Kent County Council chooses Refernet

by Peter Viccari | Sep 23, 2022 | Uncategorised

Refernet chosen by Kent County Council for its digital referral platform. 23 September 2022

Kent County Council chooses Refernet

Pioneering new ideas and applying digital solutions in support of streamlining client referral across Kent is something Kent County Council (KCC) are totally committed to.

The Referral Support team at KCC recognised that building a strong digital referral network for Kent is as important as ever, with many of its citizens struggling with multiple issues in these challenging times.

The call it ReferKent

With plenty of trustworthy Advice Services available across the whole county of Kent, some of whom have already been using Refernet for several years (including Citzens Advice) – it just needed a proven digital ‘platform’ like Refernet behind the scenes to refer clients securely towards the appropriate Advice Partner Services, to meet their partcular needs.

By introducing time saving efficiencies, clearer outcomes for funders, and most importantly a proven reduction in stress for the client, Refernet will help to streamline KCC’s future referral processes, and strengthen existing relationships with its many agency partners.

Refernet’s ease of set-up and implementation was also a factor in the KCC decision; being a cloud based service means it can be accessed easily using secure passwords, across multiple PCs and web browsers, without any actual installation. Part of Refernet’s immediate attraction is down to usability and its modern, mobile friendly design interface – resulting in ‘non-techie’ advice partner teams picking up the system very easily.

Refernet believes the most forward thinking County Councils like KCC stand to gain the biggest benefits of the system. County, City or Borough Councils interested in finding out how Refernet can help their business are invited to call the Refernet customer support team on 01273 244099 for a free, no obligation, demonstration of the Refernet system.

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Registered Office
38 Holland Road
Hove
East Sussex
BN3 1JL

Telephone
01273 244099

User support
Please visit your Refernet system page and find your support email at the bottom.

Email general enquiries
info@refernet.co.uk

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Refernet is a service developed, built, provided and supported by ViccariWheele Ltd

Keeping your system secure

by Peter Viccari | Dec 10, 2021 | Uncategorised

Update Q4/21

We’ve recently added some new features to Refernet which means that the way in which you interact with certain areas of the system has changed.

Two-factor authentication

Two-factor authentication is an extra layer of security used to make sure that people trying to gain access to an online account are who they say they are. First, a user will enter their username and a password. Then, instead of immediately gaining access, they will be required to provide another piece of information.

When this option is enabled by the administrator on your system, all users will be opted-in to this additional login check via a code sent to a mobile device. If a user does not enter a mobile number, then Two-factor authentication will not trigger on login. If a user has entered a mobile number then it will trigger upon login. This functionality works in the same way for Administrator access.

Password strength

Passwords provide the first line of defence against unintentional access to your system and information contained within. The stronger your password, the more protected your system will be from unauthorised access.

We’re making sure that all your users will now start to use strong passwords. This means that passwords – moving forward – will need to be a minimum of 9 characters, contain letters (uppercase and lowercase), numbers and a special character (eg: exclamation point). This means that the use of bruteforce or dictionary based attacks will be severely limited.

Password reset

To reset or change a password, we now require the user to enter their username, and then Refernet will generate an email to the email associated with that username which contains a one-time-use link. This will take the user to a page where they can enter a new strong password. Once the user is validated, Refernet will securely allow the user to create a new password.

New User – Usernames

As Administrator, you will need to personally supply all new users with their Username that you create. You can safely do this via email or telephone. This is to make the process more secure, by keeping usernames and password invitations completely separate.

File upload and checking

File upload is becoming a more and more essential part of Refernet. Any files that fall outside of our checks will be denied upload. Files that are uploaded to Refernet undergo scanning for any potential virus’.

In conjunction with content-type validation, Refernet will validate the file’s signature against the expected file that should be received. This will help Refernet to fend off bogus and malicious files in a way to keep the system and the users safe.

Top page intro wording

Your Agency description copy, on the Refernet top page, is now ‘plain text’ only and will need to be revised. Please login as administrator and go to ‘System’ > ‘System Details’ and edit this under ‘System welcome text’.

We advise you to copy and save your existing wording before the upgrade.

Registered Office
38 Holland Road
Hove
East Sussex
BN3 1JL

Telephone
01273 244099

User support
Please visit your Refernet system page and find your support email at the bottom.

