 And we will go ahead and get started. So this month's webinar is online intake implementation. Thank you all for joining us. We would like to go ahead and just share some really quick housekeeping rules. If you have any questions, please feel free to put them in the chat. Otherwise, we do have a section for questions at the end. So that would be great if you could save them and ask them. You can go ahead and meet yourself at that point and ask them directly to Laura or I. Speaking of Laura, she is going to be our case study expert today and will share her experience with legal ADCs online implementation. And myself, I'm Chitanda, project coordinator at Just Tech. I've been helping out with all sorts of different online intake implementation since I've joined. And I used to work with Laura previously. And so we have some history together. And we'd love to share our thoughts and discussions about the online intake implementation. So for today's agenda, we'd like to just briefly cover what an online intake is and then get into the project management of an online intake implementation that typically goes ahead and starts with initiating the project. And this series of sections on how to implement a project are also in LSNTOP's project management toolkit, which I'm wondering, Charlie, if you can provide them with a link to that in the chat, that would be great. But similar to most projects, online intake start with the initiating the project. You move on to planning the project, working the project, monitoring the project, and closing the project. Online intake implementations also follow this progress. Although I will say that closing the project is slightly removed to online intake since it never really technically closes. But we will get into that a little bit later. A quick overview of online intakes. Online intakes are either posted on websites or website modules that use a series of different questions to guide applicants through and through an application for legal services and allows them to provide information about their legal matter. It allows them to request legal services. And it also is an easier way for them to provide information to the organization without either having to call in if they're busy. It allows them to do it during their hours when they're available. It hopefully lessens the burden of staff and people like your organization who are designated to answering intake phone calls. And online intakes generally will provide applicants with more specific information and resources for individuals who don't really fully understand their legal issues. All in all, online intakes are a more modern way of getting the information from applicants that you need on their time and also hopefully lessens the burden for your staff. Typically during online implementation, you'll go through the selection phase of where you choose which program or tool to post your intake on. Then you get into the planning of your branch logic for your online intake. And this includes choosing which questions you want posted on your online intake. What questions might cause an applicant to be ineligible or eligible for your services if you're gonna have resources or kick out messages provided at the end. And then you get into, once you've had that planned out, you get into the building and configuring your intake. We do like to stress the importance of usability testing because again, online intakes are designed for your applicants and that you want it to be something that they'll be able to understand and fully be able to use after that for hoping that you'll go live with your online intake. And then like we said, there's not technically a close to the project but more of a ongoing maintenance for online intakes where you have the online intake go live and start to see what changes or things that you might need to improve on or just as time goes on, your program's eligibility might change. And so you might have to go ahead and continuously update your online intake. And I'll go ahead and have Laura introduce herself again but she's the IT director for Legal ADC and she's gonna go ahead and talk to us a little bit about Legal ADC's online intake implementation, how they went about planning for it and how they implemented it and how they're using it right now. Hi everyone, I'm glad y'all could join us today for this. Like Richa said, I'm the IT director here at Legal ADC and I've been here about 10 years. We are currently at about 94 staff and we have six units here so far. We are looking to expand that. And this has been an ongoing project now for several years, but it's been a good one. Thank you. We'll get right into initiating the project. So Laura, when Legal ADC was trying to implement the online intake tool, what were you looking to get out of that and were there any specific problems you were hoping to address from implementing an online intake? So there were a couple of things we were hoping to do. This one was to have another avenue for applicants to reach us and get help. Like Richa said in the beginning, clients sometimes their free time is late at night or early in the morning when we're not available and this gives them an opportunity to apply for our services on their time. Another thing we were kind of hoping to take care of were the units were hoping this would eliminate the need to follow up with applicants by making our questions as detailed as possible but that did not pan out. But mainly it was just to give our applicants another avenue for reaching us. Did you have any process when implementing this tool and you all was involved? So this process actually started with an intake working group that we had put together here in the office just to deal with intake in general but then it morphed and eventually smaller groups split off specifically for online intake. And so we basically it included our legal director at the time, myself as the tech person and then it represented it from each of our units plus our intake unit. So that each unit