A guide on notes and how to keep track of your work with each client.

The notes section of the "Our Work" tab is so important. Why? It's the best way to keep track of your work with your clients and track the progress you make together. 

To get to the "Our Work" tab, find your client in the client list (using the search if you need) and click on their name. You'll be taken to their "Our Work" page. The screenshot below is what you'll see. Just beneath the photo, you can see the Notes section. Any time you want to add a note, you can just start typing where it says "Type here" or click the plus sign (+) button (see orange box below). 

If you click the expander with the down arrow/carrot (v) you'll see what we call "Note details" that keep track of important information we want to have for each note/visit. It's highlighted in the orange box below and will show up as ^ when this section is visible. 

Let's talk about what each of these different fields mean!

Note type: This is where you keep track of the kind of visit you had with your client. Did you go to a doctor's appointment with the client? Did you do a Meet the Person Interview (MPI)?  Many of your notes will fall under the "Follow-up" category for times when you called or met up with your client to keep working on your goals together.

Date of Encounter: This is the date that you met with the client. In the example above, the CHW met with the client on 10/26/23. (Tip: if you end up writing your note the day after you met with your client that's ok! Just make sure in the "Date of Encounter" to record the day your visit actually occurred rather than when you're writing your note.)

Time Spent: This is the amount of time you spent with the client. You can click the "+" and "-" buttons to add or subtract 15 minutes to get to the closest estimate of the time you spent together. In the example above, the CHW spent 45 minutes with the client. 

Client Reached: This is where you'll note whether or not you were able to reach your client. Most answers in the dropdown are a "yes, and" because it's important to keep track of what kind of visit you had. For the example above, the CHW selected "yes, in person at a medical setting", as they met the client for a doctor's appointment. There are also options for indicating when you had a phone or video check-in with your client ("yes, but not in person"), or you met them at their home or out in the community ("yes, in person at home/community"). You can also select "No" if you were unable to reach your client. 

Next Contact: When are you planning on seeing your client next? Enter that date here. In the example above, the CHW is going to be meeting their client Row again on 11/9/2023.

Type of Support: How did you support your client during your time together? Did you provide social support? Did you connect them with services like transportation services or food services? You can pick the best fit(s) from the dropdown menu and select multiple options. 

Creating Notes

When you create a note in the text box it's automatically saved as a Draft. The application will save your work as you go and you'll see the note you're working on appear in the list of notes under "History".

When you're writing your note you'll see a few different things beneath the note's text field highlighted in the red box below:

• On the bottom left is a trash can - you can use that to delete the current note you're writing.
• In the middle of the red box, you can see a check mark and "autosaved 2 sec ago". The note will autosave continuously as you continue to write so that you don't lose your note progress.
• To the right in the bottom corner is the "Final" button. This button is only active when you've filled out the required Note details (such as Note Type, Client Reached, etc) that we described above. If you choose navigate away from the page without selecting "Final" your note is saved as a draft. In general we encourage you to save your notes as Final when you are done working on them. 
  

Viewing Past Notes

Once a note has been added to a client profile, they'll be shown below the Final button in the History section which lists past notes with the newest on top. For each note, you can see the type of note (Doctor's Appointment), the date the note was added (10/26/2023), the name of the person who left the note (Fox, in this case).

Draft notes will have a Draft badge on them and Final notes will not. 

Editing Draft Notes

Maybe you jotted down a few key points to turn into more extensive visit notes later on. These notes, if not finalized by the "Final" button, were saved a a draft once you saw the "autosave" message to the left of the "Final" button. In order to complete those notes and make a draft into a final note, you'll just need to navigate to the "History" section (seen above). You can either look for the notes that have a "Draft" badge, or you can sort by "Final" and "Draft" by using the "all notes" drop down to the right of "History". To edit drafts, you'll want to select your draft note. A pop up window will appear with your incomplete draft. Scroll to the bottom and click on the pencil emoji. Your text box will go from grey to white, and you'll be able to type up your note. As always, click "Final" when you're done to ensure it's been saved!

Adding Addendums 

Once a note has been finalized, they are unable to be edited. However, you can add additional notes to an existing note (known as an addendum). 

To add an addendum to an existing Final note, first click on the note you want to add the addendum to. Then click the "Add Addendum button" in the bottom left. In the orange box below, you can see the Addendum text box where you can add additional note. As always, you can use the garbage icon in the bottom left to delete an addendum. Similar to Draft notes, your addendum will be autosaved as you work. Once you're done click "Final" to save your addendum as final.

Below is what your note will look like with an addendum added. Beneath the addendum, you can see the Add Addendum button to add another. As with other notes, you can see the name of the person who added it in the top left corner with the date it was added in the top right corner.

Have additional questions that haven't been answered here? We're always here to help you and you're welcome to reach out to us at support@impactcarehq.com. 🙂