Social Solutions Product Roadmap 2021

2021 – An Exciting Year for Case Management Software

It’s easy to get distracted by the past, especially given the seemingly daily occurrences bound for the history books. But today, we want to encourage you to look ahead. We want to show you what’s on the horizon for nonprofits and public sector agencies. We want to show you a product roadmap that demonstrates an optimistically brighter future for the social good sector forged by you.

Whether you’re a Social Solutions client or not, watch the videos below to get a sneak peek of the year ahead. Our vision of the future of Case Management Software is fueled by the clients we serve, and they continue to influence the capabilities that we build, year after year.

John Manganaro, Senior Vice President of Product, will first walk you through the vision and themes behind our work for 2021. He will discuss the partnership with Penelope by Athena, the impetus driving our platform vision, and a selection of the most exciting capabilities coming to our clients in the first half of this year.

Building on the Foundation of ETO

ETO is the backbone and continues to be an integral part of the engineering and development teams at Social Solutions. Fallon Thompson, Product Manager at Social Solutions, walks us through the functionality introduced in 2020 and demonstrates the powerful new capabilities on the roadmap for ETO in 2021. Check out the video below to learn more.

Innovating with Apricot

See the future of Case Management software as Tully Moorhead, Product Manager at Social Solutions, enlists the help of Fallon Thompson to showcase the product roadmap and demonstrate some of the incredible tools coming to Apricot in 2021. Watch below to learn what’s in store.

You Asked So We Answered

During the roadmap webinar, you submitted a ton of questions. As promised, we’ve listed them below with answers put together by the team at Social Solutions. Find your question below!

Will these features be available in both Apricot and ETO?

Are Rules and Alerts for ETO or just Apricot?
Rules and Alerts will begin in Apricot and then be slotted into the ETO roadmap. We already have very similar functionality to Rules and Alerts in ETO. Reach out to our Support team or your CSM to learn more. Enhancements to more closely match Apricot functionality will come to ETO soon.

Are the Referral Capability Enhancements occurring for ETO too?
Yes. We are starting in Apricot with specific markets to test the capabilities and will expand to other markets and ETO + Penelope as we progress and iterate.

Is the attendance module Going to be in ETO also?
Yes, once we complete the Attendance Module work for Apricot we will collect feedback from early adopters and slot the development work for ETO later in 2021.

Will ETO also get “swim lanes”?
Yes, we will be starting our Program Enhancements work in Apricot and will replicate it in ETO.

Will ETO get the ability to set touchpoint security down to the field/question-level? For example, a site admin can mark a touchpoint as “reviewed” without staff being able to mark the touchpoint as “reviewed?”
It is not currently supported in ETO, but we would like to do something like this in the future. Once the work is completed in Apricot, we will slot this work into our ETO roadmap.

Will Program Enhancements also be available in ETO?
Yes, we will be starting our Program Enhancements work in Apricot and will replicate it in ETO.

How can I keep up to date on product updates and available trainings?

Is there currently a training webinar we can watch on using Apricot to track referral responses/results?
When the capabilities are built, we will have a webinar and training videos showing the capabilities.

Will there be a calendar on when these features will be released?
As we get closer to expected release dates, we will inform clients when these capabilities go live. We try to give several week’s notice before the release date.

Where can I find a write-up on the changes/upgrades made recently (not necessarily the upcoming changes)? Is there an email newsletter I missed, or is there a page online you can direct me to?
You can view all of our release notes for Apricot here and ETO here.

Will there be a mobile app?

As we move forward into a more mobile world, do you plan on making an App? I am a mobile caseworker, and ETO is not the best on an Ipad, but it’s gotten way better. Just would like the ability to make it better and track data on the go.
No, we will use a mobile responsive design for all products, including ETO. We are beginning the development work to make this happen for ETO midway through 2021.

Can you provide some additional information on Schedule?

Will Schedule offer integration with Google Suite?
Yes, Schedule includes Gmail.

I have some additional questions about Rules & Alerts. Can you clarify?

In reference to Rules & Alerts, when will time-based triggers be released?
We will continue to develop time-based triggers in Q2 2021, with an expected release date in Q3.

How will users receive notifications?
Notifications are surfaced within the product itself, so users will see notifications when they log in.

Will the Rules and Alerts be a standard package feature, or will it be an upgrade we pay for?
It is included in Apricot Core and Apricot 360.

Tell me more about Attendance Tracking.

Will you be adding the ability in apricot to record “ad-hoc” attendance or other types of multiple participant responses where you don’t need a roster to record the data? Like batch records but with the ability to record different values for each person.
Event and drop-in attendance where you won’t know or need a roster ahead of time is something we will solve for, but not in the immediate future.

Will the attendance tool be available across all Apricot products, including essentials?
Attendance Module and attendance-based insights will be available for Apricot Core & 360.

How robust will the attendance tool be? When you mention classes, will this track other things class-related, such as grades? Would multiple classes be configured and participants enrolled in those Classes? And would these tie into the Connections enhancements?
Great questions! The Attendance Module will be robust right out of the gate. You can set up multiple classes, terms and rosters. You will have the ability to track additional information other than present / absent, including time in and out, activities covered and any notes. Grades could be tracked in the notes field, and we will certainly explore a numeric or letter grade-specific data type.

Can you tell me more about the roadmap for Connect?

Will site administrators have access to Connect or only Global Admins? How many seats for each?
Site Administrators are still a Standard user type. If you assign Advanced Access to Connect to the Standard User that is a Site Administrator, they will have access. Access will still depend on the permissions given to the user.

When will Connect support all the field types and form rules available in Apricot?
We will support the vast majority of field types and form logic conditions; the exception at this point is linking. Our goal is to provide a very user-friendly Connect experience, and linking can be a challenging interface for those not versed in Apricot.

Can Connect be accessed by parents/caregivers we have entered in ETO via a TouchPoint and who are attached to our youth (Participants) but the parents/caregivers themselves aren’t actually enrolled as Participants?
Multi-participant ownership or access to Connect is not currently supported but is on the 2021 roadmap as “Connect for Families.” We expect to begin development for this functionality in late Q2 2021.

I have a couple more questions about the new features discussed in the product roadmap.

ETO has done a lot towards browser neutrality but hasn’t addressed Entities yet. Any timeline regarding your addressing Entity functionality?
All the Entities pages with the (new) text next to them should already be browser neutral. Older entity pages were updated to be browser neutral as well. If there is a specific page that does not appear to be working with Entities, please reach out to our Support team to troubleshoot.

Will SSO be standard SAML? Specifically, many organizations already have their email through Microsoft 365 like us and want to utilize Azure SSO. Standard SAML would allow for other providers like OneLogin.
We will support SAML 2.0 for SSO, which will support all mainstream identity providers, such as Office 365 and OneLogin.

Will it be easy to move from Workflows to Blueprints?
Yes, we want to make blueprint adoption seamless and not require a rebuild of current workflows from scratch.

Is the Caseload Manager module available for use?
Not yet. It will be available with the release of the Role Merge Tool.