would have a voice and that's how it started. And we kind of went from there. We reached out to a couple of other organizations and asked about their online intake. We had each unit tell us what they kind of wanted to get out of this and we took it from there. Great. And when you were choosing the tool to develop your online intake, who all was involved in that? Was that primarily you or was this more of a collective effort? Are you able to speak more towards that? It was, I will say it was mainly me. We had zero budget for this project. So since I was the main person that was going to have to actually implement this, I was generally the one who made this decision and everyone, because they aren't technical, they were like, if it does mainly what we want it to do, they were fine with whatever I chose to do. And again, we had zero budget. So they couldn't be too picky. I'm just through it. So then once you started talking about implement or talked about wanting to have an online intake, did you create some sort of timeline for your kickoff to your go live? And was it the timeline that you kind of anticipated at the beginning? So we had a rough timeline. This was uncharted territory for us. So we weren't sure. We kind of gauged at six months. It actually took us more than a year. I went back and looked at my calendar back then and it was a little over a year to go from talking about it to soft launch. So be flexible on that. We knew going in that this was gonna be a fluctuating end point. So none of us were too upset with it but just kind of keep that in mind that you're gonna run into things that you weren't expecting. And plus the rest of your job sometimes gets in the way too. So just kind of keep that in mind and keep it fluid. I agree. I think a lot of us were a lot of different multiple hats in these roles. And so they're important to keep in mind. So speaking of that, how many hours did you spend a week on this project and did it vary by phase? Were you working on it more during certain phases versus others? So for me, it did vary by phase because we had a fairly long phase that was when the units were thinking about the kind of questions they wanted to have and they're part of the online intake and we gave them several weeks to get that done. So I did some initial setup with the tool that we decided to use but then I had some time where I didn't have anything to do other than go to our meetings because it was in the unit's part. But then once we got to the part where I was actually building the forms and putting them out there for the units to take a look at, I averaged about 20 hours a week. I will say not all of those hours were within my working day because I still had my regular day job to do. And as Rucha said, we wear many hats and when we started this project I wore even more hats than I do now. So, but it was about 20 hours a week. Did you work with, use any sort of project management tools during this? We did. We used Asana as our management tool because we could assign things to folks. They could put notes in there and that way we kind of had a snapshot of where things kind of stood and for those of us that need a little accountability to get things done, it was something accountable because someone else assigned me a task and they're gonna see if I didn't do it. So, Asana worked really well for us. And then getting into working the projects, once you wanted to go ahead and had your tool you had to start building out your questions. So, did your online intake match your regular intake questions at that time? Did it match the ones that were on your case management system or your walk-in form at all? So, our walk-in form was very basic. You know, it was just basic contact information. You know, what your case fell into and you'll be at housing consumer or whatever and then a brief description of your problem. So, we went beyond that for sure. We did have our basic contact information page but we also collected, we collect income information and then there's also some demographic information we collect and then we go into the questions and the questions were, that part was entirely done by the unit. They gave us what they wanted and we implement it. So, some units have pretty lengthy questionnaires whereas other units had short ones and those have changed over time. So, as you know, the units look at them and see what's getting answered or what's not, they've changed their questionnaires over time. And you already spoke to this, the next question about how you decided which questions needed to be asked on your online intake was it primarily, again, the units that made the final say on these questions too or did you have somebody within the working group kind of signed off on them? So, the units for the substantive questions, those were entirely up to the units. The units told us what they wanted and we would implement them. You know, the rest of the working group and part of this came down to our legal director was, you know, like we decided as a group whether or not that was the step or we were going to collect income information or not and that kind of thing. So, but the substantive questions were definitely all the unit. Now, are you able to go ahead and talk about specifically what tool you used for your online intake? Has it changed over time? Are you planning on using the tool that you have right now going forward? So, again, like I said, we had zero budget for this. So, at the time our website was built on WordPress and so I used a form plug-in for WordPress called Contact Warm 7 to build our initial online intake and we used that for quite a while. But then we started having some problems with it as WordPress, you know, would get updated and our theme would get updated and we had and there were just little tiny problems but I could never get them fixed. And so I eventually reached a point where I got frustrated enough and picked a different plug-in. I went with WP Forms and created a couple of forms in there and sent it