What's new in IBM Cúram Social Program Management 8.0.0

Read about updates and enhancements in IBM Cúram Social Program Management 8.0.0, released on 29 July 2021.

A PDF version of this information is also available.

For important installation information, and to learn more about product improvements and resolved issues in 8.0.0, see also the Release Notes.

Updates for caseworkers:

Updates for administrators:

Adobe™ Flash updates:

Security updates:

Removed features:

What's new for other versions:

Introducing IBM® Documentation

All existing Social Program Management documentation and content is now hosted in IBM Documentation. IBM Documentation, which replaces IBM Knowledge Center, was released in April 2021 and all Knowledge Center URLs are redirected to IBM Documentation. IBM Documentation has a modernized user experience that is hosted on IBM Cloud and was built by using IBM Design Language to make it easier to find content. Its design has been guided by analysis of metrics, and extensive user research.

You can find the Social Program Management documentation family page at ibm.com/docs/spm. The landing pages include links to get started, such as deep dive videos, release notes, and the product download document. The landing pages also have quick links to new features documentation, and to other resources, such as links to support pages, flashes and alerts, and fixes and updates.

You can choose to display either the whole table of contents, or just the contents for the section that you are interested in. Click the Download PDF link that is displayed at the end of the table of contents to access the documentation in PDF format from the PDF library.

Video iconTo view a guided tour, see ibm.com/docs.

Back to what's new list

User interface improvements

The Social Program Management user interface has been updated with caseworker productivity and accessibility in mind. New global styling changes to typography, color, and icons provide an immediate benefit to the user experience, and help caseworkers to read screens more easily.

Social Program Management is incrementally adopting components from the open source IBM Carbon Design System v10, with many existing components replaced with Carbon equivalents in the 8.0 release. The improved and fully accessible components help caseworkers work more efficiently, and provide a more satisfying user experience.

Modals were a key focus area, as caseworkers use them daily for data entry throughout the application. Improved dropdowns, date interactions, and buttons with increased click space are now easier for caseworkers to use. Text input controls, checkboxes, and search pop-up controls have also been improved. The components are fully responsive to preserve the caseworker experience across devices, and to enable caseworkers with a reduced screen size to have multiple documents or screens open simultaneously for data entry.

New layouts, with labels over fields, provide an effective use of space and help caseworkers focus on content. Lists have been improved, with dynamic distribution of widths based on the content for improved readability. The system-wide improvements can help all caseworkers to efficiently deliver benefits and services to citizens.

For test automation purposes, a new attribute is included in the rendered HTML of the user interface in the 8.0 release. The attribute data-testid has been added to the HTML for the UIM components that were updated for the 8.0 release. The addition of this new attribute in the HTML makes these UI components more easily and uniquely identifiable for the automation frameworks that target them. The improvement enables easier targeting of specific UI components in automated framework selectors, which in turn improves the automation script and framework maintenance and robustness. The result is that less effort is required when you upgrade to future product versions.

Video iconClick here for a video presentation about the user interface changes.

For more detailed information about user interface changes, see Application user interface overview and the Look and Feel section in the release notes.

Back to what's new list

Caseworker experience improvements

A case overview is now available to address the need for caseworkers to quickly identify key information in an integrated case. The new Overview tab on integrated cases is designed to consolidate the most important case information into cards on a single view, which improves the caseworker experience and productivity.

In the 8.0 release, the case overview contains a configurable Entitlements card that provides caseworkers a concise summary with high-level information about eligibility, entitlements, and payments across multiple benefits on a case.

For cases with payments, details about the latest payment and expected next payment are presented in an intuitive manner. Caseworkers can expand the payment summaries to see the benefit components, deductions, and overpayments or underpayments. Further links are provided, so caseworkers can go directly to the full details in the application if needed.

Video iconClick here for a video presentation about the new case overview and Entitlements card.

For more information about enabling and configuring the case overview tab in the product documentation, see The case overview.