Email general enquiries
info@refernet.co.uk

PDF Downloads
Refernet Terms & Conditions
Privacy Policy
Cookies Policy

Refernet is a service developed, built, provided and supported by ViccariWheele Ltd

View data your own way

by Peter Viccari | Jul 13, 2021 | Uncategorised

Your data your own way

The powerful new data export function

Our new development

We’ve created New visual charts for Refernet’s homepage, and on the Referrals listing pages, showing the ebb and flow of the agencies natural referral workflow.

The new release, has changed the reporting area in Refernet to provide a more granular export feature allowing users to export specific datasets and digest them in their own programs – such as Excel.

We’d love to hear your thoughts and feedback – which can be included in our Refernet user group discussions.

Contact us!

Under the hood?

The biggest part of this update isn’t visible at all. We have been hard at work carrying out upgrades to our servers and hosting, and testing to ensure we pass numerous reliability and security tests.

Registered Office
38 Holland Road
Hove
East Sussex
BN3 1JL

Telephone
01273 244099

User support
Please visit your Refernet system page and find your support email at the bottom.

Email general enquiries
info@refernet.co.uk

PDF Downloads
Refernet Terms & Conditions
Privacy Policy
Cookies Policy

Refernet is a service developed, built, provided and supported by ViccariWheele Ltd

A new way of Searching Refernet

by Peter Viccari | Dec 9, 2020 | Uncategorised

Search is evolving

A new method of searching your Refernet system

Our new development

Due to a significant increase in the use of Refernet during Covid, we are rolling out a new Search capability for all our users. Search results will now happen instantaneously as you type your criteria into the Search field, results are displayed as you type.

You can search for names, agencies, locations and referral IDs. Searching for names and locations is as simple as typing the first few letters of your query!

We’d love to hear your thoughts and feedback – which can be included in our Refernet user group discussions. The launch of the new search facility is planned for week commencing mid-December 2020.

Contact us!

Where do I find the new search?

The search field is right at the top of your home page and on the Referral pages. Simply click into the bar and start typing. Results are shown as soon as Refernet finds them in your system.

The homepage search will find matches from your entire account. The search within the Referral pages will only search within the Referral status. eg: The open referrals search on the ‘Referrals > Open’ page will only search within Open referrals.

Using shortcodes

The new search offers a quick way for you to use shortcodes to search for specific criteria. Currently we are supporting the hastag # code for finding partial or full Referral IDs.

Hastag – #

Simply type a hashtag followed by the referral ID or partial referral ID and all the matching referrals will be returned. eg: #42 will return all referrals with the Id of ’42’ in their number.

Registered Office
38 Holland Road
Hove
East Sussex
BN3 1JL

Telephone
01273 244099

User support
Please visit your Refernet system page and find your support email at the bottom.

Email general enquiries
info@refernet.co.uk

PDF Downloads
Refernet Terms & Conditions
Privacy Policy
Cookies Policy

Refernet is a service developed, built, provided and supported by ViccariWheele Ltd

Forward a referral – launch 24th June, 2020

by Peter Viccari | Jun 18, 2020 | Uncategorised

Following on from our recent self-referral development, and in keeping with our ongoing commitment to support our Advice Agency clients through these challenging times, we at Refernet have re-introduced another free upgrade – the ‘Forward a Referral’ function.

This will now make it much easier to pass a referral across to another agency within your system, without having to re-key the information. The audit trail record will record why the referral is being forwarded on – and save valuable time by managing referrals this way.

We will be updating the knowledge base shortly, to include more details on this new feature.

Self referral to help reduce the pressure on Advice services.

by Peter Viccari | Apr 17, 2020 | Uncategorised

Refernet’s new free self referral portal is now live.

Advice agencies who have Refernet can add a suitable link to their own websites, allowing the public to ‘Self Refer’ securely into their Refernet system, helping to reduce telephone traffic during this difficult time.

The customer is invited to ‘Self Refer’ on the Advice agencies website, and clicks a link to add their details and the nature of their issue(s) in the secure portal. The Refernet user assigned to manage these referrals is emailed that a referral has arrived, so they can log in and manage it. The system allows reporting of activity and progress.

Citizens Advice Lancashire have already started using this new service.

Citizens Advice Lancashire