Deadlines
Deadlines are useful in determining which case participants are near to or not meeting an event deadline. Participants who have gone past a deadline will appear in a different color on the activity entry screen. A deadline report counts and lists cases that meet deadline requirements. Additionally, program administrators can have an email sent to them on a daily automated basis, listing all cases that are within three days of passing any deadline.
Scenario 1:
In a court-referred foreclosure, a participant may be required to attend an education session within a specific timeframe before any mediation can be scheduled. If the participant calls after that timeframe has passed, an activity can still be entered, but the activity entry screen shows their name in a different color. This alerts the staff person taking the call that the participant may no longer be eligible for mediation.
Scenario 2:
In order to keep cases flowing forward, we want to see a list of cases that are at risk of becoming inactive, so that these participants can be contacted. Specifically, we can see a list of client cases that have begun the mediation phase yet don’t have a mediation scheduled within 30 days of intake. Once a deadline has been set up, we can get such a list of matching cases through the reports menu or by setting a case filter, or we can see all cases within three days of passing a deadline by means of an automated daily email.
Initialize the Deadlines Feature
1. Contact mediate.com to have the deadlines feature enabled for your company. It is enabled when Settings>Global Settings>”Uses Deadlines” has been set to “yes”.
2. Under Settings>Global Settings>”If deadlines are enabled: For cases within 3 days of passing a deadline, send a daily email to”, select the appropriate staff to receive deadline notifications. If you want to select more than one staff person, hold down the control/command key while making your selections.
Set Up A Deadline
1. Under Settings>Deadlines, click on “Add”.
2. Select which activity/calendar type, participant/case custom date fields are to be used to define this deadline: what main event is the deadline, what earlier event needs to happen first, and how many days are allowed to go between them.
For example, in the case of Scenario 1 above:
a. The main action is an activity/calendar type “Education Session”
b. Within 35 days
c. The earlier action is a custom case field “homeowner date of summons”
d. The priority is set to something relatively high. Priority is used to establish which deadlines are more mission-critical in the case of conflicting deadlines.
e. Color is used to show participant names on the activity/calendar screen only. Change to a different color by clicking on the color shown and either selecting a new color or else entering in the hexadecimal equivalent of the color you want.
For example in the case of Scenario 2 above:
a. The main action is a activity/calendar type is “Mediation”
b. Within 30 days
c. The earlier action is either an activity/calendar type “intake” or a case custom date field “date entered mediation”
d. “Priority” is set to a relatively high number.
e. Color is used to show participant names on the activity/calendar screen only, so isn’t applicable in this scenario.
Deadlines Report
1. Under Reports>Deadlines Report, select which deadline you want to see listed from the “Select deadline” dropdown.
2. Show “detail” if you want to see a list of matching cases, or “summary” if you want a total number with a selectable link that lists the cases. Choose “summary” if you think you might want to look up the case details.
3. Select the radio button next to “near deadline”, “past deadline” or “within nn days of deadline” as desired. If the latter, indicate how many days before the deadline.
Automated Followups and Deadlines Video Tutorial