Back to what's new list

Virtual assistant support in the caseworker application

Social Program Management now provides support for secure integration with IBM Watson™ Assistant. Caseworkers can now get answers to case specific queries, which reduces the time required to complete tasks. In addition, caseworkers are supported with workflow and process guidance.

Customers can now customize a virtual assistant to link relevant Social Program Management data into caseworker conversations. A new GitHub repository provides sample content and guidance for a caseworker virtual assistant. The content can be used as a starting point to build custom content and includes the following sample use cases:

  • Querying data, for example, asking about outstanding verifications on a case or client.
  • Caseworker procedures, for example, asking how to update client details for a specific change of circumstance.

Video iconClick here for a video presentation about virtual assistants in Social Program Management.

For more information about the sample content, see https://merative.github.io/spm-chatbot

For more information about secure integration with Watson Assistant, see Integrating with Watson Assistant.

Back to what's new list

Improved Word Integration Assistant

The Word Integration Assistant client desktop Java™ application enables users to edit Microsoft™ Word documents through the Social Program Management application. Support for the latest Microsoft Edge browser based on Chromium has been added. The installation process has been improved to make it easier to install the Word Integration Assistant and enhanced troubleshooting capabilities have also been provided.

Video iconClick here for a video presentation about the Word integration improvements.

For more information, see Installing the Word Integration Assistant and Troubleshooting scripts for the Word Integration Assistant.

Back to what's new list

Evidence broker improvements

Caseworkers can now use an enhanced Evidence Comparison View page to process incoming evidence that is comparable to existing evidence. The enhanced view provides caseworkers with the capacity to process the incoming evidence in one step by using a new Update action. New cards and confirmation modals, along with an enhanced timeline of changes view, help to guide caseworkers through the process based on the evidence that is being compared.

Video iconClick here for a video presentation about the evidence broker improvements.

For more information, see Reviewing evidence on a case's incoming list.

Back to what's new list

Employer search improvements

When users are recording employments for a participant, users must search for and select a registered employer. Previously, prospect employers were always returned in the search results, even though users cannot use prospect employers to record an employment. The employer search has been enhanced to allow a user to indicate whether to return prospect employers in the search results.

For more information, see Employments and Searching for participants.

Back to what's new list

Sharing eligibility data between non-MAGI Medicaid and MAGI Medicaid programs uses a new case groups-based approach

MAGI Medicaid eligibility can be denied where an individual is determined eligible for a non-MAGI Medicaid program (Traditional Medical Assistance). To support the requirement, information about the eligibility decisions on an Income Support case must be shared to an Insurance Affordability case that the MAGI Medicaid rules uses to determine eligibility. How eligibility information is shared between Income Support non-MAGI Medicaid and Insurance Affordability MAGI Medicaid has been enhanced.

Previously, eligibility information between Income Support non-MAGI Medicaid and Insurance Affordability MAGI Medicaid was shared by using evidence to represent the eligibility decisions on an Income Support case. A new case groups-based approach has been introduced to store and share eligibility data for non-MAGI Medicaid programs, for use by MAGI Medicaid rules when determining eligibility.

Using a case groups-based approach to share eligibility data, rather than an evidence-based approach, enhances how Social Program Management implements and maintains cascading eligibility. A case groups-based approach is also consistent with how other areas of Social Program Management share eligibility.

A hook point has also been introduced to enable organizations to control the non-MAGI Medicaid programs that the MAGI Medicaid rules use. Organizations can also use the hook point to determine where to store eligibility data.

For more information, see Customizing cascading eligibility between non-MAGI Medicaid and MAGI Medicaid programs. For more information about storing eligibility decisions for non-MAGI Medicaid programs, see Setting certification period.

Back to what's new list

Improved summary PDF

A new template that you can use to create an improved PDF summary of the information that is entered by citizens during an online application is now available. The new IntakeApplicationPDFTemplate.xsl template uses the summary page in Intelligent Evidence Gathering (IEG) scripts to generate the PDF summary form. You can also customize the header and logo for your organization. To benefit from the improved PDF summary, you must configure your system to use the new template. For more information, see Configuring the generic PDF summary template.

