Minor system enhancements released
The Data Exchange released minor system enhancements on 31 August 2019. These included improvements to the Data Exchange ‘search’ functionalities in the web-based portal and flexibility for when service types change. An overview of these changes is below.
System performance
To improve system performance, the ‘Find a Client’ and ‘Find a Case’ screens no longer show all results when you first arrive on these screens. System speed slows down when a high number of client or case records are displayed, so the web-based portal now limits the displayed records to only the results of your search criteria. If you want to view all records you can simply run a ‘blank’ search.
‘Hold’ search criteria and results
A new feature makes it easier to find your last search results in the web-based portal. Search criteria and the list of results will ‘hold’ until you run another search, clear the search criteria or log out of your Data Exchange session. This eliminates the need to re-enter this information each time you run the same, or a similar search during a session.
Service types
As a result of our continuous review process with program areas, you may notice that the service types available per program activity can change. This usually happens at the start of a reporting period, and is communicated via this mailing list and updates to the Program Specific Guidance (Appendix B) published on the Data Exchange website.
To allow more flexibility the Data Exchange system can now set a service type change in advance. This change will impact users differently, depending on their method of entering data. For Data Exchange web-based portal users, you may notice that the ‘service type’ field is initially empty when adding a session. This list will populate when you select the session ‘date’.
For Data Exchange bulk upload and system-to-system (web services) users, service types will now have an ‘Available from’ and ‘Available to’ (if applicable) in the reference data, to indicate the available date range of a service type by program activity. The ‘Available from/Available to’ dates can also be applied to the following items in reference data:
- ServiceTypeSpecificRequirements (if applicable to your program activity)
- ActivitySpecificRequirements (if applicable to your program activity)
- AvailableAssessmentTypes
Please note the new ‘Available from/Available to’ items in the reference data are for information only. Organisations are not required to configure and send new data fields to the Data Exchange, and we do not anticipate changes in third party systems.
If you have any questions about this release, or any technical enquiries, please contact the Data Exchange Helpdesk on dssdataexchange.helpdesk@dss.gov.au or 1800 020 283 between 8.30am – 5.30pm (AEST) Monday to Friday.