Documents are electronic versions of paper based forms that you can create to help simplify data collection and reporting in Penelope. Most commonly, you may use Documents to track information about your clients, but you can also use them to record information about staff, funders, services, etc.

To get started, you create Document templates which you then make available to be completed for individuals, workers, etc. in specific areas of Penelope. For example, if you have a detailed Intake Form, you may assign it to be completed at the Case level so that workers can complete it with their clients immediately upon completing the Intake Wizard. You can also create Service or Program-specific Documents that only appear for applicable programs.

You can create as many Documents as you like (each containing as many questions as you like) and modify the Documents as your data collection needs evolve. The Documents can include as many questions as you like. You can set up your Document to include a variety of different questions whose answers can be captured as long-form text responses, selections from a drop-down list, multiple-choice responses, etc.

Before going too much further, there are two prerequisites for creating Documents which are tied to your account permissions. All topics in the Documents section assume that you have both of the following permissions enabled for your Penelope account:

Required Security Settings

Ensure that your Security Class has the Setup Security Settings > Allow access to Document Set Up setting enabled! For more information about security settings, please review the Penelope End User Security Configuration Guide.

The Documents List page displays your agency’s existing Document templates.

By default, the Document List displays all active Documents, but you use Search Criteria to view specific classes and/or include inactive Documents in the Results.

To modify the types of Documents you see in the Results:

Active and inactive Documents marked by a green or red indicator respectively.

If you’re just in the beginning stages of implementing Penelope at your agency, you’ll instead find four sample Documents in this list (and if your agency has been using Penelope for awhile, chances are the Sample Documents are inactive).

Each sample is designed to give you a feel for how the Document features work and to illustrate how to use these features in different ways.

Note

Sample Documents are not designed to be clinical in nature, so we don’t recommend enabling them for use throughout Penelope.

There are four different types of Documents (or classes) you can create: form, letter, outcomes assessment, and survey. The following table will help guide you in determine which type of Document is best suited for your needs.

Styles affect the appearance of your Document. When creating a Document template, you can customize the look and feel by choosing between the following styles: Boxed, Lined, Minimal, and Shaded. You can apply a single style to an entire Document, or you can mix and match styles throughout individual sections of the Document.

Boxed

Lined

Minimal

Shaded

Elements are the items that you use to populate and format your Document. There are five element types:

Questions are the main components of your Document. They can serve as a mechanism for collecting new information or pull information from other areas of Penelope into the Document through Data Lists and Data Field question types. There are many Question Types available for you to customize your Document.

Questions can be added to the Main Body, a Page, Sections, Groups, and Composite questions.

Sections are used as a mechanism for organizing similar questions together. For example, you may have several questions related to a client’s social history, their health history, and their current mental status that should be organized into individual sections.

Sections can be added to the Main Body, a Page, and other Sections. You can add Groups, Composite Questions, other Sections, and Questions to a Section.

Groups are used to organize a series of questions together in a table-style format. For example, you may have a series of mental health questions that you’d like a client to rate on a scale of 1-5.

Group questions can be added to the Main Body, a page, and sections. You can include one or a mix of different question types. Group questions that are composed only of number-based questions will automatically total for you in a completed Document.

Composite Questions allow you to create a set of questions across the same horizontal line and allow the responder to answer the set of questions as many times as applicable. In a composite question, you create a key question (or first question) and the remaining question titles are shown as column headers. For example, you may have a series of questions related to goal planning for a client, and the client may have more than one goal to Document. A composite question will allow the client to respond to the questions as many times as need.

Composite questions can be added to the Main Body, a page, sections, and groups. You can include multiple question types (for example, text, drop-down, date, etc. questions).

Pages are used to separate your Document across multiple pages. Enabling pages means that users will be required to click “next” when filling out the Document to move on to the next page. This option is particularly useful for longer Documents as it allows the person completing the Document to save their work as they go automatically. Note: If you select the Use Pages option, you cannot deactivate it later.