Agility and Configurability

The accepted measure of ‘agility and configurability’ in today’s systems is the extent to which features can be changed per the court’s requirements without the costs and delays involved in the vendor having to change system software code.

JACS is setting the bar for agile and configurable systems. Courts’ business analysts themselves can quickly and easily specify the courts’ unique workflow processes in the form of workflow diagrams and business rules. Our system gives your business analysts the ability to change those parameters whenever needed, without the costs and delays associated with changes made by the vendor.

JACS’ court-configurable features include:

• Work Flow Diagrams that drive the system directly (Infocom Patent Pending)
• Business rules and processes
• Court policies and guidelines
• Time standards
• Individual business rules and scheduling templates for Judges
• Validation rules for fields in screens
• Business rules for triggering next event
• Define timers per court rules with Notifications on timer expiration
• Users can subscribe to Notifications
• Define Alerts for Cases and Persons
• Users can subscribe to Alerts
• Configurable Screens for each work group
• Configurable lists for drop down selections
• Configurable user defined fields on the screens
• Look-up tables with drop-down lists for user-defined fields
• Rename fields on the screens
• Disable (hide) fields on screens
• Change layout of screen
• Configure fields as read-only
• Configure fields as required
• Setting up court’s templates for form letters
• Link (or delink) any document to any, (and multiple), entity in the system
• Security – role and scope-based
• Inter-agency security
• Security for any field
• Security – over-rides for individual user without re-defining role

Automated Scheduling with Resource Management for high-volume courts (e.g., Traffic Courts)

Scheduling high volume trial courts typically require the presence of a number of resources (law enforcement officers, courtrooms, video equipment, medical specialists, etc.) JACS’ Automated Scheduling module minimizes the time and effort required to schedule hearings in these courts. The system compares the Court’s sessions schedule and the availability of the necessary resources to compute an optimal hearing schedule for the resources and the Courts.

In addition to reducing the amount of time and effort to schedule hearings, JACS’ Automated Scheduling provides the following benefits:

• Helps improve customer service levels without increasing court costs
• Increases the court’s ability to manage increasing case loads
• Court operation costs are reduced by scheduling hearings to capacity in court sessions (i.e., minimize the number of sessions needed to handle all the cases within time standards and resource constraints).
• Minimizes the number of times the resource (law enforcement officers, health inspectors, etc.) needs to make an appearance in court. Otherwise this takes away from the time that resource can spend on the street.
• Reduces the number of continuances or adjournments because of the unavailability of court resources
• Helps to reduce scheduling backlogs
• Increases case throughput without increasing head-count

Automated Scheduling for Attorneys

Attorneys can view their upcoming schedule, view available timeslots, submit requests for timeslots for hearings, and view dockets over the Internet. Optionally, the attorneys can be allowed to schedule hearings directly, subject to review by the Scheduling Assistant.

This eliminates the (non-productive) telephone tag that consumes the Scheduling Assistant’s time.

Automated Scheduling for Attorneys using our IVR system is also available as an option.

Calendaring and Scheduling

JACS Calendaring module provides a reliable, convenient way to schedule judicial hearings and effectively manage court dockets.

The calendaring is flexible enough to be used for different court divisions (Civil, Criminal, Family, Probate, Juvenile and Traffic). Anyone who is authorized to schedule hearings can benefit from an easy to use and intuitive user-interface.

JACS allows each Judge to be different. Judges can set up calendars with a high degree of flexibility according to their preferences and rules.

By addressing key issues that confront the Court system today, JACS can help maximize the Scheduler’s productivity, streamline workflow, and standardize processes across different Courts without losing flexibility. It provides multiple access points for Judges, Schedulers, and Attorneys.

JACS’ design objective is to make the process of scheduling a hearing easy! Per feedback from JACS users, the key benefits are time savings and productivity improvement for the Schedulers, streamlining and standardizing procedures for the Courts.

Higher Levels of Productivity

• Saves up to an estimated 50% of Schedulers’ time
• Phone tag eliminated between Attorneys and Schedulers
• 24x7 access for Attorneys and Schedulers

Streamlined Functionality

• One-click Calendar generation for a new Judge in any Court
• Automated extension of Calendar
• Easier reassignment of the Judge; Calendar associated with the Court not the Judge

Standardized Procedures

• Single Scheduler can oversee scheduling of multiple Courts
• Minimize schedule conflicts when scheduling Judge across multiple Courts
• Allows Schedulers to back-fill each other without elaborate orientation and re-training

Improved Flexibility

• Complete control to Schedulers – can override when necessary
• Specify unique lag and lead times for each Judge’s Motions
• Each Judge can specify overbooking and hearing length preferences
• Block Court-wide holidays and early closings

Customized Options

Infocom would be pleased to discuss making system modifications to suit your unique requirements. Some of our customizations for systems in the past have included auto-population of forms and documents, dynamic data entry fields, automatic creation of workflow tasks, systems integration and much more. We can provide information on optional features and customized options depending on your requirements and specifications.

