The Christmas Program runs from October through December and has two program types, the Standard Christmas Program (Click here for more details), and the Advanced Christmas Program. This article will discuss the Advanced Christmas Program option.
This type of visit is used to schedule a visit or delivery that will occur in the future, setting the status as Open or Pending. It will allow you to create a future visit, however, it will not be saved as an actual visit you can view through the Support Request Fulfillment report unless the status of the support request has been changed to confirm the provisions were picked up and the status is changed to Closed.
This article covers the following topics:
- Advanced Christmas Program Set-up & Overview
- Scheduling an Advanced Christmas Program visit
- Support Requests List
- Exports & Reports
Advanced Christmas Program Set-up & Overview
The reason for utilizing the Advanced Christmas Program would be to allow you to collect much more detailed information than a standard Christmas Visit and is often used by Networks with multiple agencies to keep track of how each agency distributed Christmas visit provisions.
When the program is added at the Network level to your organization you will have to complete the initial program set-up. In order to complete this you will navigate to the Network level select Administration > Network Programs, and then hit the orange edit button next to the Advanced Christmas Program that was created by our team. The first few options available will follow closely with this article concerning general program settings.
For this program type you will have unique Support Request Options you can choose to enable:
- Allow setting time on Support Requests: Allows users to set a time per each request.
- Allow tracking an external reference per request: Allows users to add an external reference per request. This adds a reference number field to the support request so they can use this to record external reference numbers.
Scheduling an Advanced Christmas Program visit
Search for the client in the system, if they are a new client add them to the system by creating a profile for them, click here for instructions on how to add a client.
Upon pulling up a client's profile and navigating to the Services tab you will select the grey New Advanced Christmas button. The name may differ depending on what you have assigned. Once this is selected you will be brought to the screen to record a visit, this is broken down into the following sections:
The Request Details
In the first section are the Request Details fields:
- Request Date: this is the date the request was made.
- Request Time: this is the time the request was made.
- Requesting Agency: automatically set to the location the user is currently linked to. This can be manually changed to a pick-up or delivery location in another location within the network.
- Reference Number: optional, if the food bank tracks another type of number for this request.
- Family Type: this is set as a list, customized by the organization, click here for instructions on how to add a list item.
- Status: automatically set to Open. This list can also be customized depending on your food bank's wording. Closed would mean it's been collected, click here for instructions on how to add a customized status.
- What were the reasons for this visit? (If selected in program settings): This allows you to record a reason for the visit based on your visit reasons list, for more information on how to customize this please click here.
Who from the household is receiving services for this visit?
The second section details the client and household members and defaults to all household members receiving services. Un-check the box beside the household names of those not receiving services.
Food Provisions & Item / Service Provisions
This will provide a drop-down list of any food provisions -or- in the next section any Item/Services provisions assigned to this program. Once selected it will display additional options to select the Fulfillment Agency, Fulfillment Date, Pickup Date, and whether it not it has been picked up.
The Fulfillment Agency is a list of Agencies or Sites created which live within the List section of Administration. Click here for information on how to edit this. Generally speaking, it is the site where the client picks up the provision. In most cases, it will simply be the same as the agency, but in some cases, it may be a temporary site you want to track for the holiday season. For example, if say a site utilizes multiple drop-off locations for the holiday season you may need data on where items were picked up, so you could add each location as a Fulfillment Agency list item. With that being said you can also just add the Agencies who utilize the Christmas Program to this list.
Additional Notes/Information
This field is a text box where you can add information regarding the client and visit.
A visit can only be deleted if you’re on the profile of the client the request was created for (not one of the other household members) AND it’s either Open or Pending and hasn’t been partially picked up (no provisions have been picked up.)
Step-by-step instructions / video walkthrough
- Search for the client in the system, if they are a new client add them to the system by creating a profile for them, click here for instructions on how to add a client.
- Navigate to the Services tab.
- Click on the grey New Advanced Christmas button.
- Complete the required fields in the Request Details section.
- In the Who from the household is receiving services for this visit? section un-check any household members not receiving services.
- In the Foods Provided section click on the drop-down Select Type field at the top right-hand corner of the section, this will provide a list of foods available to the client.
- select an option and then click the light blue + ADD button; repeat this step for every food item you wish to select.
- specify the Fullfillment Agency
- If selecting something other than Open enter the Fulfillment Date, Pickup Date and Picked Up status.
- In the Items/Services Provided section click on the drop-down Select Type field at the top right-hand corner of the section, this will provide a list of items and services available to the client.
- select an option and then click the light blue + ADD button; repeat this step for every item or service you wish to select.
- specify the Fullfillment Agency
- If selecting something other than Open enter the Fulfillment Date, Pickup Date and Picked Up status.
- In the Referrals section select any referrals that apply.
- Add any extra information in the Additional Notes/Information section.
- Click the blue Save button at the bottom right-hand side of the page to save the visit details.
Support Requests List
The Advanced Christmas program generates a filterable list of all visit details, to access this list:
- From the left-hand navigation pane click Clients and then Support Requests.
Running down the right-hand side of the Support Requests page is the Filter, if your list is long you can filter it in several ways, those being:
- City.
- Postcode/Zip code.
- Age.
- Date of Birth.
- Family Type.
- Fulfillment Agency.
- Fulfillment Date.
- Items Requested.
- Request Date.
- Requesting Agency.
- Request Status.
Be sure to click the blue magnifying glass on the top right-hand side of the filter pane after selecting your method for filtering. You also have the option to print the filtered list by clicking on the white printer icon.
Each support request has a blue header that contains the client name, from here you can:
- delete the support request by clicking on the red trash can icon.
- edit the support request by clicking on the orange pencil icon.
- view client details by clicking the person icon.
Exports & Reports
Support Request Export
When running an Export on the Advanced Christmas Program you will need to select Support Request Export to view the visit details.
This export option has different options for you to select that are customized to the Advanced Christmas Program options. You will also see a Filter pane running down the right-hand side of the page, this allows you to export appointments/requests based on certain criteria about the client and/or the visit details.
Support Request Fulfillment Report
As support requests are different than normal visits, Advanced Christmas Program entries will not appear on standard reports but rather will only appear on the Support Request Fulfillment Report so long as they are closed and have had provisions picked up.
For information on this report please click here.