Release Notes

July 3, 2024: Use Organization-Level Dashboards

This release delivers this fix:

• Organization-level dashboards show data as expected. Some users were seeing an error message saying, “That page doesn’t exist, or you don’t have permission to view it,” when they tried to access their Volume dashboards from organization records. The reason was that the Organization ID filter value that allows organization-level dashboards to work was no longer being filled in. We restored this functionality, and now these dashboards work the way they are supposed to.

Resources

For more information related to this release, check out these links:

July 2, 2024: Save Dashboard Filter Settings

Saved dashboard filters, one of our most requested features, is now available! Instead of resetting filter values every time you open a dashboard or making multiple copies of a dashboard with different default filter values, you can save time by saving the filter value set you want once and applying it whenever you need it.

Note: This feature is only available on hc1’s current dashboard platform. If your company started using hc1 prior to 2019 and still uses our legacy dashboards, please contact hc1 Client Success at clientsuccess@hc1.com for assistance with upgrading to our current platform.

The new Saved Filter Options menu gives you three choices:

• Save new filter: After you have selected filter values you want to save, choose this option, type the filter name in the text box, and click the Save button.

• Manage existing filter: This option lets you rename or delete a filter you have saved. Choose the filter you want to manage from the list of saved filters under the search box. If you are renaming it, type the new name in the box and click Rename. To delete the selected saved filter, click Delete. For both renaming and deleting, you will see a confirmation box asking if you are sure. Click Yes.

• Apply saved filter: This option lets you run or update a filter you have saved. Choose the filter you want to apply from the list of saved filters under the search box. Click Run to load the dashboard with the values in your chosen filter. If after working with the saved filter you want to change its filter values, make your changes to the dashboard filters and click Update. You will see a confirmation box asking whether you are sure. Click Yes.

Note: Saved filters are designed to be available only to the user who created them and only on the dashboard where they were created.

If you are a system administrator, you can control access to the saved filters feature from the HI Report Component Display Options. We have already turned on the Saved Filters option for all existing dashboards that are displayed in your environment.

Resources

For more information related to this release, check out these links:

June 20, 2024: Review Employee Details in hc1 Workforce Optimization

In response to client feedback, we have changed hc1 Workforce Optimization to display the employee’s name and exclude status on the Employees Configuration page so that you don’t have to open the edit window to see these details.

Note: You must have the Administrator role to see employee names.

This release also delivers these Configuration changes:

• Alerts are now sending email messages as expected.
• On the Departments Configuration page, the Copy Values From feature displays the selected department’s values as expected. Before, a blank page would appear, and you would have to refresh the browser page to see the values.
• The Time Unit value displays on the Analyzer Info page. Before, when you would open the Analyzer Info page, it didn’t display the value for Time Unit, making you wonder if a value had been saved.

On the homepage, we have improved the Recommendations section.

• Recommendations subtabs are now color-coded. The new formatting makes it easier to differentiate between New, Deferred, and Completed recommendations and to see which subtab is selected.
• The Completed tab’s link to the recommendation’s details page is now marked View instead of Optimize to reflect that these recommendations have already been resolved and don’t require further action.

We also improved the Staffing Levels chart:

• Week 6 predictions are now populated in the Staffing Levels chart and Business Impact graph. Before, this week would be blank because the prediction service generates predictions beginning the Sunday before the current date, but the prediction metrics show predictions beginning the Sunday after the current date. To close this gap, we extended the time the prediction service runs to seven weeks.
• The full-time equivalent numbers in the Staffing Levels Chart now display double minus signs for very understaffed departments and double plus signs for very overstaffed departments.

Resources

For more information related to this release, check out these links:

• Predicting Your Lab’s Future Staffing Needs Now With AI: An hc1 Workforce Optimization Demonstration (hc1 webinar recording)

June 6, 2024: Request hc1 Service Select™ Services via a New Portal

hc1 Service Select™ is the name for the premium services subscription that enables you to order a certain number of hours of professional services from hc1 each month. In response to client feedback, we have launched a streamlined hc1 Service Select portal to replace the application we retired in May.

With this portal, you can:

• Upload attachments and provide details in your initial request. No more back-and-forth emails!
• Submit hc1 Service Select requests in the same portal you use to open hc1 Support tickets.
• Track the progress of your requests outside of your regular Service Select meetings.

To access this portal from your hc1 environment, open the Administration Settings menu and select the new Submit a Service Select Request option.

A new tab opens with the portal log in page. Use the same credentials you use to access your hc1 Support Service Desk account to log in. If you have not yet created an hc1 Support account, now is the time to do it.

From the hc1 Support and Service Select homepage, click the Service Select button.

You can either click New Service request to request a new service or click the Requests button in the top right corner to view previous requests.

Note: If you are interested in adding hc1 Service Select to your hc1 subscription, contact your hc1 Client Success Manager directly or email clientsuccess@hc1.com.

