Hale County just switched from Able Term to Odyssey. My office did not use the Able Term prosecutor module, and I am still trying to determine whether we can modify the Odyssey module enough to work for what we do.

I believe that our Treasurer and Auditor use Odyssey for their work, and I can help get you in touch with them if you email me, jtirey at halecounty.org

Has anyone looked up the word Odyssey in the dictionary ? In my opinion it fits perfectly... an extended wandering journey or voyage.

The only part that I semi-like is the document production for creating indictments, and many, many of the "tokens" need to be created or you have to import the charging language. It has slowed down my intake by half because it is so slooooooooooow and forget about running a useful report. I have a local police agency that is about to go postal because we haven't been able to give them a dispo report since March.

When we first got it I thought well its a new system, it will get better when everyone gets used to it. Its been 6 months and I'm still waiting.

Wes,

Is this delay new? Thought you were on track for next month with Prosecutor?

Not good too hear if that's the case. Odyssey Prosecutor does have some flaws and "missing" functions which we all need. However, Tyler has a focus group, which includes Wes and I, to help develop the tools, tokens, documents, etc. that are common. I encourage you to let us know what would be necessary and/or nice to have and we can pass it along.

We tried Odyssey's prosecutor for two + years; constantly communicating error issues and requests for missing fields and capabilities that we all use daily. Given the huge number of ineffective functions when Odyssey decided to start billing us $7000/yr for software maintenance and support on what is at best a mediocre prosecutor package we opted out to a privately designed software that incorporates more features and costs less than 1/10 of what Odyssey did. It still allows us to file electronicly through Odyssey in the clerk's office. The other two prosecutor's offices in our county have also opted for other providers. When Odyssey recently came to Kerr County we showed them issues that have been pending resolution for 2+ years. The Co. rep. that recently came to Kerr was very conciliatory but it has been our experience that their left hand does not talk to the right.

I agree that the left hand doesn't seem to know what the right hand is doing. Tyler's gone through 2 project managers so far and deadlines appear to have little meaning to them. The district clerk is having the same financial difficulties mentioned in an earlier post. At this point, I just hope the prosecutor module doesn't hurt our operation.

We in the Kerr County Attorney's office have had much the same experience as this writer:

"I don't think they understand what is legally required of [most prosecutor functions], and it seems awful complicated. I haven't been able to find anyone who has documentation about how it is supposed to work, and the trainer completely ignored my question about documentation."

I'm glad for the opportunity to hear everyone's stories. Anything we can learn from each other will only help identify issues and determine solutions. I don't want to sound like I work for Tyler, but my county has bought into Odyssey and I am one of the project managers working full-time on the installation (but I am still a prosecutor). So I have to keep a positive outlook and work towards an effective solution. The good news is that modifications/enhancements are typically to Tyler's core product, so future releases you get will contain the work we have done here. Melissa stated above we are part of a group working on making the prosecutor program better for everyone, so again, let us know what we can do to help.

I wanted to address some specific comments I read here to try and help. Understand every county does things differently and not all can afford to enhance the program. I will tell you, out of the box, I don't see how you can use the prosecutor product -- and some are.

Melissa, we did not delay go-live b/c of Prosecutor. One of the clerk's had an issue with Case Manager, but since we are converting criminal together, we are all waiting for the modification.

Stacey, Odyssey is not slow here. I think that is probably a local IT issue with the quality/size/speed of your local network and/or servers, etc. You're right about missing many tokens, but the September release will see more than a dozen new ones added that I had them write and Fort Bend/CUC funded.

Rex, I don't think this version of Prosecutor has been out for 2+ years. I know there was a "beta" version that was pitiful, but it was a prototype for what is coming online now. I could be wrong, in which case I'm very concerned.

In general, we have had one great project manager and we all keep to our deadlines. And while it is obvious that they misunderstood the nature of our business and don't have much documentation, they're working with us on that now. I will do what I can to represent all of us. Email me directly at wwittig@co.fort-bend.tx.us if you have specific requests, concerns, questions, etc.

One issue we have noticed is that Tyler doesn't seem to understand what "expunge" means. We have told them that legally, we are required to make some data go away. They don't want to do that, for reasons that make sense from an IT standpoint. We have also tried to explain to them "Class B misdemeanor, up to 180 days in jail," if data is not expunged, but they just sort of look back at you like it doesn't matter, kinda like fish look at you from the other side of the glass at the aquarium.

Wes,
I might agree that its our IT system if our prior Tyler product had been slow too but it wasn't. Difficult for me (a totally non-IT person granted) to understand why one of their products worked quickly and the other did not.

Here are a few of my issues from today (there are others but I thought I would just take todays) :

Offenses listed in reverse chronological order makes it pain to get to the offense you're working on if the guy has 8 pages of offenses

Very limited "back" feature, most times when you need to go back it sends you to the search page so you have to start your search for party/case from scratch

Can't look at a jail census by limited date like you could in ableterm

Can't hook dispositions to agency case numbers

I'm sure these and many other issues are being worked on but as of right now they are issues that affect my daily practice.

Heck! I would be happy if I could search for people by either first or last name alone!! If I had a dollar for everytime I need to search for someone and I only have a last name or first name only . . . grrrr!

