Welcome to Epact™ the premier United Way impact and outcomes measurement tool.

Epact was developed in 2003 by DevStudios International Inc. as part of a consultative process with the United Way of Alberta Capital region, as well as United Ways in Vancouver, Calgary, Victoria, Winnipeg, Peel, Toronto, and the United Way of Canada.

Epact is able to manage the entire funds allocations and impact reporting needs of today’s forward thinking United Way organizations. Epact’s architecture is based on a strong set of collaborative features including:

• United Way office-to-Agency collaboration
• Inter-office United Way collaboration
• United Way federated collaboration
• Movement-wide collaboration and impact management

In addition to the above features, epact provides a comprehensive set of easy to use tools allowing it to be customized to the needs of each United Way organization. The epact application is delivered in its entirety as an ASP secure hosted solution, requiring only Internet Explorer on the user’s desktop.

Multiple levels of security provide a high level of control as to who has access to what. Finally, epact provides a user customizable reporting infrastructure that not only allows for the creation of a wide range of reports but also allows for reports to be published electronically on the United Way’s website, thus making the impact of the organization more tangible and visible to the public. Epact has seen strong adoption in Canada, and through an innovative adoption program, we are working on making it the number one tool in the United States.

Epact™ Reporting Engine

The epact reporting engine allows for canned as well as ad-hoc reporting of submissions. It supports a wizard-driven approach to searching, classifying and reporting across forms, local, regional, and global dimensions.

Reports can be saved as “point-in-time” meaning that the output of the report is frozen as of the date the report was run. Reports can also be saved as “dynamic” meaning that the report is run with fresh data every time it is invoked. Reports have URL handles that allow for access to specific reports on the United Way organization ’s website.

Epact™ Analysis Engine

The analysis engine supports the reading and evaluation of open text fields. Using this service, the e-pact user can assign specific meaning to large chunks of unstructured text answers and in doing so further facilitate the analysis and reporting of submissions.

The analysis engine also allows for the management of partially completed forms, spoiled submissions, and quality control of all submitted packages. It also allows for comprehensive searching of all submissions based on a wide range of criteria including the Dimension Values of each question and answer.

Epact™ Users

There are three types of epact users. The United Way Epact Administrator is the person responsible for the setup of the United Way organization in the application. This comprehensive role allows the creation of all additional epact users, as well as the setup of all the agencies.
 
The United Way User is created by the epact administrator and allows the user to gain access to all tasks assigned to him/her by the administrator. A user has the ability to create forms, receive routed submission packages, run reports, and access areas of the system based on their security rights.
 
Agency Users are able to log into the Agency portion of epact, view available forms, create submission packages, view the status of a submission, resubmit if necessary, and communicate with the United Way office through the secure epact messaging system.

Epact™ Recognition

Epact was one of three finalists in the Microsoft Canada Impact Awards for 2003. The software application was nominated for Microsoft's Community Leadership Award. The epact application was also a finalist in the Alberta Government's 2003 E-Business Awards (non-profit category).