Resources

For more information related to this release, check out these links:

June 3, 2024: Use Activity Picklists

This release delivers a fix for activity picklists:

• Activity picklists display options as expected. Before, Status, Root Cause, Category, Subcategory, and other picklists that had been set up with dependencies were not displaying values. We have improved the way the code retrieves picklist values to ensure that no picklist is left empty.

Resources

For more information related to these releases, check out these links:

May 21, 2024: Exclude Employees from hc1 Workforce Optimization Recommendations

With the latest hc1 Workforce Optimization release, you can make sure that lab staffing recommendations leave out department employees who don’t usually process specimens, such as managers or quality control personnel.

To access this feature from the hc1 Workforce Optimization homepage, click Configuration and choose Employees. Click the pencil icon for the employee record that you want to edit and check the new Exclude Employee box.

This release also delivers this fix:

• The Business Impact chart shows data for today. Before, this chart was omitting this data. Note that if today is a day when the selected department is closed, there will be no projections, so there won’t be data to show.

Resources

For more information related to this release, check out this link:

• Predicting Your Lab’s Future Staffing Needs Now With AI: An hc1 Workforce Optimization Demonstration (hc1 webinar recording)

May 16, 2024: Hours of Operation Included in hc1 Workforce Optimization Calculations

In response to client feedback, the latest hc1 Workforce Optimization release delivers improvements throughout the solution to make it easier to use.

We have changed how a department’s hours of operation figure into calculations in multiple reports:

• When calculating averages for the key performance indicators, we now exclude days that departments are closed.
• To prevent sharp dips in the Service Level Impact report trendlines, department service levels are now defaulted to 100% on the days that the departments are closed.

We have redesigned the Staffing Levels report and Recommendation Optimize window to be clearer.

• Since Full-Time Equivalent (FTE) is the standard measure for staffing, we removed the FTE unit of measurement in the Staffing Levels chart so that the numbers are easier to read.
• The new staffing color scheme uses shades of blue to show levels of understaffing, shades of orange to show overstaffing, and bright green to show balanced staffing. Before, unbalanced staffing was shown in shades of gray. The improved legend format also makes the meaning of each color easier to understand.

We improved how data is displayed on the Business Impact report:

• To better reflect staffing cost averages on the Business Impact report, we now omit data from days that departments are closed from those calculations, although gray placeholders for those dates are still shown on the trendline.
• The Threshold line has been renamed to Average to clarify what it shows.
• The Today bar displays projection data as expected.
• The recommendation bubble chart displays all dates, even those that don’t have recommendations, to align with the trending bar chart.

On the administration side, we fixed the sorting and filtering options in the Configuration pages to work as expected.

Resources

For more information related to this release, check out this link:

• Predicting Your Lab’s Future Staffing Needs Now With AI: An hc1 Workforce Optimization Demonstration (hc1 webinar recording)

April 21, 2024: Group Dashboard Filters with AND/OR Logic

With the latest upgrade to the hc1 analytics Looker platform, hc1 Insights Builder users can create content that includes separate groups of filters by using AND/OR logic.

Suppose a user wants to see activity for Chicago, Illinois and Detroit, Michigan because they have an in-person event coming up in those two cities. Before, filtering would only allow for City = Chicago, Detroit AND State = IL, MI, as shown in this screenshot:

The problem is that this logic would include any activity from the tiny village of Detroit, Illinois as well.

With the new filter groups logic, the user can prevent this problem by setting filtering to (City = Chicago AND State = IL) OR (City = Detroit AND State = MI). Here’s how this looks:

Resources

For more information related to this release, check out these links:

April 5, 2024: Activity Improvements

The latest hc1 releases have resolved issues related to activities:

• The Notifications list accurately reflects task status. Before, when tasks were completed they were still showing as open on Collaboration Center Notifications lists. We have changed the code to ensure that case and task status changes are updated in Notifications lists.
• You can edit memos again. Before, users were receiving a “Contact the system administrator” error message when they would try to make changes to a saved memo. After our code changes, memos now work as expected.

Resources

For more information related to these releases, check out these links:

April 4, 2024: View More hc1 Workforce Optimization™ Recommendation Details

This release delivers these improvements to hc1 Workforce Optimization:

• You can view why a past recommendation was declined. In the Business Impact section, click the declined number for the date you are interested in. In the Recommendations window that appears, click the down arrow to view the recommendation details. Click Close to return the hc1 Workforce Optimization homepage.

• The database can now store employee shift data with decimal places to track partial hours.

Resources

For more information related to this release, check out this link:

• Predicting Your Lab’s Future Staffing Needs Now With AI: An hc1 Workforce Optimization Demonstration (hc1 webinar recording)

March 26, 2024: Reset Filters in hc1 Workforce Optimization™

With this release, you can easily change your date and department filter settings back to their default values by clicking Reset All in the Filters section.

This release also delivers these improvements to the hc1 Workforce Optimization homepage:

• The new full-color logo shows that hc1 Workforce Optimization is part of the full hc1 suite of products.
• Department filter settings persist when you navigate to the Configuration pages and return to the homepage.
• In the Business Impact section, the green threshold line now adjusts to show the average of your dataset instead of a preconfigured number. A new shaded box separates future dates from past and current dates.