out to the units and was like, okay. This is the problem. This is what I'm proposing. If y'all are okay, I'm gonna move us to this other plug-in for our WordPress site and of course no one argued with me. They were like, fine, it still does what we want it to do. And I'm like, yep. So when it was actually a little more streamlined and easier to use. So we did change to that a little over a year ago at this point, maybe a year and a half ago. So we intend to stick with that until next year where we have decided to implement the online intake part of legal server. So we will eventually be moving to that. Great. And if y'all mind me asking, will you still, does your working group for this online intake still exist so that when you implement to legal server, you'll rely on the same folks or kind of the, again, take people from each unit to help implement this new change? So our working group sort of morphed into our legal server group when we found out our old case management system was gonna go away and we had to switch to something else and we picked legal server. So we don't have a representative from every unit but we do have some unit reps in our group and that will continue to be our group. But when we do start implementing our online intake with legal server, we will reach out to the groups to assign somebody in their group to help with this transition so that they can make sure that their unit is getting what they need out of this. And another part of working the project is the usability testing. So we talked about how this online intake is designed for our applicants. And so making sure that the questions that are presented on the online intake are readable and can be understood by applicants is really important. How did you all test the complexity of your online intake? So once we reach a point where we had everything pretty much the way we wanted, we opened it up to the staff but focused on getting our legal assistance to go through these things and our interns with the idea that our interns are, they aren't in this every day, they aren't doing intakes and so they would have insight or questions or whatever would come up. And then also we have a community advisory council that does include some current clients and some former clients and we also had them do this too so that we could get some feedback from the client community. But also over time, we do get feedback from applicants. If they've run into a problem or something, they do, some of them will reach out and tell us what their problem was, which is great because then we know it's happening and can fix it. So, but that's basically what we did. Great, and just so that others know too that I've also heard of projects where people have reached out to applicants or the client community and provide them with some sort of incentives to help out with the usability testing as well where they'll get applicants to go through the online intake to give them feedback before they go live. And so that has been just reaching out to applicants in the client community in general to get feedback on the intake is really important because they will definitely catch things that staff members or people who've been on the working group don't. Yes, I agree with that. And following up with that, was this like your usability testing? Is it a one-time thing or do you purposely test your online intake often? Or like you mentioned, you have applicants come to you when they've had issues with the application? We haven't done a formal test in a while. Part of that is knowing that we're gonna be migrating over to legal servers online intake. So we're gonna save that for when we want that tested. But if we do make a substantial, a large change, we at least reach out to the staff and interns to take a look at it just to make sure there's like no glaring problems. But like I said, that the applicants, we appreciate that they reach out and a lot of them are not afraid to. So in a sense, we have ongoing testing just by the sheer fact that people are using it every day. So. Moving on to the go-life phase of working the projects. Is what, if any, change management strategies is your organization used to prepare your staff for going live with an online intake? Or yeah, were there any? So process-wise, nothing really changed. This only brought in another way for an intake to come into us. But once it was here, it still went through the same process that any other intake would go through. So that part didn't really change for us. We did prepare the units for the fact that there would be more intakes. Since there was this other way for folks to get us, that was available 24 seven, which meant, like I said earlier, people can take care of it outside of regular working hours. And so we did prepare them for that. But the actual process stayed the same until COVID. And then everything changed then. How did you get the word spread out to your client community? Or were you, again, you said you mentioned earlier on, you had a sort of a soft launch to that change from after you decided that you felt more comfortable to advertise your online intake? So we were still in our soft launch phase when COVID started. And so we decided then that we would advertise since we were no longer open for in-person intake. And so we really needed this to be out there. So the main things we did was we let the DC consortium know, let the DC consortium know, which is a consortium of legal services and pro bono attorneys and things like that, local here in DC. We also had our community advisory council advertise in their networks. And they do a lot of outreach in the neighborhood. So they definitely started to include all the information for our online intake with all of their interactions. And of course, we let our fellow legal services organizations here in town also know that, oh, this is now something available too, since we do a lot of referrals and things back and forth between us. And of course, word of mouth. Getting into monitoring the