NDL Community Newsletter
Community Connect is back for 2026 — and we’re coming to a location near you!
Get ready for an immersive event packed with the latest developments from the Evolve Platform, NDL Solutions, and NDL Services.
Be inspired by your peers, share your success stories, exchange ideas and leave with thoughts on how to drive real change in your organisation.
Whether you're looking to network, explore the latest innovations of the Evolve Platform, or spark ideas that could revolutionise citizen services and patient care, Community Connect is the place to be.
Whilst we are busy planning and working to make this the best Community Connect event yet, here’s a sneak peek at what you can expect on the day:
• Introductions to your nearby members of the NDL Community, letting you know who they are and what they’re doing.
• NDL | Evolve update, where we will share the latest changes and releases to the NDL | Evolve Platform, along with a preview of what to expect in 2026.
• Training and resources update, sharing the latest evolution of our online, self-serve training, along with the wealth of resources we have available to get you up and running more quickly than ever. We’ll also be detailing our Solution Support offer, which gives you peace of mind and additional help when deploying projects.
• Have your say in the NDL roadmap. Our CTO will be on hand to take your suggestions for what you’d like to see in the roadmap for 2026 and beyond. Share your priorities so that we can ensure the platform addresses your current and future needs.
• NDL Community interchange, giving you a chance to share the projects you’ve been working on to inspire, get feedback, and more. We’ll also be sharing a selection of relevant case studies from the wider NDL Community, which may help get you started on your next Digital Transformation project.
• Have your say on the resources that would help you, so that we can run them through our Resource Factory to benefit all members of the NDL Community.
• Solution updates, sharing some of the pre-packaged, ready-to-go, solutions we have available that you can take, tweak, and then deploy with minimum effort.
More details are coming soon, but why wait? Secure your spot today.
Early bird tickets are now available — don’t miss out!
Wales – 20th January
Birmingham – 21st January
London – 27th January
Manchester – 28th January
Upcoming Webinars
There’s still a lot happening between now and the new year, with an extensive webinar programme planned for 2026.
Sign up for an NDL Inspire webinar and hear direct from fellow NDL Community members about how they have used Evolve at their organisations, and be inspired with ideas to take back to your organisation.
Get your tickets for the upcoming webinars now!
NDL Inspire Webinar – 19th November - Digital passports: Putting patients first
Join us online to learn how University Hospitals of Morecambe Bay is putting patients first with Digital Passports. Hear how the trust has replaced paper-based forms to create a consistent, person-first approach to care.
If you are focused on patient experience or digital transformation, this webinar will share a scalable model which is replicable in any public sector organisation wishing to improve the continuity of care through smarter, streamlined data capture.
Book your place
NDL Inspire Webinar – 10th December – Faster repairs, better homes: Digital working in the field
Moray Council has transformed its housing repairs service by adopting a fully digital, resident-focused system using the NDL Evolve Platform. By integrating a mobile app for field workers with automated workflows and back-office systems, the council has eliminated paper processes, resulting in quicker repairs, more effective communication, and increased sustainability.
Join the webinar to hear first-hand how the project has created a more efficient way to manage housing repairs and what this means for Moray Council.
Get tickets
NDL Inspire Webinar – 22nd January 2026 – Future-Proof Hiring: AI in Recruitment
Join NDL and Ottomater, to discover how artificial intelligence (AI) is revolutionising the recruitment process across NHS Trusts, delivering efficiency and fairness at scale.
Register your interest now!
NDL Out and About
As the 2025 programme draws to a close, we’ve been busy planning for 2026, so not only will you see us at NDL Community Connect in January, but you’ll have lots of opportunities to catch up with us at industry events throughout the year.
You’ll be able to find us at various Socitm events across the Country, NHS Confederation events, NHS Skills Development Network meetings, and no doubt even more events throughout 2026.
Visit our events page to stay up to date with all the details for the upcoming events.
COSLA -13th & 14th November
We’ll be at COSLA’s Annual Conference on the 13th & 14th of November. We’ll be talking all things digital transformation within Scottish local government. If you're attending, we look forward to seeing you there! Find out more about the event.
NDL Alliances
We are working with a growing number of suppliers whose aligned technology and services complement the Evolve Platform.
Access Group: Access Paysuite is a widely used payments engine which can integrate into Evolve Digitise. This means NHS Trusts and Councils can take payments as part of their digital services, using all major cards or the new Open Banking standard, often resulting in significant comparative savings on traditional transaction fees.
