When building documents to be complete by clients via Engage and/or ClientConnect it’s important to consider the following:
How the document it fits into their day
How they will understand the questions in the document
It is important to remember when creating documents that will be completed in Engage and/or ClientConnect, that the client’s progress is only saved on the submission of the document. It is therefore important that your client can complete the document in a timely manner.
Tips for Building and Simplifying your Documents
Review Your Content
If this is a document you created (like an intake form), these tips will help through the next steps as it will make sure you’re asking questions that are relevant. Ensure what you’re asking is concise and clear. Identify any redundancies that may exist in your set of questions. The more concise a document is, the less time it will take for the client to complete. Some questions to ask yourself when defining the questions:
Does this question ask for data we already collect from standard fields in Penelope?
Is there anything a client needs to know about filling out this question?
Is this question repeated anywhere else in the form? Can these questions be combined?
Pages
More than 2 pages could become confusing or make completing a document difficult for your client. This will depend on the number of questions you have for a page. Remember, your client may be filling this out on a mobile device, over 10-15 questions on a page could become cumbersome.
Question Setup
There are specific question types that are available in Engage, try to only use those in the document setup. Penelope will tell you on the template setup if you have added questions that will not show up in Engage. For these items, if appropriate, you can use a short text field instead if required. If you commonly use the Document Breakdown report (or would like to start), where applicable use Lists, Number, Yes/No, Date, Service, and Site questions as these will feed into the report. Use the Comment question type to give the user instruction on how to fill out the document. Using numbering may help your client with how many questions they have left to answer.
Sections, Groups, and Composite Questions
Floating – in Engage or ClientConnect. Unless required for printing, you don’t need to set this. Composite questions – as with Documents completed in Penelope, we don’t recommend using over 4 questions in a Composite Question. Headers and Footer – you can also use these to give the user instruction on how to fill out the document here.
Conditions
Keep conditions simple. Your clients may not be used to complicated logic determining what questions appear.
Use the condition to show a question that is right below the original question. This will help make the connection that what they just answered has to do with the one that just appeared or a field is enabled below it. Try not to use conditions to show a new page. Try not to use conditions to affect questions on other pages
Stages
Again, ensuring ease of use for you and your client.
Stage Names – ensure the stages are named appropriately and that your staff can easily identify Initial, Progress, and Close stages. Stage Rules – always make sure the logic is not complex. The “Display Initial Stage” stage rule will not display when completing so it’s important that you are able to provide sufficient context using headers and footers of Sections/Groups or Comment questions.
Additional Documents
Sub-documents cannot be used with Engage or ClientConnect. We recommend using the Action Trigger setup on documents to send a Client another Document if required. See Action Triggers for Documents for more information on setting up Action Triggers on Documents. Doing this may also help you pair down what you need for a particular Document.
Copying and Pasting
Avoid copying and pasting where possible. When adding text into headers and footers, copying and pasting can carry hidden formatting with it. This can impact the way not just this text appears, but also how other questions and answers (when saved by the client) appear in the browser, such as making the text appear in italics, smaller/larger than other text, a different font type, etc. It’s better to manually type the text in wherever possible.
Data Field/Data List Questions
Avoid the use of data field/data list questions. Questions pulling answers from one document into another to display when completing a document may not work as expected when your client completes it within Engage and ClientConnect. These question types are best used only when completing documents in Penelope by a Worker.