Intakes are not nearly robust enough to fill the function that they were intended to fill. They need a checklist, a note tab, and so many other things that they should be set up exactly like cases. Intakes can live as intakes and be worked as intakes for a very long time. Many firms have had to create a work-around of an intake case-type for each case type that they have, doubling the workload and reporting problems.
Make Intakes basically just cases. They need more features.
It would also be nice to have a Value block in the Intake options so firms can run reports on economic losses on non-cases.
Also beneficial would be to be able to have more than one intake form for a practice class. This would allow you to update your intake forms over the life of the software without overwriting or deleting fields and the data attached to the fields. Currently you are only able to edit the Intake for a case type. This does not allow for improvement in your intake process while preserving past practices that were good at the time.
Just got off of the phone with Jennifer Nichols of The Servant Center and she would also like to see some changes to the client intake interface in order to make it more useful to users.
Intakes should not but a case as you defeat the purchase of having Intakes. While they may need various tabs, your ability to work the potential case should be limited until you actually decide to make it a case. Most firms will do limited amount of investigation into a potential case. Staff should not be required to put a lot of time into a potential case; therefore, certain features should be limited.
I agree with having a checklist inside an intake so the user can be notified when followup is needed.