projects. How did your project team, your working through the track of any issues you ran into throughout the process? So we use the sauna still for a lot of that, but we also kept the spreadsheet and we still kind of keep the spreadsheet, although that's also morphed into a legal server thing too. I've just, you know, here's an issue. This is how we resolved it, which, you know, it was a sheet that everyone had access to. So we could keep track of everything. Are you going off of that a little? Were there any specific risks that you are, were you able to highlight or anything that stands out during that monitoring phase that really jumped out to you aside from, you know, later on when the contact form wasn't working? Is there anything specific you're able to go ahead and highlight for us? So a lot of it was the units after getting some of their intakes and they did a lot of tweaking to their questions. We did the biggest risks that, you know, us being attorneys, liability. So we did come up with, for instance, we have a disclaimer that shows immediately when you go into our online intake. So we made sure to implement one of those and we spent a lot of time, well, they spent a lot of time on the language of that. So that was one of the things but most of the issues were either that questions that the units wanted answered weren't getting answered at all or correctly, like they weren't getting what they wanted out of them or it was a technical thing. Like we used a lot of branch logic in this and so sometimes we would get feedback that the branch logic didn't work and so that would confuse applicants. So those were the main things that we had to deal with in that part. And I think you briefly touched on this but kind of getting into more of the data that you were collecting from your online intake, was there anything helpful from that data that helped you or helps you maintain your online intake right now or any other ways that you're using your data from this? We definitely collect data on this and we keep track now of if an intake came in through online or the phone or in person or through one of the other projects where we do intakes. It also has helped, we've been able to collect some demographic information as to who's more likely to use online intake and what part of the city they're in when they do that which also in conjunction with the other data we collect on our other online intakes helps us think about where we may want to maybe open a satellite office or things like that. And it also just in general helps us with all intake information trends in the year. Are we getting more housing intakes in the spring or are we getting more domestic violence at the end of the year around the holidays? Those kind of things too that regardless of the intake that just in general gives us good information. Are you using this for granting purposes or? Oh, definitely. We definitely use this information for grant reports and when we apply for new grants because this is now a large chunk of our intake and so it's important that somebody fund us for this. And we talked about closing the project and it isn't hyphens because we talk about just how iterative the online intake process is is that even when you have online with it there's just so much maintenance and again organizations eligibility changes, your applicants that you're having take your online intake constantly are changing. And so even though you technically want to consider the implementation of your online intake closed it never really fully closes but Laura, when did you and Legal AGC consider your online intake project closed? Was it the soft launch or a little after that? I don't think we've ever actually considered it closed because we still make changes. So I mean just recently our housing unit decided to scrap all of their questions and slim it down to three questions from like 20 questions. So I don't consider it closed. I consider it stable but there's always gonna be those changes that a unit wants or we start to see a trend with applicants not answering these questions or not doing something else that we may decide to change how it looks or how it reacts or something. So I don't think it's ever really closed but if I had to pick a time I would say when COVID hit and we advertised it out to the community. So nice clean date. Everyone knows that date. And since we talk about just again being continuous and not technically closing how are you able to maintain your online intake but online intake and who was responsible for when we kind of were making things still live? Or did you have a plan in place for how are you gonna improve on the site or is that something else that you kind of figured out along the way that oh, this project is never tech approved for those things? So it was always assumed that I would maintain the web part tech side of it because it was now part of our website which I maintained that then too. We had a woman in our intake unit who helped with creating the forms and all of that. So she still helps with that. So if like when a unit wants to change something that doesn't always fall to me because she's able to do it too. So I tend to end up doing more of the hey, this form is doing this weird thing can you figure out why it's doing that? And then the actual editing of substantial stuff usually falls to Dina, but we work closely together, we triage and tackle it all together. But it's definitely something you need to think about is for the ongoing maintenance, whose responsibility is that? And make sure that there is somebody that can take care of it. And if the person you're thinking about for that role is not included in the implementation of it, they should be. So just kind of keep that in mind too. And just gonna spiral off and ask another question. Was there anybody who's involved in the maintenance of your intake right now that wasn't part of the implementation process? No. So Dina and I are still the main lines we did recently redo our website. However, the online