On August 4, 2011, the Steuben County Probation Department became the 17th agency to begin using Odyssey Supervision. The Steuben County deployment was also the first “dual deployment” for JTAC, which involved coordinating the Odyssey Case Management System (CMS) deployment schedule for the courts and clerk’s office with the probation department’s deployment plans. Training with the probation department lasted only two days; however, an additional two days of on-site support were also provided.
The Steuben County Probation deployment is also the first time JTAC has utilized the Data Warehouse for probation data. The Data Warehouse is an INcite application that was custom-built at JTAC to house the county’s case data from their old case management system. This application will allow the probation department to maintain access to existing case records, which allows for a much easier process when converting active cases into Odyssey Supervision. Pam Feller, the Steuben County Chief Probation Officer, commented, “I would like to thank the individuals involved with developing the Data Warehouse. I don’t know what we would have done without it. It has made the transition from Gavel to Odyssey a smooth process. I can’t imagine the amount of hours that would have been spent if we had to reenter all of our notes or the expense if we had to print out all of the notes.” With a simple copy and paste feature, staff is able to transfer their entire notes for a probation case from the Data Warehouse into the case record in Odyssey Supervision.
Steuben County will continue moving their active caseloads to Odyssey Supervision over the next few weeks. At the conclusion of the Odyssey Supervision training, Pam Feller stated, “My staff is very pleased with the Odyssey system and the training provided by JTAC.” JTAC is pleased with the success of the Steuben County deployment and thanks Pam Feller and her staff for their patience and positive attitudes during the training. All participants agree that the Steuben County Probation deployment was a huge success!
JTAC will be working with the Washington County and Union County probation departments to deploy Odyssey Supervision in the coming months.
