Marking Individual Contacts as Confidential

Many schools requested an ability to mark certain contacts as 'confidential'. The details of these contacts should only be able to be viewed by staff that know the 'Executive (or Confidentiality) Password'.

It is expected that only the School Executive (Principal, Deputy, Assistants, Leading Teacher) and Counsellor should have access to the confidentiality password. However it should be noted that because of the structure of RISC, the RISC System Administrator would also have access to the password. This person may or may not be a part of the School Executive.

The default setting for Confidentiality Status in RISC is Off. This means all contact records are available to all users, and no contacts can be marked as confidential. To turn the confidentiality status On, you must run the RISC Admin Module, select Preferences from the Configure menu and click on the Confidentiality Status field to toggle it from Off to On.

You MUST also enter the Executive Password (this is the password to be used to unlock all confidential contacts in the contacts database). If you do not enter a confidentiality (executive) password, but the status is set to On, then confidentiality is available, but no restrictions will apply which defeats the purpose of turning the status On. You can change the Executive Password at any time.

When you have made these modifications in the Preferences screen, click the Save button.

When you run the RISC program and have logged on with a password other than the Executive password, the user will have Restricted Access to the database - they cannot see the details of any records marked confidential. You will also see a check box marked 'Confidential' to the left of the smilies on the RISC form. All records marked as Confidential will have a cross or a check mark in this check box.

Searching for contacts while in Restricted mode will produce the following results:

1. If searching by contact number (i.e. by typing a number into the Contact No. box then clicking Search) and the selected contact has been marked confidential, a message box will appear to state that the contact is confidential and will not be displayed.
2. If searching by Student Name, Teacher, Year/Grade, Category, Type, Status, Description or Action and the result finds more than one matching contact, the Table View will be displayed. Double-clicking the contact number on one of these contacts that is marked Confidential, will bring up the same message box as described above. The Table View will show all matching contacts, but restricted access users will not be able to access those marked confidential.

To be able to view confidential contacts if you did not open RISC using the Executive password, then the Executive (Confidentiality) Password must be entered separately. To do so, select Enter Confidentiality Password from the Options menu. In the displayed box, enter the Confidentiality Password then click OK. If correct, the box will disappear and then all contacts will be available for viewing.

Additional Notes on Confidentiality:

• To mark a contact as confidential, simply click the Confidential check box (so that there is a tick or cross in it) before saving the contact. This can be done using either Save or Save Updated button.
• Once RISC has been unlocked using the Confidentiality (Executive) Password, it remains unlocked on that workstation until RISC is closed. There is no option to lock-up RISC again. To do so, you should exit RISC, and then restart it from its shortcut.
• Any user with write access to RISC can save a contact as Confidential regardless of whether they have restricted or unrestricted access. However, if a restricted user marks a new contact as confidential, then that user will not be able to see the contact anymore until the Confidentiality password is entered.
• Any contact that is marked confidential can only be unmarked by an unrestricted user. Any non-confidential contact can be marked confidential by either an unrestricted or a restricted user.
• Any contact marked confidential will have the word **CONFIDENTIAL** printed at the top of any printed Contact Form.

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