intake portion did not get redone because I actually separated it out. So we still take care of that. And going forward when we do migrate over to the legal server online intake, everyone in the legal server group will know how to make changes and maintain it and do the things that need to be done. So it won't just fall on me and Dina anymore. There will be seven of us that will be able to take care of things as they come up. And great thing is because it's legal server, if there's a technical issue, we get to go to them for help. And I will also mention that they do have documentation involved in the process as well. And so were you able to create any sort of documentation for keeping up with your online intake? Or again, since you were being technical, lead on this, has Bailey followed on you? That's so funny. So I do not have any formal documentation on how to make changes or anything like that. I should probably do that. Might be a good idea. And actually in general, just in case I fell off the face of the earth tomorrow that, and so did Dina, somebody would have an inkling of what to do. So it's probably a good idea. And thankfully when we moved to legal server, we'll have that. Just some final thoughts on the projects. Were there, what were the main challenges that you all faced, anything specific? So like you've got here, the units, there were a couple of units that came back to us with very extensive questionnaires for this. And we as a group agreed that an applicant's gonna get bored with this or frustrated with something that long. So getting those units to kind of pair down with what they were asking. The units really thought this was gonna be the thing that would eliminate any sort of followup with an applicant. It doesn't. It doesn't matter how many questions you put on there that you think is gonna fix it. They're always not either not gonna answer the question or, and if you make the question required, they're just gonna give up or they're gonna give you not the kind of answer you were looking for. So we needed to get them to narrow down those questions and accept the fact that this was not gonna eliminate that followup step. The other problem is because we didn't have a budget, there were things that the units wanted this to do that just wasn't gonna happen. I'm not a coder, I'm not a developer. So we were also limited by my technical skills. And so if there are fancy flashy things that you want, you may consider hiring a developer to do this that A has the time and the knowledge to do it. So, keep that in mind too. And I will say the budget thing was really, really, I never hesitated to be like, well, if we had some money, we could do X, Y, and Z. So yeah, some money would be great. Yeah, and you bring up again a great point of like, if you are gonna go ahead and plan for additional features, like somebody in the chat had, I think, mentioned any follow-up or scheduling features that you may have had or processes that you may have had with a lot of case management systems, some of these additional features are additional prices too. And so making sure that you budget for those features and additional add-ons is important. What were some of the great things that came out of your online intake? So when COVID came along, we were so thankful that we had done this and had this to offer to the applicant community because we were no longer able to do in-person intake, which was the main way that we did intake before then. So that's been one of the biggest things is, you know, this new avenue for them, you know, became much bigger than we expected because of COVID. And well, you know, as I think everyone's experience, COVID in general just changed a lot of things for us and having online intake has made it easier for us to get intake done. It's taken some load off of the staff that used to have to do intake. So overall, in general, it's been a really good addition to what we do and don't intend to get rid of it at any time. Thank you so much for just sharing your thoughts and your experiences with this implementation. It's just, it's a tool that, again, you kind of work through, through trial and error. You have rounds of, and it's, again, an innovative process, rounds of edits and constantly making sure that the questions that you're asking are relevant to the applicants and it's capturing the information that you want. When I'm gonna go ahead and open it up to questions from people, and I do wanna go ahead and quickly address that there was a question in the chat regarding, any fall back scheduling functionality. So did you all have any processes or implementations or sorry, processes or is there any add-ons or plugins that you've used for calling back? So no, that's one of those things that was limited by my technical inexperience. So that falls, so for us, that falls on the intake unit. Once they get an online intake and they go through it, they do an initial conflict check, and if that's okay, they take a look at it and get it to a point where we could, if it's something that we could help with to get it to someone in the unit that would, if it's that kind of case. So it falls on the intake unit that they do any callbacks, any follow-ups initially. And I believe, and I may be wrong, we have it written somewhere on there that they should call us, that they have questions about an online intake that's been submitted. So, but we had nothing formal or part of the process now. And I will say that I have seen, at Google Server, there's the clinics module, which allows applicants to choose a time for them to have a callback, basically, and review their intake. There's also the ability to schedule for applicants to schedule appointments through the scheduling appointments feature in Google Server. There's third-party features like time space, which allow you to have the same functionality, but again, it's a third-party feature. So at the end of an application, an applicant will go ahead and get a link where they have to click into