Engage: Providers of superb process definition software to really help explore, define and document your business processes to help your Digital Transformation go faster and more smoothly.
Ottomater: Experts in Intelligent workflow, Ottomater use Evolve as part of their SaaS AI-driven NHS Job Application shortlisting service. They also have extensive proven expertise in Evolve and transformation project delivery services.
Ensuring Trust Through Standards and Accreditation
NDL’s commitment to maintaining robust internal processes and delivering secure, reliable solutions of the highest standard is paramount to supporting the ongoing needs and expectations of all our NDL Community members.
As part of our compliance and governance, we have elevated our Cyber Essentials accreditation to Cyber Essentials Certified Plus. This means our customers can be assured that we are always proactively working to minimise our and your cyber risk. As an additional measure, we have also specifically invested in £2M Cyber Risk Insurance to minimise any disruption in the event of an incident.
Evolve 1.9
Evolve 1.9 is the next step for Hub, Flow, and Connect, allowing you to build orchestrations, workflows, and no-code API integrations more quickly than ever before. This release focuses on making the data within your processes more accessible than ever before, and includes:
No-code Connector integration within Flow – Allows you to use Connectors to access AI and Cognitive Services, back-office systems, data processing functions, and more directly within your Flows, without any code.
Schemas – Remove the guesswork when working with complex data within Flow, allowing data structures to be graphically represented directly within the Studio, without any manual intervention. This makes writing expressions, building logic, and just working with data within Hub and Flow easier than ever before.
Drag-and-drop+ - Allows you to write powerful expressions simply by dragging and dropping within the UI. No more do you need to remember the appropriate syntax, structure, or field names.
For Each Loop - Allows complex data to be iterated through without code, even when the number of iterations is unknown, including with email attachments, CSV data, and more.
Digitise Forms 3.1
Digitise Forms 3.1 is a minor update that brings increased accessibility and an upgraded way of taking payments. Please note that this release contains important security fixes, and all customers are recommended to upgrade.
Compliance with WCAG 2.2 AA – All out-of-the-box Elements have been re-worked to ensure their continued compliance with the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.2 AA standard, which is now nationally required. This ensures that Forms, in their default configurations, are accessible to all users, including those using assistive technologies such as screen readers.
Access PaySuite integration - Payments can now be taken directly within your eForms using Access PaySuite. These payments can use a debit card, a credit card, or even open banking (which has no transaction fees). All payments are processed outside of Digitise Forms in the Access Group's PCI-compliant environment and can be integrated into your existing payment processes.
Digitise Apps 11
Digitise Apps 11 is a major upgrade for our mobile app creation module. It brings significant new features and under-the-hood refinements to allow a wider range of powerful applications.
Audio recording and playback - Audio can now be natively recorded and played back from within your Digitise Apps applications. This is great for voice recording, nuisance audio capture, and more.
Push Notification enhancements - Push Notification support on Android and iOS has been completed and overhauled to make use of the latest OS functionality, and to improve support for large volumes of repeating notifications. This removes the need for applications to 'poll' servers for new data, instead allowing the server to 'notify' an application whenever new data is available.
Support for iOS 26 and Android 16 - Digitise Apps 11 brings extended support for the latest major versions of iOS and Android, allowing your apps to seamlessly run on all modern devices and operating systems.
Automate 8.1.3
Automate 8.1.3 is the latest patch release, which includes updated third-party libraries and refinements to support the latest versions of the Microsoft Edge browser.
Further refinements, including a series of significant performance enhancements, will be available at Automate 8.1.4 later this year.
Security Warning
As always, and to assist with your continued compliance with standards such as Cyber Essentials Plus and ISO 27001, each of the updates above not only brings great new features, but also security updates and upgrades to third-party libraries used within the platform. As such, we always recommend you update to the latest versions of the Evolve Platform as soon as you’re able to.
Seen our solutions page yet?
Across the NHS and local government organisations are faced with similar digital opportunities and challenges. The solutions to these challenges are often the same, even if the systems used are slightly different.
On our new Solutions page, you will find all the details of the ‘pre-built’ solutions we are offering – take a look here.
Want to see what other NDL Community members are doing? – Check out the case studies and see some solutions in use.
Speak to your DTC today to learn more.
