Merge feature for Services and Sites

This article provides detailed information for consideration by Providers who wish to streamline their Services and Sites as configured in SupportAbility due to various factors such as restructuring.

This is a feature where Services or Sites, and their related data, can be merged by SupportAbility on behalf of providers as required.

Due to the far-reaching implications of reassigning Sites and Services for all related records, and that this process is not reversible, due consideration and planning will be required before this can be actioned.

Audience: Authorised Representatives, Executive Management, Operations Management

Summary

The following list summarises the content within this article. Click on the links below to take you to the relevant sections:

Decide when the merge feature is applicable

The following are the recommended circumstances in which your organisation might consider merging Services and/or Sites:

the Services and Sites being relatively new or have minimal information and are no longer required
SupportAbility needs to reflect a restructure of your organisation
a clean up of data in your installation is required and has identified Services and Sites as being redundant or no longer required
restructuring is required to align with process changes

This action may not be suitable in instances where your organisation wishes to preserve historical information of the Services/Sites that records were originally linked to. In this event, it is recommended to Inactivate the relevant Service or Site records. This can be actioned by visiting the Configuring Services or Configuring Sites articles, linked below.

Planning and considerations

When a merge is performed, this updates everything that was once linked to the old Service/s and/or Site/s and references the new. This includes

the 'Sites and services a staff member works in' as listed in their Staff Account,
any 'Client Service Participation' Client records,
all Activities,
Journal entries etc.

N.B. Please note that this merge feature is not available for the 'Default Administration Service'. For more information, please see the Default Administration Service Article linked below.

Prior to a merge being actioned, it will be important to consider the following:

complete a mapping process to identify which Services and/or Sites need to be merged
- running a Client search for each of the existing Services, to work out how many participants are linked to each may assist in this process
decide what the preferred Service or Site will be, and list the Services / Sites that need to be merged into this
determine if this will mean a change to the configured General Ledger (GL) Codes will be required for the preferred Service / Site as this is used in invoice and timesheet data exports
in the case of a Service merge, it is important to ensure the correct Funding Types are linked to the preferred Service
if a change of name for the preferred Service or Site needs to be performed, this can be actioned in System Preferences. Please see the Configuring Services or Configuring Sites articles, linked below for more information
once a merge has been completed this will result in a change for Staff Members using SupportAbility, It is important to ensure communication has been made regarding the change in advance.

Actioning the Merge feature

It is important to note that only SupportAbility can perform the merge function on behalf of your organisation.

In order for us to do this, we ask that one of your Authorised Representatives submit a request to support@supportability.com.au, including the following information:

a list of the Service/s and or Site/s that need to be merged, highlighting the preferred Service/Site and what needs merged where
your organisation's preference for when you would like this actioned, (e.g. preferred date) so that we can liaise with you regarding a suitable time to update this for you after hours.

This is not a billable exercise and our Customer Success team can perform this as required, provided all of the Service/Site merge mapping has been outlined as above.

Final actions to be completed by your organisation

Once SupportAbility has completed the merge as requested, you may wish to check the following:

in the case of a Service merge, check that this preferred Service is available at the required Sites
in the case of a Site merge, check that the applicable Services are available at the preferred Site.
where the original and preferred Service/Site had been itemised in Staff Accounts and Client records this will now display as duplicate instances of the preferred record.

e.g. if we merged the 'In Home' Service and the 'Individual' Service into the 'Day Services' Service, and the Staff Member once had each of these Services itemised in their Staff Account, the preferred Service of 'Day Services' will now be listed three times:

Similarly, where a Client participated in two of these Services, this will now appear as such:

These duplicate entries should not cause any problems, however, your organisation may wish to clean up this data manually, in the relevant Staff Accounts and Client records.