The hc1 Workforce Optimization Configuration interface has this improvement:

• On the Add Department page’s Department Baselines section, the Expected Test Volume and Average Staffing Commitment Per Day must contain positive numbers before you can turn on the Department Ready toggle. If you leave these fields blank, turn on Department Ready toggle, and click Save Department, you will get an error message.

Resources

For more information related to hc1 Workforce Optimization, check out these links:

Predicting Your Lab’s Future Staffing Needs Now With AI: An hc1 Workforce Optimization Demonstration (hc1 webinar recording)

March 21, 2024: Download Report Data in Excel

This release delivers this improvement:

• Excel is the default file format for downloading report data. Before, the default was TXT. This change aligns with how many clients prefer to view data downloaded from hc1. If you want to download an entire dashboard, your format choices remain limited to PDF or CSV.

Resources

For more information related to this feature, check out this page:

March 19, 2024: Access Custom Fields and Tables in hc1 Open Analytics™

hc1 Open Analytics™ enables you to work with your organization's hc1 data directly from hc1’s data warehouse service using your company’s own business intelligence and data integration tools. This release delivers a key improvement to this solution:

• Changes to user-defined fields and datasets in your hc1 environment are synchronized with hc1 Open Analytics daily at 7:05 UTC. Before, you had to submit an hc1 Support ticket so that our data engineers could update hc1 Open Analytics for you manually. Now, custom field and database table changes are automatically available in hc1 Open Analytics within 24 hours, no support ticket required.

If you are interested in adding hc1 Open Analytics to your hc1 subscription, please contact your Client Success Manager directly or email clientsuccess@hc1.com.

Resources

For more information related to the search feature, check out this page:

March 13, 2024: Search Using Host Codes

This release fixes an issue with global search:

• Inactive organizations don’t show up in search results. Before, if users entered an inactive organization’s host code in the global search box, the search results would list the organization. Now, inactive organizations are fully blocked from appearing in search results.

Resources

For more information related to the search feature, check out these pages:

March 8, 2024: Add and Filter Departments in hc1 Workforce Optimization™

In hc1 Workforce Optimization™, a department is a subdivision of a lab and the work area or team that an employee is part of, as specified in the staffing system. Each department has its own hours of operation and baselines for number of employees, shift lengths, and test volumes. Department names are loaded as panel types in the Clinical administration settings in the hc1 core platform. The hc1 Workforce Optimization homepage filters display departments within the labs they are associated with.

This release improves how hc1 Workforce Optimization handles Department information:

• All required fields must be completed to save a lab department record. To add or edit department information, open the Configuration menu, choose Departments, and click the edit icon in a department’s row or the Add Department button. Required fields are marked with an asterisk. If you click Save Department without completing all the required fields, an error message will be displayed.

• The Labs and Departments filters on the hc1 Workforce Optimization homepage only show departments that are marked as Department Ready. Before, the filters showed all departments. Now, users only see information for departments that have been activated.

Resources

For more information related to hc1 Workforce Optimization, check out these links:

Predicting Your Lab’s Future Staffing Needs Now With AI: An hc1 Workforce Optimization Demonstration (hc1 webinar recording)

February 20, 2024: View Legacy Reports

This release fixes an issue with legacy reports:

• Legacy reports embedded on organization records display as expected. Before, users would see a login screen when they tried to access a legacy report from an organization page. When they would log in, they would receive an error message that the report could not be found. The root cause was a change in how the Google Chrome browser handles these embedded reports. We have added logic to the hc1 code to prevent the extra login step and error from happening.

Resources

For more information related to browser support and hc1’s current analytics platform, check out these pages:

February 13, 2024: Optimize Your Lab Staffing Levels

The new hc1 Workforce Optimization™ solution uses artificial intelligence trained on the past 90 days of lab volume data to predict future demand for lab services and make scheduling recommendations based on those predictions, your organization’s workforce data, and your organization’s required service levels. By adding hc1 Workforce Optimization to your hc1 subscription, you can:

• Track key lab and productivity performance indicators, including the average test turnaround time and the average number of specimens and tests processed per day; staffing level status; and service level and overtime impact.

• Receive email alerts when testing capacity thresholds are exceeded so that you can quickly respond by making staffing changes.
• Monitor historical trends and predicted future staffing levels to determine whether any departments are over- or understaffed.
• Review specific, department-level scheduling recommendations to address predicted future staffing shortages and overages and export or email a task list to ensure follow-through.

• Assess the business impact of staffing decisions, such as changes in staffing cost per day, labor cost per test, and number of tests per full-time equivalent hour.

Existing customers who subscribe to hc1 Workforce Optimization can access it right from the 9-box App Switcher icon in their current hc1 environment.

To find out more about hc1 Workforce Optimization:

• Register for the February 21 webinar, “Predicting Your Lab’s Future Needs Now with AI.”
• Contact your Client Success Manager directly or email clientsuccess@hc1.com to request a demonstration.