The COHMIS Leads have created an interactive suite of statewide dashboards that reflect a variety of breakdowns about the data being entered into COHMIS. The goal of these dashboards is to provide a better understanding of the extent of homelessness in Colorado being captured in our system and to ultimately help improve the performance of our homeless prevention, response, and resolution systems.
The dashboards are built in Tableau Cloud and hosted on our COHMIS.org website, where you will find additional information about the reports we currently offer, the associated data elements they include, and definitions for common terms and calculations we hope will allow you to better understand and effectively utilize these resources.
How to Access the Dashboards
As the guardians entrusted with overseeing COHMIS, the COHMIS Leads have created a Tableau Cloud End User Agreement (available here). This agreement outlines the context shared above about what Tableau Cloud is, what access to Tableau Cloud entails, and what violating the agreement may result in (ex: losing access to Tableau Cloud & potentially COHMIS).
Please note: The dashboards we currently offer require a username and password, which are only provided to staff members employed at an organization that have a valid COHMIS Agency Partnership Agreement (APA) on file.
Reporting Methodologies in COHMIS Reports/Dashboards vs. Federal Reports
As you review the dashboards and any other COHMIS custom reports or dashboards, it's important to keep the following in mind.
Many of the federal reports available in HMIS, like APRs and CAPERs, calculate the number of persons and households served using a methodology referred to as Entry-Exit. This Entry-Exit methodology will include any person with Enrollment dates (specifically Project Start Dates or Project Exit Dates) that overlap with the selected reporting period. This includes people who were enrolled in projects prior to the reporting period if they had not yet been exited as of the reporting period start date AND people who were enrolled or exited from projects within the reporting period.
The custom reports the COHMIS Leads developed also rely on the Entry-Exit methodology for certain HMIS project types. However, there are other project types for which timely exits are not always expected or required to be created since there may be people served who are intermittently accessing services or having activities tracked within their enrollments. As a result, for these project types, an active enrollment within the reporting period does not necessarily mean that a person was served during the reporting period.
To account for the workflow differences within these particular HMIS project types, the COHMIS Leads developed an Activity-Based methodology. The Activity-Based methodology uses custom calculations that look for additional dated activities (referred to as Qualified Activities) within enrollments before our custom COHMIS reports include a person as having been served during the reporting period.
The following table contains a list of HMIS project types and the methodology used in the custom COHMIS reports:
|
Reporting Methodology |
HMIS Project Types |
|
Activity-Based |
|
|
Entry-Exit |
|
A full list of Qualified Activities for HMIS project types that use the Activity-Based methodology can be found below:
- Project Start Dates
- Current Living Situation Dates
- Service Dates
- Status Update Dates
- Annual Assessment Dates
- Project Exit Dates
Due to these differences in reporting methodologies, you may notice differences in the numbers of persons and households served when reviewing breakdowns in a federal report like an APR or CAPER as compared to the custom COHMIS reports.
Please reach out to your COHMIS Lead agency if you have any questions or would like to discuss further.