With other issues Athena responds fairly quickly. Once that occurs, ODBC works fine and is reliable. Using login credentials for downloading the data can be frustrating initially because they are not immediately actualized by the engineers. They do provide data dictionaries and data maps which I found very helpful. I found that support for accessing the raw data, especially in terms of data preparation is very limited unless you pay for a support meeting. Managers can look at staff caseloads easily. Athena Software has a lot of documentation for Penelope that I have found extremely helpful. There is a feature that allows appointments to sync with Microsoft Outlook that is very handy.
One can also use the built in reports for these. One can access the raw data via ODBC and prepare the data for reporting, projections for grant writing or program surveillance. Penelope is comprehensive in terms of documenting service appointments, client assessments, referrals, notes, agency workshops and meetings, etc. Now I can track anything entered into Penelope. Athena's data dictionaries were invaluable, but you have to become familiar with the databases to correctly merge them and prepare the data.
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Once I was able to download the data, I had to figure out where everything was at and how to link it together. It took a couple of months for Athena to figure out the issue was on their end. Initially, I had trouble using my credentials to log into Penelope's ODBC interface. To be fair to Athena, I've observed this is true with any database system built in reports for any database are static and the reporting needs of non-for-profit organizations are dynamic and shift at least annually. I was hired to obtain, process and analyze the raw Penelope data because the built in reports were not sufficient for our reporting purposes.
Penelope from the Perspective of Reporting and Program Surveillance
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