Connect 211’s Online Community Resource Directory and Search API services provide a great user experience in part because it requires important information to be present on Search Records records in order to make them useful. Search Records which are missing required information will not get published.

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This document is going to use data object names from the Human Services Data Specification, or HSDS, by Open Referral.

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A “Search Record” is a denormalized form of HSDS’ service_at_location object. It contains information from one service and one location

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Requirements.

At it’s most basic, a Search Record must have the following:

  1. A linked and active location
  2. A linked and active organization
  3. A machine readable service_area, AKA “coverage area”

If any of these three core components are missing from a service, it will not be published.

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It’s important that location and organization not only exist, but also meet the inclusion criteria that you give us for publishing. For example, in addition to being “active”, your data team may have given us additional columns to check to make sure data should be published. Additional checks that we’ve seen include whether a record is intended for the website, or whether it’s private.

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Locations are required.

A location record is required even if the service does not have a physical address. We think of location as “the point of service delivery”, and as such a location could also be “virtual”, “redacted”, “mobile”, or other types.

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If your source data does not require location (or “site”) records then we can usually fill those in for you. However, it’s helpful if we have a field that explicitly tells us the service is virtual, otherwise we may publish incomplete data, i.e. services that should have an address, but don’t.

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Nice-to-haves.

Usability will be noticeably improved if you can provide two additional fields:

  1. Indicate explicitly whether a service is delivered at a physical or virtual location. This matters because we’ll make sure to hide the pins for virtual service delivery so that users don’t see pins half-way around the world.
  2. Make sure your service records are tagged with taxonomies. 75% of Connect 211 users search by using taxonomy suggestions

Need support?

If you have questions or would like to talk with our team, please email [email protected].