Apricot: A real peach!
July 09, 2020
Apricot: A real peach!
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Software Version
Apricot Core
Overall Satisfaction with Apricot by Social Solutions
We use Apricot to manage all of our clients. This includes financial data, scanned documents, many forms, and reports. Another important part of the database we use is to schedule rides to our clients. The system is used by almost all employees. The upper management staff does not use this product as they feel that reporting, etc. is not adequate. I generally export data and create the type of graphs/reports they are used to getting.
- Support is excellent: I find this a very important part of the product.
- Most things I need to do are done easily.
- Setting up reports that I can export is fairly easy.
- The biggest gripe I have with Apricot is the constraints on the pages. I have little control over the real estate used. For example, if I use the "Name" on a report it takes the entire line and I cannot edit that. When I create entry forms, questions take up too much real estate and the users have to constantly scroll down the page. It makes their task look daunting even before they have started.
- I have difficulty importing data to fill forms when there is a drop-down. This should not require me to make all sorts of changes. This should be fixed by Apricot.
- From time to time, I use a feature only to find out that it was something that was temporary and has since been removed. One that caused us extreme problems was when the ability to delete a calendar entry no longer deleted the entry on the Outlook calendar. The only way I found out was after many rides had been confused, I called support to find out that this "benefit" was no longer available.
- When updates are done to the system, I believe that Apricot should let us know how to exercise the system to make sure that the product is working the way we expect.
- Our director would say that this was not our best investment as she feels that reporting from her perspective is not what she is looking for. Some of that is just the way the data has been entered. I am not sure that we should have imported data that was in an Access database without "cleaning" the data better. That alone has caused problems with the reporting. She wants a dashboard and the only way that I can find to do that is to export the data daily and import it into the dashboard. Not something either of us is very happy about.
- In our industry, there are databases that are geared toward the work that we do. Because we are an outlier to those databases, we just don't have the same ability to discuss issues with our peers.
- There are things that are very good about the system, for example - scanning documents into a client record that are very helpful.
We have been able to scale the program to meet our needs, however, because it was originally set up incorrectly, we struggle to correct some incorrect assumptions that were made. Again, the import of data and the limitations to that, are an issue in our ability to really change some original decisions that were made. I am more accustomed to having databases reviewed yearly by the supplier so that they can make suggestions, etc. to help us. They also check for data integrity, etc. This would be very helpful.
We have not had any issue of adding data fields needed as governing bodies change their data requests. That is such a plus for me! I can make these changes on the fly and that is a very good thing. If, however, we had selected a database that 90% of our piers used, these changes would be made automatically. But the fact that I can make the changes has worked thus far.
We have not had any issue of adding data fields needed as governing bodies change their data requests. That is such a plus for me! I can make these changes on the fly and that is a very good thing. If, however, we had selected a database that 90% of our piers used, these changes would be made automatically. But the fact that I can make the changes has worked thus far.
We use the data in Apricot to secure grants, etc. but that data is really kept in a different database used just for donations, etc. This is a database and we use the data for various things. Generally speaking, data is exported from Apricot to be used in other databases or manipulated for reports/dashboards, etc.
My previous experience is in education and I have used various SIS systems as well as CRM systems. I have been the data administrator for at least 15 different databases that all ran on different platforms. One drawback for Apricot is that I cannot attach ODBC to this database so I have to export data manually when needed. Good for job security, but not for my time management.