Summary
We find that our customers share a similar mindset around how they use ClinSpark to meet their needs of clinical research.
We also find community engagement an important aspect of ClinSpark development. We look forward to opportunities where we can share details about upcoming changes and gather feedback during active development.
We aim to find opportunities where ClinSpark users and our product team can interact in an open, transparent manner. We also want to see customers share ideas, challenges, and discuss best practices with each other.
Community Platforms
There is no single platform for community engagement. We are continuously evaluating how to best engage with the wider user community, depending on the need. At the moment these platforms are used:
Slack
Basecamp
Groups.io
Slack
Slack is a real-time communication platform that was setup to allow users to engage with ClinSpark subject matter experts. It is currently used as a release announcement channel and a way for community members to engage in chat with other ClinSpark users and product team members on various topics.
Access to the ClinSpark user community is managed through invitation (via Service Desk). Or, if someone within your organization is already a member of the community, they can also request a member invite directly in Slack.
Some of the product team are present in the Slack community to oversee platform administration and facilitate discussions.
Slack is not an official avenue for support. For any topics that require support assistance, customers must use the service desk.
Basecamp
Basecamp is a collaboration tool that many customers are already familiar with, as it is used for onboarding and ongoing project management. We may sometimes use Basecamp with the intention of cross-customer collaboration projects. Projects can be used to organize assets (documents, etc) and information that can be referenced amongst the community. For example, we used a Basecamp project to gather and review feedback from multiple customers about the initial development of Pharmacy features.
Groups.io
Groups.io is a platform managed entirely by members of the ClinSpark user community. It can be accessed here. Some product team members may engage with members of the community in this platform, but otherwise do not have direct involvement in topics of discussion or it’s use.
Community Dev Environment
We provide access to a community ClinSpark development environment for our customers to explore the latest features and proof of concepts, provide us with product feedback, and have a general area to collaborate with others in.
Community Dev is located at https://community-dev.clinspark.com/
This environment does not contain customer specific configurations or sensitive data. Things are expected to change freely without much disruption.
Access and Use Agreement
Customers are permitted to add other users from their organization to the instance, as well as add and maintain studies, and generally use the environment however they would like to.
As a shared instance, please be respectful of community use. If there is question about any existing configurations or study setups, consider reaching out to the product team via service desk.
In general, the environment is provided with the following expectations & understanding:
Not subject to normal ClinSpark service level agreements
Owned and maintained by the ClinSpark product team
Available for use by any existing customers or development partners
Not intended for any ‘production’ data; sensitive, PHI or other
The Volunteer database is expected to contain obscure/obfuscated data, and should otherwise not contain any ‘real’ volunteer data
The environment is subject to frequent deployments at an interval our choosing
Build and configurations deployed may contain unreleased / new features that have not yet been formally tested
The database and configurations may be changed or ‘wiped’ at any time