Outreach focuses on open standards to support agile development and collaborative working

Toplevel has improved facilities for both developers and other users of its low-code open design studio. Visual Studio Developers will be able to write and repurpose code easily for future agile deployments using their familiar .NET development environment. Extensions to Outreach web API will also enable digital teams to integrate Outreach more tightly with other software. . New low-code features include easier navigation and configuration options, such as new help functions, look-up by role, and character limited field entry, which have been incorporated following customer feedback. Additionally security has been further enhanced with full AES 256 encryption for all data at rest.

The Government Digital Service (GDS) recommends government departments use open standards to build digital services in a bid to prioritise the user, functionality, security, legal requirements, efficiency, and interoperability, and in order to prevent vendor lock-in. Those standards promote collaboration, transparency, due process and fairness. Outreach’s extended .NET support coupled with web APIs see it become an open standard-based platform.

.NET will give developers the advantage of being able to use their Visual Studio skills (Including C#) to code and develop systems which they can then reuse for future agile projects. .NET memory also confers advantages such as faster processing, enabling digital services to be accessed and used by a larger user base without any degradation in performance. Web-based APIs simplify third-party integration. The API provides technical architects with the means to develop Service Oriented Architectures (SOA) that enable easier integration with back-end systems.

Security functionality has also been extended on Outreach so that under the Dual Zone configuration staff as well as customer-facing data at rest is now encrypted. All data are digitally encrypted using the AES 256 encryption mechanism with SQL Server Transparent Data Encryption (TDE) key management.

Changes in design have seen the Outreach GUI remodelled and new features added. These range from the ability to create staff or customer persona profiles to the addition of six different ‘help’ displays (such as pop-ups, drop downs and link displays) that can be added into the workflow. In keeping with the web-enablement of the platform, browser support for back, forward and history functions have also been added, while within the Outreach Process Modeller “sent from” and “reply to” email addresses can be set to enable recipients to reply easily to system generated emails. Character limits can also now be specified in fields within Design Studio.

“We want to practice what we preach when it comes to digitalisation and that means improving on each successive generation of Outreach.

We spotted the move towards collaborative working and need for web support but we were also acutely aware of the drive by GDS for open standards. The new version of Outreach now meets both those requirements.

But we also wanted to listen to our customers and incorporate things from their wish lists. Like a look-up box to display users with particular roles in a given group and the ability to download PDFs to the server rather than just the end client. It’s those small tweaks, not just the big ones, that make the difference to our customers and ensure Outreach delivers a rewarding user experience not just for the citizen but also the staff.”

Jane Roberts,
Toplevel's Strategy Director


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