High Level

Changes since V4 at a glance:

• Crisisworks ID: provides a single ID for signing into all your Crisisworks sites, and is SSO-ready for organisations wishing to use their corporate SSO solution. Crisisworks ID supports multi-factor authentication for increased security.

• User Interface: a new, fast and friendly user interface does away with the slow parts of Crisisworks 4, and introduces improvements in nearly every part of the system while retaining familiarity for existing users.

• Faster: the system is much faster in nearly every operation, from signing in, going on duty and everyday use through to running reports, performing mail merges, uploading imports and sending communications.

• Updated forms: forms and workflows have been upgraded to be easier to use and more consistent.

• Working across events: fast event switching and an improved “All Events” mode improves the experience working across multiple events at the same time.

• Fast switching between multiple sites: you can now fast switch between all your Crisisworks sites without signing in multiple times.

• New mobile app supports a better offline experience and more offline record storage

Other improvements and changes

• Public form improvements: public forms are now easier to activate and can support multiple events in the same site with multiple active public forms of the same type.

• A&TSI: improved data collection, with Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander fields now mandatory in relief and recovery forms

• Communications: comms now supports direct reply to SMS with a number e.g. 1 for available, 2 for not available.

• Positions: Changes to a number of position names and slight changes to access.

• Request Tasks: now you can create multiple tasks and assign resources to manage your Requests

• Simplified resources: Resources now have their own sub-register and have been simplified to make them more flexible and user friendly

• Improved request & information contact search and linking

• Data grid improvements

• Simplified advanced searching

• Bulk actions improvements and more features

• Recovery Case Merge docs: Correspondence

• Merge docs support for Word templates (for simpler merge needs)

• Report Searching added

• Dark mode support

What’s to come and missing features

Here’s a blog post tracking any known problems with Crisisworks 5 and new features to come. We will maintain this page to keep you up to date.

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Improvements in details

Crisisworks ID

Crisisworks ID is the name of your central sign-in account.

• It is based on your work email address. You will need to be able to access your email address to sign in for the first time, and for password resets.

• Your single Crisisworks ID will be able to access multiple sites, based on your Crisisworks ID’s email address matching a user in that site.

• You can strengthen your account protection with multi-factor authentication — both SMS and authenticator apps are supported

Preparing for Crisisworks ID:

• All users of Crisisworks 4 will get a Crisisworks ID

• If you work across multiple councils, decide on a primary email address to use and align all your user accounts in each site to that single email address

Joining and switching events

• Joining events is now much faster and more efficient.

• Switching between events is fluid and takes only moments.

• A refresh button quickly loads new events, in the case a user cannot see a new event added moments earlier by a coordinator.

• Working across events is more streamlined.

Creating events

What’s new:

• A one-step full event form creates new events quickly.

• New events can now be created from the mobile app, using a streamlined template-based approach.

Searching and filtering your data

Filters:

• Counters are now called “filters”

• Most Filters no longer show the record count; this makes way for an improved dashboard system to summarise and display your data. Some key filters will have a counter soon

• The search system has been condensed into a single-field search system.

Search improvements:

• All filters are now based upon the search technology known as Crisisworks Query Language (CQL). This is exposed in the search box whenever you click a filter, allowing you to extend, customise and combine filters.

• Searching can be as simple as typing a few words to search upon — this activates the full-text search system.

• More complex searches can be built up by typing in “field:value” combinations, or by using the field selector to help build your searches.

• Advanced searches can perform boolean operations, search within related records, perform geospatial area searches and more, all from the one interface.

Data grid improvements and changes:

• The data grid can be customised, by adding, removing and reordering columns.

• Columns can be grouped

• Rows can bulk-selected by shift-clicking

• The grid can be set to automatically refresh

• Every search can be shared or bookmarked by simply performing a search and then copying the URL in the browser and sending it to your colleagues. This allows for simple and effective saving of common searches right in your browser.

• The “select all” feature in the grid now only selects the visible page. This is a key difference to Crisisworks 4, however bulk actions

Map changes

• Switching to the map now shows it in full screen

• The mapped data is the current filter or search; changing this in the sidebar will update the map.

Roadmap:

• Additional views of your data will be added in addition to grids and maps Q1-Q2,2025

• We have planned support for a calendar view for rostering your records, a kanban board view for supporting agile workflow practices, and an analytics view to graph and summarise your data. Q1,2025 - Q2,2025

Bulk actions

The bulk actions system has been overhauled to be more convenient, faster and more powerful.

• Bulk edit supports more fields, as well as dependent field changes (e.g. if changing a status activates a required field, that field can also be changed)

• All bulk actions start immediately, run much faster than before, and provide richer feedback when they’re finished.

• Bulk move is now part of bulk edit

• Compatible bulk actions can be applied to “all records in the result set” by selecting no records. The supported bulk actions will be named to reflect that they apply to all records — for example, “Export All to Report” vs “Export Selected to Report”.

Correspondence

The correspondence system has been upgraded to provide support for both MS Word documents (simpler but less powerful) and PDF documents (advanced but harder to configure).

This system can be used to both generate bulk and individual correspondence to many registers, specifically:

• Contact

• Recovery Case

• Fire Prevention

• Permit

Operations

The operations module is the heart of Crisisworks, containing modules such as requests, information, offers, contacts and more.

