System configuration overview

Civica Cx Housing system parameters and preferences provide a very important and easy way of creating and maintaining values for commonly-used fields such as Companies, Functional units, Alert Severities, Address Types, etc. This approach of using global parameters that are visible to all system users ensures that a value needs to be entered only once and then becomes instantly available throughout the system. It also provides consistency and accuracy of data, ensuring that naming conventions are controlled centrally by the system administrator and that duplicate values are avoided. Whilst new parameter values can be added at any time, it is important that careful consideration be given to the core parameter set from the start, before linking these through to live records. Not only will the data be more comprehensive and meaningful, this preparation will also reduce the need for any significant re-work and reap its own rewards in terms of reporting analysis and efficient record entry. Where a housing organisation wishes to create a new field for their own specific use, or where a seemingly common field is already employed for a different purpose, a user defined parameter may be created. These can be linked to different field types - numeric, character, date, Boolean, etc. - depending on the data to be captured.

A system parameter is defined as a drop-down lookup field containing multiple possible values, all specified by the end user, and is available throughout standard screens within Civica Cx Housing.
A system preference is most commonly defined as a field with three possible data types: a single value entry, a prescribed lookup value or a Boolean (True or False) representation. These values are set by the end user to configure functionality within Civica Cx Housing to meet their specific needs.
A user defined parameter is characterised as one where the description, type and format are controlled entirely by the end user and is bespoke to them.

Separate help articles have been created for each key aspect of system configuration, including:

System parameters	System preferences	User defined parameters
To define a VAT type parameter value To define a general lookup parameter value To add organisation details To define a company parameter value To define a repair priority parameter value To define a repair priority rule parameter value To define a rent notice type parameter value To define a rent account type parameter value	To define a system preference value To define a reference number syntax	To create a user defined lookup type To create a user defined lookup parameter value To create a user defined field