Back to what's new list

New in IBM Cúram Universal Access

For more information about what's new in IBM Citizen Engagement, see the What's new and release notes for Universal Access.

Back to what's new list

Making it easier to add a product to the Social Program Management solution for Health Care Reform

HealthCareProductManager is the business interface that creates and maintains products within the Health Care Reform cascade. Adding a custom product to the Health Care Reform cascade requires an implementation of HealthCareProductManager and, within the implementation, the creation and maintenance of the product delivery and case groups records.

The following list outlines the new class and interface that have been introduced to make the implementation of HealthCareProductManager easier:
  • HealthCareProductManagerHelper is a new class that provides developers with methods to create and maintain product delivery cases.
  • HCRCaseGroupsRuleReference is a new interface that custom products can implement. Custom products specify the Cúram Express Rules (CER) that represent the case groups of type member and benefit. The Health Care Reform infrastructure then maintains the case groups of type member and benefit as part of the maintainCaseGroups method that is provided in HealthCareProductManagerHelper.

For more information, see Product management examples.

Back to what's new list

Optimizations for Cúram Express Rules (CER) reassessment

The way that Cúram Express Rules (CER) reassessment processing works has been enhanced. The following list outlines the improvements to help optimize the reassessment of cases that are long lived and have much static evidence with many changes:
  • Evidence Descriptor caching is now used when retrieving static evidence.
  • Data from the EvidenceChangeHistory and AprovalRequest tables that is not required for reassessment is no longer being read.

You can use application properties to disable both optimizations. For more information, see Developing with Eligibility and Entitlement by using Cúram Express Rules.

Back to what's new list

Intelligent Evidence Gathering (IEG) logging improvement

New logging functionality has been added to the IEG engine that you can use, in particular, to analyze unexpected exceptions. You can deploy the logging functionality at any stage during the execution of an IEG script.

The logging function prints a message to the server logs in the following format:
=================================================
Script Execution Failed - Current Script Details:
=================================================
Script ID : ...
Script Version : ...
Script Type : ...
Question Page ID : ...
=================================================
The functionality is called when a NoSuchElement exception occurs in the IEG engine. The functionality is accessible anywhere in the IEG engine if the script execution details can be accessed, so you can deploy the logging functionality wherever new exceptions occur.

Back to what's new list

New milestone delivery batch processes use batch streaming infrastructure

The new batch processes ScanMilestoneDeliveryStartDateBatch and ScanMilestoneDeliveryEndDateBatch replace the existing ScanMilestoneDeliveryStartDate and ScanMilestoneDeliveryEndDate batch processes. While the new batch processes provide the same functionality, they use the batch streaming infrastructure that permits the defining of processing chunks and provides a better fail-over strategy.

The existing ScanMilestoneDeliveryStartDate and ScanMilestoneDeliveryEndDate batch processes have been deprecated.

For more information about the new batch processes, see the Cúram batch process reference. For more information about the deprecated batch processes, see Deprecated functionality.

Back to what's new list

Introducing Apache Log4j 2 support

Because Log4j 1.x has reached end of support, the logging framework that is used in IBM Cúram Social Program Management has been upgraded to Apache Log4j 2. For more information, see https://logging.apache.org/log4j/2.x/

Back to what's new list

Introducing new externalized APIs and classes to support customization

A set of APIs and classes in the following areas that were previously classified as restricted have been externalized. You can now extend and call the following APIs compliantly from custom implementations:
  • Health Care Reform annual renewals processing
  • Health Care Reform electronic verification data processing
  • Health Care Reform interfaces
  • Health Care Reform plan management integration
  • Case home page menu
  • Intake address data processing
For more information about the classes that have been changed in each case, see the Release Notes.

Back to what's new list

Introducing support for shared Enterprise Java Beans (EJB) persistent timer tables for WebSphere® Liberty

Social Program Management has been enhanced to support shared EJB persistent timer tables for WebSphere Liberty. The timer tables store timer information for Social Program Management timers that are created from the application.