Request

The following summarises the key changes to the request system.

Requestor selection

Requestor selection has been improved, designed to cut down on duplication and increase a common operating picture.

• You will now search before creating a new contact

• Searching can “include similar sounding names” to find misspellings

• Ability to verify the search result before selecting the contact

Request Tasks

Requests now support adding Request Tasks

• Request tasks allows a request to be broken down into the tasks required to fulfil it, with multiple tasks that are each individually assigned

• Assign to either a position or a user

• Optionally also assign a resource to track its utilisation and track costs

Resource simplification

Resource tracking within requests has been simplified.

• Resources are now optionally added to task records

• As the task is directly assigned a user or position for management, there is no need to configure a chain of resource → organisation → position → user to have a contractor manage their records.

• A single category list is used for resources and tasks, making it simpler to create resources and make them assignable to tasks.

• Offers, volunteers and resources are integrated together, meaning you can assign an approved volunteer or offer to a request task.

• Offers and volunteers can now have costs assigned.

• Request task costs are summed into the “total cost” field under Financial.

Assignment when working across events

When working across events, you need to select the event before assigning a position. The assignment field will update with the available positions and users for the selected event. The field will be greyed out until an event is selected.

Summary

Information

The information register remains largely unchanged, with the following key changes:

• The information register uses a common “source” field that works the same as requests. This is designed to promote the re-use of contacts and avoid duplication.

• An assignment field now allows for a user or position to own the record. This user will be notified when the record reaches an expiry date, for example.

Logs

The key difference between information and logs is that logs are private by default, while information is designed to be shared.

The logs register is unchanged, other than the removal of Crisisworks 4’s quick log entry system (in the right-hand sidebar, if exposed).

Resources

Key changes:

• The new resources system brings together resources, volunteering and offers.

• Volunteering records can now be added by users (previously they could only be added via the public form)

• The contact details section of the form is now unified with the same style of search + select approach used by resources and information.

• Offers and volunteering share the same, unified category system with resources. This allows for offers and volunteering to be assigned just like resources, and it allows for a richer selection of resource categorisation.

Important resource changes:

• The resource system has been simplified

• Alignment of a resource to an organisation has been removed, along with the concept of resource manager users.

• Resources can be stored in either your current event, or into a global event if it is to be re-used.

• Resources are now only used for tracking costs and usage, and separate positions now need to be created for each of your external contractors if they need to be assigned tasks.

• Resources can no longer be permanently deleted by administrators. Resources no longer needed must now be set to Closed.

• Resources are no longer selectable when creating/editing an event. Instead users can add any global resource can by searching for existing resources.

Contacts

The contacts and users system remains largely unchanged, apart from a refreshed data grid and bulk actions.

Key changes:

• All your users will have a Crisisworks ID created and associated.

• You authorise your users to your site as you did previously — enable a user account, add positions and optionally send a welcome email

• If your users change their email address, you can edit their contact record and change their email address to align the records. Only administrators can change a contact’s email address for this reason.

User management changes:

• You can no longer reset a user’s password. They must reset their own password by following the forgot password option at sign-in.

• Bulk managing positions, bulk creating or removing users from contacts and bulk setting communication preferences are now merged in the bulk edit tool.

• We’ve improved the messages when a user account is being added to a non-global event.

Expertise

The expertise records in Crisisworks 5 are unchanged in functionality over Crisisworks 4.

Other observations

• It’s not easy to search for contacts having expertise (it is possible in CQL but not intuitive).

• The recommended approach will be to search the expertise register, and then link to the contacts you find

Permits

Recovery

Key changes:

• Recovery Tasks are now assignable to positions, not resources. Resources can also be added where it makes sense for the task.

• Correspondence generation has been added

Fire Prevention

Key changes in the Fire Prevention module:

• Bulk mail merge has been updated.

• FPN Tasks are now assignable to positions, not resources.

Other features

Communication

The communication module has the following changes:

• Email and SMS delivery is now much faster

• Responding to an SMS is now done by the recipient replying to the SMS

• Responding to an email is now done by clicking a link

• The opt-out system now runs at a system-wide level due to anti-spam laws and requirements

• You can opt a user back in by using “Override communication preferences“, but use this feature carefully.

Correspondence

What’s new

• Improved support for MS Word document templates

• Can now mail merge recovery cases

Library

The library works the same as previous versions of Crisisworks 5.

Reporting

The reporting system has been overhauled:

• A new UI consolidates all reports onto a single screen.

• All reports download as CSV and are designed to be opened in MS Excel.

• For reports that support “Group By”, grouping by a field will now sum all the detailed lines for each group.

• Specialist reports that create PDFs or other file formats are still supported.

• Reports will begin running in under a minute, and will complete much faster

• Troublesome reports in CW4 where there is a lot of data will now complete quickly and support a high volume of data.

General changes

Form changes

• Change: Date fields no longer support typing relative dates or times. A date and time picker allows for entry.

• Fixed: status fields in sub-forms now only show the next statuses, where previously they showed all statuses.

General

• Dark mode is now available on the web application (beta)

Information security

• All attachments are scanned for malware immediately upon uploading

App changes

• Generally much faster

• No wait time for the initial post-event spinner

• Can now reset a forgotten password from the mobile app when signing in

• Improved offline resilience, supports thousands of offline items and hundreds of thousands of assets