It seems as if it wasn't that long ago that we built our first portal. An intranet for a local manufacturing company.
A couple years later our local YWCA needed a new case management system. We took the base of our existing portal, added case management, and CaseStream was born. The YWCA has been using that application ever since.
A year or so later, Ottawa County Circuit Court needed a court/case management application. They had a tight schedule and couldn't wait for something to be built from scratch. So, we took CaseStream, removed some case stuff, added some court stuff, and CourtStream was born.
That was 2003.
CourtStream was developed when Internet Explorer 6 was in its heyday, Firefox was a blip on the radar, Chrome was still 5 years away, and don't get us started on mobile devices. Half the phones out there didn't even have a color screen, let alone a touchscreen.
Since then, a lot has changed with CourtStream. We've added:
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Detention tracking
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Facility tracking
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Form builder
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Daily log
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Audit log
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Medication tracking
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Service plans
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Completion checklists
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And a ton more!
These features all work well, and have proven useful. We've also learned a lot. We've learned that it would be nice if a record of discipline could be linked to an incident. And, maybe we don't need to separate case manager from detention quite so much.
Reports would be a lot simpler without so many different data sources. It sure would be helpful if a user could just add comments to things such as incidents or progress reports. And, wouldn't it be nice if the calendar synched with your Outlook or Google Calendar?
We've also learned that sometimes you just have to start over from square one and ask yourself, "How can we make all this work together more effectively?".
So that's what we're doing.
Early this year we began development on the newly redesigned YouthCenter. This version is completely new from the ground up. It will even have a new URL. It will work with all major browsers as well as mobile devices.
We're starting small and building the essentials to start. We'll be adding features as fast as we can build them. Each new feature will be well thought out. We aren't just going to be recreating old features and making them prettier. We're going to take a hard look at each feature and ask ourselves what, why, who, how, and everything in between so we can make sure our users are getting the most of YouthCenter.
We look forward to continuing to work with the courts and facilities who have been with us for the long haul, as well as to working with new organizations.
With that said, welcome to the new YouthCenter.