Financial Management

JACS uses double-entry bookkeeping and conforms to Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP), to ensure your books are always in balance. Business rules for accounting allocations and distribution of revenues is entirely configurable.

IVR

Our Automated Scheduling for Attorneys module provides the ability for Attorneys to schedule hearings via the Internet or IVR touch-tone phone.

Notes and Comments

Notes on Cases and Persons can be designated as Judge’s Notes, Court Notes, or Public Notes. Judge’s notes can only be viewed by the Judge who originated the note. Court notes can be viewed by any authorized user in the court. Public notes can be viewed by anyone with access to the case or person, including public access users.

Open-Ended Design

JACS’ design is open-ended wherever possible.

It allows, for example, an unlimited number of entries for:

• Parties of each party type in a case
• Addresses of each address type for persons
• Phone numbers of each type for persons
• Linked Documents in a case
• Links for documents to entities in case
• Alerts
• Notifications
• Ticklers
• Lookups
• Etc.

Person/identity Management

JACS utilizes a superior Enterprise Master Person Index (EMPI) which incorporates many improvements to the outdated Soundex algorithm to provide the most current and efficient name searches. It provides the capability for detecting duplicates with a ‘probabilistic’ search technique. The exact match search function also provides the ability to perform exact matches on partially entered key fields.

Reminders, Notifications

JACS allows users to track due dates during all phases of the case and send reminders or notifications based on pre-defined time periods before the due date. Users can subscribe to notifications, and configure the time-periods per their preferences.

Reporting

Reports can be developed and added to the Menu to support in-court printing with required information for the case, person and financial information.

The court can easily:

• Develop reports
• Provide detailed levels of data for extensive reporting capabilities
• Export search results to a preferred reporting facility
• Enable detailed reporting for Key and Internal performance measures
• Provide search capabilities with ability to sort
• Provide ad-hoc reporting with the rich search criteria capability

Scheduling Templates for each Judge

JACS’ Calendaring module allows Judges to specify the scheduling pattern they would like to follow on a weekly basis for scheduling hearings. The system automatically applies this template to all the weeks in the open scheduling window, and extends the open calendar every day per the template pattern,

Searches

The user can specify the columns to be displayed in the ‘Search Results” screen and their sequence.

The end-user can directly generate an ad-hoc real-time inquiry or report with criteria covering the various entities desired.

The user can sort the results in any column order (ascending or descending) by clicking on the column.

Security

JACS provides a rich, powerful, and highly-configurable security mechanism consisting of two security dimensions: Role-based security and Scope-based security. Role-based security controls which screens, menu items, tabs, reports, and fields users can access, view, or edit. Scope-based security controls which cases, courts, Judges, etc. that users can view or edit based on the organization they belong to and their level in the Court’s hierarchy.

With this mechanism, you have complete control of who can view and edit what information. You can also have multiple agencies viewing data from a shared database, with desired controls and restrictions on access from external agencies. By defining separate roles for separate agencies, you can configure the security such that, for example, public defender agencies can see only some attributes for a case, and state attorney agencies can only see a different set of attributes for a case.

Sealed and Restricted Cases and Documents

Cases and documents each have special “sealed” and “restricted” attributes. You can configure which roles and users can view and/or edit such cases and documents. This configuration takes precedence over normal role permissions, thus ensuring that only the appropriate users can actually view such cases and documents.

Traffic Court

The Traffic Court Scheduling module provides automated rules-based scheduling of hearings. It maximizes revenues by reducing dismissals on account of “failure to appear” by law enforcement officers. It minimizes costs by optimizing the scheduling of court sessions. For these, it takes into account speedy trial dates, session capacities, and the schedules of law enforcement officers.

Please see also “Automated Scheduling with Resource Management for high-volume courts (e.g., Traffic Courts)” above.

Training

Our training strategy is to provide skills transfer as efficiently and cost-effectively as possible. Our approach applies proven techniques for skills transfer so that your staff becomes proficient with specific applications knowledge and functionality. We offer training for each individual user in a classroom type environment or provide a train-the-trainer approach.

Workflow Management

JACS is also event-driven through our workflow diagrams (patent pending) that can be created, changed, and maintained by the Court or by Infocom.

JACS’ unique approach to workflow allows a user to specify the workflow process incorporating the business rules, system actions, and timers to drive the system directly based on the defined parameters. The Workflow Diagrams provide the court with the ability to make changes to a step(s) within a defined process. Changes can be scheduled or implemented immediately.