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Preparation guide for your Crisisworks 5 upgrade

By Kerrie Williams
4 min

@Crisisworks will be upgraded to version 5 from December 2024 for some sites, with many opting for an early 2025 upgrade. This provides an opportunity to clean up existing data. Some preparation work can be done now in version 4.

Here’s a step-by-step guide to prepping your site, however, this preparation is optional; all existing data will transfer to version 5 regardless.

Note: Where we instruct to add a tag to an item, your tag must match exactly.

Events

Administration>Events
Review all Open Events: Close Events that are no longer current. This will remove all the Positions from the Event, ‘delink’ any allocated Resources and archive all event data. Events can be re-opened at a later date if required. Keep active Events Open.
Review Event Templates: Close outdated templates.
Create an ‘ARCHIVE DATA’ event:
Create an Event using the Emergency Sample template
Name it ‘ARCHIVE EVENT’.
Move any unwanted records you’re not able to delete into this Event.
Note, you will need to be ‘on duty’ for the ‘ARCHIVE EVENT’ to use it.

Users/Contacts and Organisations

Operations>Contacts
Obsolete VPR Coordinator users - When a user profile is made inactive with the VPR Coordinator position still attached, they will remain on your VPR Coordinators list within the VPR system. To resolve this:
Edit the User Profile: Open the user's profile, make them Active and tick Enable user account for this contact. You will then be able to remove the VPR Coordinator position. Save the record.
Disable the Account: Reopen the user's profile, disable their user account by unticking Enable user account, and change the Contact Status to Inactive. Save the record.
Obsolete Users - edit their user profile, untick Enable user account for this contact and change the Contact Status to Inactive.
Move any of old inactive contacts to your ‘ARCHIVE EVENT'. Select them all from the Datagrid, and use the ‘Move' function from the Bulk edit menu at the bottom of the screen to Move these contacts to your 'ARCHIVE EVENT’.

Positions

Administration>Settings/Positions & Position Groups

You list of Positions will contain a number of built-in system Positions, alongside any custom Positions you may have created over time.

System Positions allow for limited edits, but they cannot be deleted. Crisisworks 5 will allow you to rename system positions to make them more relevant to your operational needs.

We recommend reviewing Positions as follows:

Review Position Groups: Positions Groups exist to help organise Positions into categories, they can be renamed or deleted to suit your operations.
Create a ‘REMOVE’ Position Group: To help manage outdated positions, consider creating a new Position Group called ‘REMOVE’. This will allow you to easily identify and isolate positions marked for deletion.
Delete Unused Positions: Positions can only be deleted if they are not part of an Event and not assign to any Users.
Steps to Delete a Position:
Open the Position under Administration/Settings>Positions
Check if any Users are assigned to this Position. If so, click the link to the user and remove the Position from their Profile.
Scroll to the bottom of the Position record and select Delete.
If the Position is still associated with an Event, you will get an error message specifying the relevant Events. Navigate to that Event(s), edit the Positions, and untick the Position.
Return to the Position record and delete it.

Deleting Positions can be quite a complicated process if they have been involved in previous events. An alternative approach would be to add your unwanted Positions to a Position Group called ‘Remove’ and let us know via support@crisisworks.com. These will be easier to clean up in Version 5.

Resources

Administration>Resources

In Crisisworks 5, the Resources feature has been simplified into its own register.

Here are some key points to consider about the migration of your existing resources:

  • Utilisation history that appeared in the Resource record in CW4 will not be retained. To keep a record of resource utilisation, generate the Request Resource Assignments report ensuring you select Events=All Events. Save this report for further reference, and consider adding it to a Library item in CW5, tagged as Resource_Utilisation.

  • Organisation Association: The organisation previously associated with the Resource will not be carried over in the migration. This is because in CW5, it is no longer mandatory for Resources to be linked to an Organisation (resource manager).

Review Resources: review your list of Resources in Crisisworks 4, and edit as needed. Set any Resources no longer in use to Status Inactive.
Resources in use: The Resource datagrid shows any Resources that are ‘In Use?’ as well as ‘Involved Events’.
Deleting Resources: To maintain the integrity of your data, we recommend only deleting Resources that have never been utilised in an Event.
The Resources datagrid will show any currently ‘In Use?’ or linked to ‘Involved Events’, it will not show any utilisation that has been marked Complete or where an Event has been Closed.
To delete a Resource: select the Resource under the Administration menu, set Global Resource to No and Save.
Edit the Resource again, and this time, select Delete.

Merge Templates

Administration>Settings/Merge Templates
Review Merge Templates - templates that are no longer in use can be set to inactive or deleted if no longer needed.

Lookups

Administration>Settings/Lookups

The Lookups section contains all the items displayed in dropdown menus across the system. Depending on how extensively your council has customised Lookups, you may want to review and remove items no longer needed.

Reviewing Lookups: we recommend reviewing Lookups by Category. Some are system-defined and have limited editing options. Any Lookups you no longer need, you can edit them and set them to Inactive.
Deactivating Lookups: Lookups no longer required can be set to Inactive.

Rostering & Availability

Note: The Rostering feature will not be immediately available in Crisisworks 5, as we are reworking it to make it simpler and more flexible. Based on our understanding, this function is not widely used by most users. However, we would love to hear from you if you currently use it or would like to use it more in the future. Your feedback could help us incorporate new, user-suggested features during its redevelopment.

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