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Qudos 3 Help
Actions - Overview
Components
Security
Creating a new Action
Status
The toolkits - for guidance, training and procedures
This module is the real engine room of the application. It is here that incidents, problems and opportunities detected at meetings, audits, reviews, assessments, and during everyday activities are
recorded in one integrated database.
Incidents may be related to safety, security, environment or other matters.
Problems may be actual or potential - they may occur in various forms e.g.
product or service failure, customer complaints, technical support requests.
Ideas may result from customer feedback, or may be suggested by members of staff,
contractors or consultants.
One thing is for certain, the smart organisation needs an effective way of dealing with these issues, and learning from them. The actions planned and taken can play a significant role in achieving
compliance, and driving improvements to your processes, products and services. The records generated provide a key source of information about your organisation and can be a valuable aid to business
planning.
The Actions module is a critical component for implementing a management system based on Dr. Deming's PDCA (Plan-Do-Check-Act) cycle.
Components
The main components of the Action modules are the Action List - which displays a summary of all records (or a customised selection), and the Action Form - which is used to record an issue and the action planned and taken. For complex issues, each main form may be used to generate up to 99 Related Actions that are linked in a parent-child relationship, but may be managed and tracked separately.
When completing forms, some items that are selected from drop-down lists - these options are set in central Lookup Tables by your System Administrator. Your organisation should establish arrangements for people to request changes to those tables.
Security
You will need to be a member of the appropriate security group to view or edit a form. You will also need a password to lock or unlock a record. If your security permissions need to be changed, please contact your system administrator.
Creating a new Action
There are two ways to create a new Action:
Directly
An Action form may be created whenever an event or issue needs to be recorded for
possible action - perhaps by observation in day-to-day work, customer feedback or
another source of information from outside of the application. Qudos 3
offers several alternative ways to do this:
- From the Main Screen, click the New Action button
- From the Main Screen, click on 'Actions' to open the Action List, then click the New button
- From anywhere in the application, select 'Create a New Action' from the 'Quicklinks' menu
- If you wish to create a Related Action: From an existing Action, click on the 'Related Actions' tab, and then click the New button
Indirectly (From another source record in Qudos 3)
This may be from:
- Objective
- Audit Record
- Meeting Minutes
- Risk Assessment
- Benchmark Assessment
These forms have one or more Action buttons, and an indicator that lets you know whether an action has already been created from that spot.
- If the indicator currently displays 'No'; That means there is currently no action linked. While the relevant record is selected, clicking the Action button will enable you to create a new Action
- If the indicator currently displays a reference number; While the relevant record is selected, clicking the Action button will open the existing Action
This method should be used whenever you want to create an Action Form associated with one of the record types listed above. It will permanently link the Action Form back to its source record. Once created, you may find one from the other with just a single-click - a great way to integrate compliance and risk management activities!
Status
As Actions are a 'workflow' tool, they have a status indicator to let you know how far they have progressed in the process. The status of an Action is automatically calculated by the completion of various fields within the Action Form. On the most basic level, an Action is either Open or Closed. On a more advanced level, an Action has a status according to what tabbed sections of the Action Form have been completed.
- When the Event / Subject tab has been completed, but the Action Required section has not been completed, it is considered as Action not planned
- When the Action Required section has been completed (by entry in its text field and locked), but the Action Taken section has not, the record is considered as Action not taken
-
When the Action Taken section has been completed (by entry in its text field and locked), but the Follow Up section has not, the record is considered as Follow-up required
In any of the above cases, the status of the record is also considered to be Open.
When the Follow Up section has been completed (by entry in its text field and locked) as well as all the previous sections, the record is considered as Closed. Therefore, if no follow-up is actually required but you wish to close the record, type "N/A" or "None required" or similar in that section's text field, and complete the locking process.
When the Date Required specified in the Action Required section has been passed, and the Action Taken section has not been completed, the record is considered as Overdue. There are several sub-sets of the Overdue status.
The following schematically illustrates various conditions of action status. Within the global set of All, actions are either Open or Closed. Within the Open set, there are various sub-sets - such as Action not planned.
In fact, there are more sub-sets than the main ones listed above. These are for variations in how far an action is overdue, and also for actions that have or have not been modified within a certain period of time.
The toolkits - for guidance, training and procedures
The Quality Manager, Safety Manager and Enviro Manager toolkits include guidance on the requirements of relevant national / international standards, and sample procedures. These toolkits may be accessed from the Qudos 3 Main screen, and Help menu