Best Practices: Early Intervention Signals
Early Intervention Signals gives your team a daily view of who may need attention, without building a report. A few good habits when you set it up will help your signals stay useful and your team stay confident in them.
Getting Started
For the step-by-step setup, see How do I create an Early Intervention Signal in Apricot?
Recommended Practices
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Start with one signal and a few factors. You can have up to 3 signals during beta, so you have room to grow.
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Keep criteria simple first. If the output is confusing, simplify your prompt before adding complexity.
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Use a test participant you know well. Run Review & Test before you activate, and refine until the output matches what you expect.
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Add protective factors. They’re optional, but they give your team a strengths-based view alongside risks.
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Give your team a heads up before you activate. New cards will appear in their doc folders.
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Choose notifications deliberately. Alerts are bundled into one daily digest, so choose the people who will act on it, such as whoever last created or modified the record.
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Scope through forms. Signals are form-based, so pointing a signal at Tier 2 forms used by a specific program scopes it to that program.
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Create a new signal instead of editing when you want to compare. Editing clears previous output.
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Treat Signals as a daily triage tool. It isn’t a report, so use it to act in the moment.
Setup Checklist
| Done | Task |
| ☐ | Choose the Tier 1 form and the Tier 2 forms to watch |
| ☐ | Identify the fields that indicate risk or progress |
| ☐ | Create the signal and set the look-back period |
| ☐ | Add at least one risk factor with a clear criteria description |
| ☐ | Add protective factors (optional) |
| ☐ | Set up notifications |
| ☐ | Test with a known participant |
| ☐ | Tell your team, then activate |
What do you want to do next?
Not what you’re looking for? Navigate to back to the Early Intervention Signals Index.
What are best practices for Early Intervention Signals? | How do I make my signals more accurate? | How should I roll out Signals to my team?