NDL Community Newsletter

Summer 2024

Welcome to the NDL Summer Newsletter 2024! From our TechFest round-up to your invitation to our latest NDL webinar, strap in for another info-packed newsletter this July.

Headlines

TechFest24 - it's a wrap!
Recapping community speaker sessions
Direct from the NDL experts
Product updates
Two BIG announcements
Got a TechFest question? Don't hesitate to reach out!
TechFest25 - have your say
NDL Community Awards 2024 - congratulations to this year's winners!
Thanks for joining us for our Flow webinar
Integration & Evolution: Overcoming the public sector API challenge
We're here to help
Your stories
The latest from the NDL Blog

TechFest 2024

This year's TechFest was, without a doubt, our biggest and best yet! Taking place in Birmingham to bring innovation closer to your communities, we showcased transformation in every corner of the public sector. We'd like to take this opportunity to thank all of our speakers and attendees for joining us this year - it's been fantastic to connect in person, learn all about your latest achievements and share the latest Evolve developments.

With five community speaker sessions, five product masterclasses and four roadmap and NDL sessions, this year's TechFest channelled two separate technical and business-led streams - meaning there truly was something for everyone.

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Sessions from across the community

There was a true sense of collaboration at this year's TechFest, with lots of engagement throughout our community speaker sessions. It was fantastic to hear about innovations coming from every corner of the public sector - be that live projects that have pushed the boundaries of digital transformation as we know it, to ambitious future plans that are set to take your public services to the next level. Here's a little more about our community sessions - remember, if you'd like to learn more about any of these sessions, don't hesitate to reach out.

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Birmingham Community Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust

Digital transformation experts at Birmingham Community Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust hosted a session on healthcare mobile applications. Alan Collinge, BI and Information Services Manager, discussed the wide-scale usage of the trust's new immunisation mobile app. Steve Pollard, Head of Information & BI, covered his work with the ICB on the Community Care Collaborative. The session explored NDL Digitise and the ideal transformation approach from pilot to rollout.

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Warwickshire County Council

Ravi Paul, Mobile Apps Developer at WCC, reviewed the council's mobile application strategies. Beginning with a digital mission overview, he detailed WCC's various app projects. Ravi highlighted the council's progress over eight years, from enhancing public transportation to managing a multi-million-pound property portfolio and improving citizen safety with NDL Digitise. He discussed the impact of recent safety apps and outlined future plans for expanding WCC's mobile services, including using Digitise Forms for waste management.

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SRS Wales

Steve Hopes, Automation Service Manager at Shared Resource Services Wales (SRS), showcased how SRS used the entire NDL Evolve platform in several digital transformations across its four local authority partners. With a dedicated RPA team built from scratch, he detailed how SRS has used NDL Flow to streamline "Starters and Leavers" processing. SRS also demonstrated the organisation's AI Language Translation project.

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Circle Health Group

Daniel Smith, Head of Automation at Circle Health Group, discussed the organisation's end-to-end digital transformation landscape. With a focus on automation and an open approach to knowledge sharing, the session covered project stories and insider tips, offering food for thought about potential automation applications at your own organisations. Daniel uncovered the transformative power of automation and the unique advantages NDL Automate brought to Circle Health Group.

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The Princess Alexandra Hospital NHS Trust

Marcel Host, RPA Project Manager, and Satyam Gehani, Integration Developer at PAH, led a session on their Digital Automation (DA) journey with NDL. They discussed their DA methodology, ongoing and future projects, and how these align with PAH's Digital Strategy. Satyam shared implementation details, live demos, key lessons learned, and insights into the Trust's digital transformation journey.

NDL Product Sessions

Sessions from the NDL experts got attendees hands-on with Evolve, providing tangible advice, tips and tricks to innovators from across the community. Showing you how to get the very most from Digitise, Automate, Connect and Flow, sessions such as "End-to-end Starters and Leavers Process" and "AI & Photo Capture" were able to provide personalised guidance for developers and demonstrated how to replicate common transformations in your own respective organisations.

"The NDL Way" aligned the community with our methodology and how we collaborate to ensure your projects are successful, impactful and effective.

The NDL-led sessions and product roadmap session gave insight into what’s in store for Evolve in the future and showcased how your requirements and ideas have helped shape the direction of the products. Please see below for some of the exciting product announcements.

Product Updates

As confirmed at TechFest, new versions of both Digitise Apps and Digitise Forms have been released.

Digitise Apps 10.9 - Now Includes improved app and user management, new device OS platforms and build options.

Digitise Forms 2.0.1 - Provides flexible ports for infrastructure flexibility, new and enhanced elements such as searchable drop lists and graceful data recovery for timed-out forms.

To learn more about the Digitise releases and all current product versions, please see the release notes here.