The original Social Program Management timer infrastructure design is based on traditional deployments of IBM WebSphere Application Server and Oracle WebLogic Server. A separate timer table is created for each Java Virtual Machine (JVM) in an on-premises deployment, and a relatively small number of static timer tables are created.

However, a deployment of WebSphere Liberty on Kubernetes is more dynamic, where pods are created and destroyed based on system demands. If the original timer design is used in WebSphere Liberty, timer tables would be created each time that a pod starts. Therefore, orphan timer tables would build up in the database, and a database administrator would have to remove the orphan tables.

The introduction of shared timer tables in WebSphere Liberty drastically reduces the number of associated timer tables that would otherwise be created in such a deployment. Therefore, a database administrator does not need to manage the timer tables.

The use of timer tables in traditional IBM WebSphere Application Server and Oracle WebLogic Server deployments is unchanged.

Performance tuning guide moved to a GitHub runbook

To unify on premises and cloud performance tuning information, the performance tuning guide has been removed from the documentation. Instead, a single on premises and cloud performance tuning runbook has been published in a GitHub repository. For more information, see https://merative.github.io/spm-performance-tuning/.

Back to what's new list

Removal of Adobe Flash dependencies for editors

You can remove Adobe Flash dependencies for Social Program Management by downloading and installing the Editor Applications software asset. For Social Program Management 7.0.0 or later, the asset enables stand-alone versions of editors that previously needed Flash support in the browser.

The following editors were updated:

  • Cúram Express Rules (CER) editor
  • Data Mapping editor
  • Data Store editor
  • Intelligent Evidence Gathering (IEG) editor
  • Decision Matrix editor
  • Dynamic Evidence editor

For more information, see Installing the Editor Applications asset to remove browser Flash dependencies.

Back to what's new list

Removal of Adobe Flash dependencies for charts and widgets

Charts and widgets based on Adobe Flex have been replaced with responsive versions based on modern React JavaScript™ components. The current functionality of the charts and widgets has been maintained for existing customers, with enhanced accessibility where appropriate. A new color scheme from the IBM Carbon Design System provides an accessible and enhanced user experience.

The following charts and widgets have been updated to improve the user experience and to make them accessible:

  • The Citizen Context Viewer (CCV) widget
  • The Enhanced Client Selection widget
  • The Create Social Enterprise Folder widget
  • The Assessment Delivery Details chart
  • The Assessment Tracking chart
  • The Factor Activities widget
  • Horizontal Bar charts

Video iconClick here for a video presentation about the flex charts and widgets replacement.

For more information, see the Social Program Management has removed Adobe Flash dependencies in 2020 technote.

Back to what's new list

Configuring SSO for Oracle WebLogic Server

Social Program Management currently provides customer guidance to configure SAML Single Sign On (SSO) with IBM WebSphere Application Server and WebSphere Application Server Liberty. The guidance has now been extended to include Oracle WebLogic Server. The documentation provides a step-by-step guide to configure SSO with WebLogic Server.

For more information, see Configuring SAML SSO on Oracle WebLogic Server. The documentation includes Service Provider (SP) and Identity Provider (IdP) initiated Social Program Management and Universal Access SSO flows.

Back to what's new list

Securing the XML server

To enhance communication security, particularly in distributed environments, communication between the Social Program Management application and the XML Server has been updated to use a TCP/IP connection over TLS 1.2 (Transport Layer Security) socket. For more information, see Securing the XML server.

Back to what's new list

Enhanced cross-site request forgery (CSRF) protection

Enhanced Cross-Site Request Forgery (CSRF) hardening has been included in version 8.0.0. The Social Program Management user interface (UI) infrastructure has been enhanced by adding extra security measures to further protect Social Program Management against CSRF. Only requests from trusted domains are permitted. For more information, see Cross-Site Request Forgery (CSRF) protection for IBM Cúram Social Program Management web pages.

Back to what's new list

Code removals

The Social Program Management product development team continue to optimize the application by removing previously deprecated features. Removing deprecated features ensures that we maintain a lean product, which enables us to focus on delivering business value. For more information, see Removed functionality.

Back to what's new list