If you are unhappy now, wait until you run into the issue where defendants arrests do not match between the prosecutor and case manager packages. Dispositions are inconsistent, can not get court costs and jail credit on dockets, confirmed arrests do not show-up in jails, DPS offense codes are inaccurate, juvenile detention hearings scue the state reports so we run a ghost docket etc...You will become very adept at creating your own fixes to bypass odyssey issues that Tyler will tell you "can't be fixed". I sincerely hope that Tyler succombs to the total pressure of all the counties and creates a worthwhile program.

Thanks for the input!
Several of those who replied mentioned that they are using other software programs.
What companies are you going through and how successful have they been?
Has anyone used NET DATA?

In response to James' question, two prosecutors' offices in our county have contracted with a private software designer to custom-build an application using Microsoft Access to replace the Odyssey Prosecutor package, and the other prosecutor is looking at a commercially developed program called "Just-ware," which sounds promising.

As long as we are getting frustrations with Odyssey off our chests, below are excerpts from a memo I wrote after a meeting with Tyler Technology's exeecutives in October 2006. Despite their "mea culpas" and promises to "do better," little has improved. Hence our decision to just get out of the Prosecutor package:

"These are notes I took at the presentation by Odyssey representatives yesterday, 10/11/06, in the Kerr County Commissioners Courtroom. There was not a recording, nor was there a court reporter taking down what was said, so I made an effort to write down verbatim much of what was said by Dusty Wamble, who was the primary speaker. Wamble represented that he has been a director of the Tyler group for several years, which is the parent company for Encode, which provides our financial package. He has been associated for several years with the Software Group, but just became part of that organization 2 months ago, apparently to help Odyssey work out its problems in Texas. Where I have used quotation marks, the words are exactly as Wamble stated them.

According to Wamble, the Software Group began developing Odyssey in late 1999 - early 2000. It has been successfully installed on a national basis. In the State of Minnesota, they are in 63 of the 76 counties, and are also in Florida and New Hampshire.

Software Group made a decision that the program was ready to release in Texas and made installations in Kerr, Hayes and Gillespie counties within the last year.

Wamble acknowledged that all three counties had been using Software Group's product, Ableterm (they call it the Legacy System) which he described as a "feature rich application." He acknowledged that Odyssey "did not do a good job of integrating these [features] into a new system."

He committed to fixing the problems with the program, with the following specific plans:
� They have decided to have a ��moratorium on any new Texas installations�� until the problems in these three counties are resolved.
� They are going to hire/train/dedicate a team that will concentrate only on Texas issues, to help with training and needed revisions to the program;

Wamble described his job as setting in place long term initiatives in order to make the company "proactive, rather than reactive,". . ."but that the fix would not happen overnight."

He said at least twice that "installing Hayes County when we did was ludicrous." He acknowledged several times that there is a problem with their support and training for Odyssey, and committed to change that in the near future.

Several people gave specific examples of problems we are having with Odyssey, and in every case he agreed that the problem should have been fixed, and that many of the fixes "are not rocket science," and should not be difficult to correct. He had no answer for why these easy fixes were not already completed.

...

We also need the name and phone/e-mail of a person in the company who is in charge of receiving all complaints from all users, so that we can be confident that issues we complain about have all gone to one central decision-maker who can prioritize the complaints for fixing. He said there is not such a person now, but that if I would "wait until next week," he expected to have that someone in place."

That's one thing that I don't understand, is the searching only with a full name. Able Term was able to do that.

Also, it seems to me that Odyssey is much slower than Able Term.

Finally, does anyone know of a program with which you can use Word Perfect?

Yeah, the search feature requires you to know too much already. I have mentioned it, but will make it a point to dig deeper. I can tell ya'll that expunctions have been brought up and they ar working on it. It won't be in the September release, but hopefully within one or two cycles thereafter.

Stacey, I will work on the issues you have listed. I hate that it kicks you out to the search screen too.

Rex, sounds like you've got some configuration issues. Some of those things would be fixed by your county, but it will take more space than I have here. Email me at wwittig@co.fort-bend.tx.us so we can talk about how you're set up.

IBailey, Dusty isn't around any more. Hmmm. The president and COO of the justice division have been there less than a year and have some plans. I hope for my sake they talk a better game than what you got. Good luck to you.

We are about to go live with JP Package. Has anyone using Odyssey gotten a set of "offense codes" for class C misdemeanors that make sense so that it is easy to figure out across the entire system?

Katherine McAnally

Katherine,

Nice to meet you at the user conference. Fort Bend went live on JP at the end of March. We began with their basic code set but modified and added on to cover all our bases. Tyler stated up front that it varies by county how things are done so they don't lock down a standard code set. That said, most of ours use DPS coding. Would be happy to share. Who's your Tyler project manager? You can always email me directly at wwittig@co.fort-bend.tx.us.

Nueces County is about to implement Odyssey for criminal cases. However, Tyler Tech. is telling us that multi-defendants on same indictment will not be handled in the Prosecutor module. Any one else come across this issue and if so, what was the solution?

Same for multi-count indictments!

Why would you ever put multiple defendants in one indictment?