Happy Spring Day!
To all of those in the southern hemisphere - enjoy spring! In Chicagoland we are heading into fall and then winter is coming. I logged into Case Manager today and was greeted by this beautiful custom Spring theme which made me decide to write a short blog about form customizations. One of Case Manager's core strengths is it's incredible flexibility. On the accompanying image you can see a beautiful spring theme but more importantly if you look carefully you will see an extremely customized Case form. I will quickly touch on the following aspects related to Case Manager data customizability. This article is structured with a focus on the following aspects of Case Manager.
- Custom Case Data Fields
- Custom User Interface
- Custom Documents
- Custom Reports
- Custom Workflow
- Custom Extensions
This blog article discussed the customizability of Case Manager 5. Version 6 took leaps ahead in improving this capabilty. Have a look at our Data Type Model documentation for more on this topic.
Case Manager Custom Case Data Fields
Case Manager allows administrators to create about two hundred custom fields - these fields can then be used to create and enhance custom User Interfaces, Documents, Reports, Workflows and Extension. The Case Manager development team continuously strives to strike a good balance between flexibility and simplicity - the approach followed with data customization is a great example of this balance. The following screenshot shows how easy it is to create a variety of types of custom fields in Case Manager - you can create single or multi-select dropdown boxes with predetermined value options and then also all the standard field types like financial / numeric, date, date time, text and phone numbers.
One of the first places where custom data is used is on the user interface.
Custom User Interfaces
Case Manager makes it incredibly easy to customize your user interface - you can even specify a different user interface per account type. An easy to use drag and drop interface builder gives managers and administrators the ability to easily customize the Case Manager interface to meet the needs of your workflows. The following screenshot gives an example of one of these custom user interfaces - note the tabbed sections, headings and different types of fields used. The available action buttons can also be customized.
You might think that creating a sophisticated interface like this is difficult and requires coding - actually it is pretty easy. The following screenshot shows form customization in action - it's all just drag, drop and configure.
Another thing that is pretty amazing is that Case Manager makes it possible to specify different form customizations for different divisions of your overall caseload as you can see in this following screenshot form customizations can be imported and exported.
Custom Documents, Reports, Workflows and Extensions
Case Manager's interaction with custom case data fields does not stop at the user interface but it is built into the entire case management process. Beautiful custom documents and reports can be crafted which generate with incredible precision and can display any of the custom case datafields. Thousands of these custom documents can automatically be generated in minutes as part of your case workflows. Custom case fields can also be pulled into case workflows and can for example be used on SMS / text message templates or on legal documents and bulk correspondence. If you want to push the flexibility of Case Manager we can even go as far as developing a custom extension for you with custom functionality.
Build your vision!
If you are frustrated by the rigidity of your current solution and you have ideas you want to implement easily and on the fly then you have to take a look at Case Manager - it combines flexibility and simplicity to provide you with the ability to adapt to change.