TABLE OF CONTENTS
Shelter Management
With Outreach Grid, we make it easy to manage your beds and which clients are occupying them.
Setting Up a New Inventory
Before creating a new shelter inventory for a new shelter, your agency must first create a new Project on Outreach Grid. To create a new project, click on the downwards carrot next to the notification bell to navigate to your Settings.
On the Settings page, users will see a list of settings you can update depending on your level of access. For now, click on Projects to view all of the Projects in your agency.
On the Projects page, you will see all projects that have been created by your agency.
Once a Project has been created, you can begin setting up your Inventory.
Once you have created your beds, you will be taken to the Inventory’s main page. Here, shelter operators can see an overview of all activities that have been done in their shelter.
- General Inventory Information - Shelter operators can see the inventory’s name, description, and a quick look of bed status in their inventory.
- Bed Utilization - Shelter operators can also see the current utilization rate, how many clients were served, the number of live reservations at their shelter, and how many days their inventory has been used by clients.
- Inventory Overview - Shelter operators can see an overview of who is currently using a bed, current reservations for beds, clients who didn’t come to the shelter for their reservation, the shelter’s past stays, and clients that have or will use the shelter.
Before we get into editing beds and accepting reservations, we’ll go over how to set your operating hours, add new tags, and how to give permissions to agencies to view the bed availability in your inventory.
Operating Hours
By setting up and managing your shelter’s operating hours, referring agencies will see whether or not the shelter is in operating hours upon requesting for bed reservation for clients.
To set the shelter’s operating hours, go to the “Operating Hours” tab.
Once you’ve submitted your operating hours, a prompt will notify you that you’ve successfully added your operating hours and you can see them on the left side of the the Operating Hours page.
Adding New Tags
In the Add New Tags tab, you can view all current client tags and create new client tags to assign to better designate beds to clients.
Permitted Agencies
For many shelters on an Outreach Grid Network, shelter operators either allow all agencies within their own network permission to view and reserve against beds for their clients or they only allow a few agencies permissions to see their shelter’s inventory.
In the Permitted Agencies tab, shelter operators can manage which agencies are allowed to view their inventory.
Editing Beds
For a more detailed view of beds in your inventory, click on the Inventory Map tab to see an overview of the beds.
You can add tags to the beds (i.e., male, female, couple, etc.) and set the beds to active, inactive, or in use once you’ve assigned a client to a bed.
Note: Before you can add tags to each bed in your inventory, you must first create them in the Add New Tags tab.
Select the bed you want to edit and click on “Edit” underneath the bed’s name.
Managing Beds
Shelter operators are able to mark a bed as inactive or active. This feature is helpful to indicate any customizations to the layout of your shelter beds — whether due to COVID-19 accommodations or other conditions in which a bed becomes unavailable for clients.
To mark a bed as active or inactive, head on over to your Inventory’s overview page. Tap on the “Map” tab to view your bed inventory.
Tap into a bed.
Tap the orange “Edit” button.
Set the bed as active or inactive.
Beds set as “inactive” will mark the bed as reserved and prevent clients from being checked in or reassigned to this bed. It will also prevent users from making requests for the item.
Beds can be set as “active” accordingly by the shelter operator. Once a bed is set to an “active” status, clients can be checked in or reassigned to the bed.
Reservation management
At the inventory’s overview page, you can see your shelter’s utilization numbers, current utilization, and live reservations (confirmed reservations that are in transit to the shelter).
In the “Requests for Reservations” page, you can view all requests for reservations. Please review them in a timely manner so that service workers in the field can respond to the client accordingly.
Confirming Reservation Requests and Setting Time Window for Check-In
Confirming and checking-in a client begins in the “Requests for Reservations” page.
Referring users will receive push notifications and emails of their updated reservation request with the time frame that was set to bring the client to the shelter.
Once the client has been transported to and arrived at the shelter, begin the check-in process.
When checking in a client, navigate to the appropriate free bed and assign the bed to the client.
You can add information in the notes section about their belongings or other notes where applicable. These notes will follow the client in the event that the client is re-assigned to another bed.
Declining / Canceling Reservation Requests
To cancel an existing bed reservation request, go to the “Requests for Reservations” tab on your Inventory page.
You will see a list of current reservation requests for clients.
Log the reason for cancelling the reservation request and tap “Cancel”. The client’s timeline will update with the cancelled log, noting that the cancellation was done by the reservation request reviewer (shelter operator).
Inventory Management
Assigning Beds
If a bed is already occupied by a client who does not yet exist in Outreach Grid, create an Outreach Grid client profile for the client.
On the client’s Public Profile, tap the “Assign Inventory” button.
Select the appropriate shelter that the client is currently staying in.
Assign the appropriate bed that the client is already occupying.
Reassigning Beds & Exiting Clients from Shelter
When you update a bed’s status, you can:
- Confirm Check to indicate that the client is still using the bed
- Reassign to reassign them to another bed
- Exit to indicate that they have exited from the shelter
