Welcome to HosPortal. By now you should have reviewed our overall approach to setting up customers, here.
This page outlines some preparations for our first 'Discovery' meeting and the agenda for this meeting.
Data required
You will see below a link to a spreadsheet that we will use to track the information we need and to structure our onboarding process ('Initial Data Request'). This list is duplicated below.
After this first meeting we will refine the other data we need and update the spreadsheet to reflect the process that we will need to use for you.
Priority | Information required |
High | Names, contact details and roles of each of the people involved in the setup and configuration process. If there are decision-makers who are not part of the project we would like their details too in case they are referred to later in the project. |
High | Copy of all rosters in the format the customer currently uses them for circulation (e.g. PDF, spreadsheets) showing any colour-coding, tagging and other 'meta' information. |
High | If different, copy of all spreadsheets with working calculations, macros, etc used when building rosters, especially if they have calculations used in roster-building. |
High | An overview of any repeating patterns of work, such as staffing templates or repeating cycles. How are these determined? Where do these apply? |
High | Description of the process used to share rosters with each participant (e.g. 'posted to a shared drive') |
High | A preliminary staff list, so we can see the number of staff, the sorts of roles of staff (e.g. Consultant, Registrar) and the information tracked about them (e.g. team membership, skills). This will not be used for uploading at this stage. The highest priority is to include clinical staff who are eligible to be rostered. Other staff, such as admin staff with read-only access, can come later. |
High | If there are sub-domains of staff that are used in rostering, a list of those categories (if it is not obvious in the staff list). Examples might be separating VMOs from staff specialists, or different year cohorts for Registrars. We want to use only the minimum number of categories required to get the rostering correct, so we only need those categories important to rostering or reporting. |
High | A preliminary leave log, so we can see the types of leave and the format that leave is stored. We will need to import a more up-to-date leave log later in the process. |
High | Where activities are identified with a person's name and not by a clinical domain (e.g. 'Smith list'), we need a list of the clinical domains and may require the roster to identify the clinical domain of each activity. |
High | For each activity roster or shift, we need to be able to identify, or will need to see a separate list, for the following:
Any standard AM and PM session times, and any common exceptions.
If you have a week naming/numbering system, the week names and how to identify what week we are in. |
High | A description of your normal roster publishing timing. Examples might be: |
High | Where there are named locations, such as theatres and clinics, a list of those locations |
Medium | A description of the rules that are used to build or manage the roster today. HosPortal considers 4 types of rules: |
Medium | Any reports that are run regularly, and the explanation of those reports. This can assist refine the level of detail we need to define rosters and/or staff. |
Agenda for the Discovery meeting
Our first meeting will be arranged once we have the information described above. it is typically on a video conferencing tool like Teams or Zoom.
A typical agenda is as follows:
Introduction to the personnel on the call, and any key people not on the call.
Review of the onboarding process and the weekly cadence of meetings
You and your team share key issues, concerns and aspirations from the implementation of HosPortal
HosPortal to ask questions from reviewing the answers to the Initial Data Request
You to describe the rostering workflow in some detail, including
The roster building process
Who does what
If there is any defined sequence of roster writing
The issues that are considered in each stage to produce a good quality roster
How leave is processed and approved
Discuss preferred implementation timing and - if possible - set target go-live date
Agree the regular schedule of meetings
Review actions for the next meeting. In some cases the action will be on HosPortal to review different implementation choices and develop pros and cons for consideration at the next meeting.