We also spoke about upcoming releases in 2024…

Automate 8 - With new signpost controls to speed up the creation of automations and deal with ever-changing UIs, screen scaling and Azure Virtual Desktop support along with better grid handling and a whole lot more.
Connect 1.7 - Featuring our Connect Engine 2.0 with its advanced import wizard, extended API support and a plethora of pre-configured connectors for AI services.
Flow 1.8 – Introducing our advanced scheduler, push notifications, rich text process notation, multi-step email chains, multiple value assignment steps, central pdf generation and Gov.UK Notify connection.

Coming in 2025…

Connect - Introduces ‘chaining’ multiple API’s together and converting web services to databases - a real breakthrough in managing and using API’s.
Flow - Showcases multi-step activities containing storyboards of their own, adding a new dimension to workflow.
Digitise - Includes a new and easy-to-use web-based studio that combines the creation of native and web apps in single projects whilst maintaining compatibility with your current apps.
Automate - Provides the ability to create automations by recording user activity in real-time, then editing the process in a step-by-step, no-code process workflow diagram - all integrated seamlessly using Flow. This one is big!

You can see more product demonstrations and hear about the latest updates at our Community Connect event coming in early 2025. Look out for more details about this coming soon or register your interest early by emailing events@ndl.co.uk.

Big announcements...

We made two big announcements this year - the launch of our new solution support service and end-to-end Evolve packages.

Solution support is now available for any process or solution delivered by the NDL team - meaning we'll look after the solutions we build for you way into the future, with experts on hand to help whenever you need it.

We're also launching three new Evolve packages, offering you access to all four of our products. There are multiple options to support you, whether you’re at the start of your end-to-end journey or deploying solutions in every corner of your organisation. With an upgrade path available, you can evolve your NDL capabilities as requirements dictate.

Want to understand more about migrating to a new Evolve package? Get in touch today.

After such a busy couple of days, we know some of you might not have had the chance to ask all of the questions you had - or thought of on the way home! Don't worry; we've got you covered. Whether you forgot to ask about that niggling product query during a Masterclass or didn't manage to grab a community speaker when a thought popped up later in the day - we encourage you to reach out to the team. Your curiosity matters to us, and your suggestions help us further shape Evolve to your specific requirements and challenges.

Missed a session, or couldn't join us this year? Whether it's a catch-up with your account manager or just a quick email to the NDL Helpdesk, please don't hesitate to contact us. We're here to help and ensure you get the very most out of your digital transformation journey.

Get in touch

NDL Community Awards 2024

Congratulations to our winners!

As is NDL tradition, the NDL Community Awards ceremony took place on the first day of TechFest, celebrating the everyday successes of our outstanding public sector community.

Another huge thank you to everyone who entered - it's truly fantastic to recognise the achievements of such an innovative group. Couldn't make the ceremony? Catch up on 2024's winning projects now!

See the winners

Elevating public sector processes: The power of workflow

Hundreds of NDL Community members and newcomers from across the public sector logged on to learn more about the power of workflow technology - and how to harness it in a low-code, storyboard-based development environment.

A huge thank you to everyone who joined - we hope the session was as informative as it was inspiring. Interested in incorporating Flow into your digital transformation toolkit? The team are always on hand to deliver bespoke demos and help you form an excellent business-case to get your wider organisation on board.

Don't hesitate to reach out!

Talk about Flow

Integration & Evolution: Overcoming the public sector API challenge

Have you signed up for the latest NDL webinar? NDL’s Chief Technology Officer, Gareth Handley, and Commercial Director, Tom Wright will be deep-diving into the power of integration and data sharing in the UK public sector - as well as how to overcome API complexity to harness it.

Aiming to help you understand exactly what APIs and web services are, and how they could be used within the public sector to share data quickly and efficiently, this session focuses on overcoming complexity and integration barriers with no-code technology. Taking place on July 30th, this webinar is free to attend - and there's still time to register, so don't forget to secure your place!

Ensure you're running the latest version of your NDL software

Did you know you can find the latest versions of our software right here in the community portal? Head to product downloads and get access to all of the latest features, bug fixes and security updates - alongside our online documentation - with just a click of a button.

Save time and get help with installation

Need some extra support getting your product upgrades up and running - or simply don't have the time? We can help! Our implementation services mean you can focus on the tasks that matter, while our experts ensure products are properly set up, no matter the environment.

Work with the experts and deliver successful projects

Time is often of the essence in the public sector, and resources aren't always available. Whether your team just needs a hand with certain project stages, or you need us to develop and deploy a full project, we’re here to help you launch your digital transformations.

Evolve in action: New stories from the community

NDL Community Case Studies

Bringing you success stories from every corner of the public sector

Success Stories

20 May 2024

Want to tell your story?

Got a new project you'd love to shout about? Share your hard work with the community, help accelerate digital transformation in organisations just like yours and get well-deserved internal recognition! Don't hesitate to reach out to your account manager for case study opportunities - work alongside us to create written and video assets to showcase your achievements and allow the wider public sector to replicate their benefits.