HMIS News

HMIS News

Recent Servicepoint Software Updates: New Report Run History and auto-generated emails

A number of HMIS end users reached out to the Helpdesk last week in the wake of some surprising ServicePoint software updates by our vendor WellSky. ICA keeps close tabs on these updates to make sure we know exactly what will be happening. Nevertheless, we can’t always predict how or when these changes – even minor ones – may actually roll out in real life. The most recent software update, which occurred on Saturday, February 6, contained two changes that our end users immediately noticed:

(1) Auto-generated emails being sent to users about reports from the system and (2) a new Report Run History feature at the top of canned (built-in) ServicePoint reports, including the COC-APR and the ESG-CAPER.

Report Run History – Canned reports (the reports not in ART, like the CoC-APR and ESG-CAPER) now have a Report Run History section above the Report prompts fields. This allows you to see the status of the report as it’s running and when it is completed. You can switch screens while the report is running and then return to the report screen to get your completed report. Another benefit here is that your reports will not “time out” - if it is taking a long time to run and you get logged out of ServicePoint, the report will continue to process.

Note that users are limited to running no more than two reports at one time. Generally, these “canned” reports do run quickly, so this isn’t much of an inconvenience. That said, if you find a report has gotten stuck and is not completing, you should contact the ICA MN Helpdesk (mnhmis@icalliances.org), as we will need to contact WellSky to clear that report.

 
ServicePoint screen with Report Run History bar showing above Report Options fields

ServicePoint screen with Report Run History bar showing above Report Options fields

 

Auto-Generated Emails – *Update: this issue was resolved when our ServicePoint site was upgraded to version 5.13.13 on 2/27/2021. You should no longer receive auto-generated emails when running these reports!* Currently, if you run the COC-APR 2019, the ESG CAPER, or the Data Quality Framework, you may receive an auto-generated email from the system upon completion of the report running. This new “feature”, while harmless, caught us off guard since it was not included in the list of anticipated update changes from WellSky. Upon reaching out to WellSky for clarification, they let us know that this feature was not intended to be a part of their latest update at all! It is a mistake and presumably will be rolled back at some point (we do not have details on a timeline). In the meantime, you can completely ignore these emails – we do not have a way to “turn off” this feature ourselves, but WellSky is looking into it.