and schedule an appointment that way. So there are features and solutions for workarounds if you don't wanna have a specific, you know, kick out message saying providing your hotline number or anything like that, but that is definitely something to look into. Another question in the chat is, did you attempt to offer questions in languages other than English? So we do have the option on the website to pick another language. We just use Google Translate. However, we are gonna include the extra modules for legal server so that we can have it in Spanish and a mark, which are the two other languages that we get applicants applications in the most. So yeah, just by virtue of it being a website and that we can add that language feature. Now, we do understand that Google Translate is not perfect and that sometimes it translates things not correctly, but it's been usable enough that we get applications and we get applications that, you know, both of the questions are answered and answered enough to give us an idea of what's going on. And have you found any sort of sweet spot for the number of questions that you can ask? I am sure that the units have found that sweet spot and it definitely has varied by unit. For instance, like I said, the housing unit scrapped their 20 question questionnaire and knocked it down to three. We have also made changes in the consumer unit questionnaire that is also kind of narrowed down, remove some questions. So I'm gonna say yes, I'm not a hundred percent sure on that, but I'm just based on what Dina and I have been asked to change and update. I'm gonna say at least the consumer and housing unit did find that sweet spot because since we've made the changes they asked thinking it was gonna change how things were going, they have been very happy. So it may take a while, but I think anyone can find a nice sweet spot to get where you're gonna get everything you need from the applicant and have them not just give up or you know, whatever the case may be. Any other questions from folks? Feel free to unmute yourselves or keep asking them in chat. But we did want to go ahead and give you an opportunity to hear Laura's experiences about through their implementation of the online intake, just as technology becomes more and more critical of like how we work and function. I think it's just a great way to kind of see how other people and other folks are using tools to make things a little bit easier for our applicants, hopefully provide them with better information and additional resources. And yeah, just want to stress the importance of online intakes and maybe if you're not using an online intake now, we'll consider using and implementing an online intake going forward. Can I add just a couple more things? Sure. So I will tell you that one of the conversations we had in one of our meetings was when we were struggling with the units to get questions and things was this actually the right way to go about this project? Should we consider changing directions? And at that point when our legal director asked that, everyone looked at me because at that point I had put in a lot of work into this. And my immediate response was if this is not working for us, I have no problem switching gears, scrapping it all together, whatever the case may be. Don't be afraid of that. I had no problem giving up all that work I had done because my goal was to have this work for us. And it's not about me and the work I put in, it's about us and our client community. So think about that too, that just please don't be afraid to reevaluate mid-process. If something's going on and you just don't think it's gonna work, great, stop, reevaluate. So I just wanna put that out there because we did talk about that. And even though we ultimately went ahead in the direction we were going, we did stop and have a serious conversation about it. So please don't hesitate to think about that too. I think we have one more question in the chat. Can you estimate how many more intakes you've seen now? I cannot, but I will tell you in the beginning, cause we were still on a soft launch. It wasn't a ton, but it was a fair amount. But once we advertised and because of COVID, there was a significant increase in the number of intakes. And I think part of that also was before COVID, we require people to come in person to do an intake. And I feel like that was a hindrance for a lot of people doing an intake with us. So because we've taken away that requirement and COVID forced us to do that, we have had a significant number of intakes because I feel like more people can do an intake with us. Did you have to change your staffing in any way because of the increase in intakes or at least the process of the intake? We did change some of our processes and we did expand our intake unit to start accommodating the extra intakes we were doing, yes. Well, thank you so much, Laura. If anybody else has any other questions, feel free to ask them. Stick around for a couple of minutes, but that is it for today. Again, just really hope that you'll ask any questions if you have them. And one other question is, what's the size of your intake unit? So our intake unit is one, two, three, four, five, six people, which includes three intake specialists and a senior intake coordinator. However, two of those intake specialist positions are vacant at the moment and we have not filled them yet. So I will tell you right now, the intake unit's a little stressed, although we're getting ready to close intake through the end of the year next week. But yes, it's six people at the moment and could be more, should be more, in my opinion. Well, we will go ahead and have this recording up on LSNTAP's YouTube channel. It'll be up on their website and we'll go ahead and share the slides as well. I'll go ahead and give out my email address, but feel free to reach out to me with any questions and I hope you all have learned something and were able to say something like from this, but thank you so much for joining us. Thank you.