case Find: When searching for Cases, a new Location (map) option has been added to locate cases that fall within a free form or circular boundary.

List Builder

Contact Mapping: When target criteria are used to identify a set of contacts in the List Builder, the option now exists to display the locations for these contacts on a map.

External ID Support: When “Show All Criteria” is enabled, the List Builder now includes the ability to use external ids as target criteria. Four separate external ids are supported with operators that include “Contains”, “Exists” and “Starts with”.

Last Updated Support: For contacts specifically, the List Builder now supports a “Last Updated” criteria option. This makes it simple to identify all contacts that have been modified according to a wide range of available date operators.

Source and Due Date Support: For cases, the List Builder now supports criteria options for “Due Date” and “Source”.

Mobile Application

Landscape View: With this release the AccessE11 mobile application has updated to support landscape viewing.

Support for Source Channel and Case Sub-Status:  The mobile application has also been updated to fully support the Source Channel and Sub-Status features described above to fully align with the web application.

Other Improvements

Terms and Conditions:   An electronic signature option has been added for accepting Terms and Conditions.

API Enhancements:  A number of enhancements were made to the platform APIs to further simplify integration to third-party systems.