Common Actions Across User Roles#

Signing in for the First Time#

Signing into VA Explorer requires an email address and password. You will use a temporary password obtained from either system-generated email or your administrator when signing in for the first time. Contact your admin if you do not have a temporary password or cannot find it.

  1. Navigate to VA Explorer in your web browser. Compatible web browsers include Google Chrome, Microsoft Edge, Mozilla Firefox, and Apple Safari.

  2. Use your email address and your temporary password to sign in. You will be prompted to choose a new password on the next page. Follow the instructions to create a strong password that will help protect your VA Explorer account.

  3. After signing in, the application will take you to the Home page. The Homepage shows trends of VAs collected and coded, as well as a snapshot of VAs with coding issues and VAs coded with Indeterminate cause of death. The scope of VA data shown on the Home page depends on your assigned role and geographic access.

  • For Field Workers: If you are assigned the Field Worker role, the Homepage shows trends and data on the VAs for your location.

  • For All Other Roles: For all other roles, data on the Home page are limited to the specific regions or facilities you can access.

Viewing Your Account Profile#

Your profile shows the role you have been assigned, your geographic access, and actions you can take in VA Explorer, such as viewing PII and downloading data. These account settings are described in User Roles and Capabilities To view your account profile:

  1. Click your name in the upper right-hand corner of the navigation bar; a dropdown menu will open.

  2. Click the “My Profile” option within the dropdown menu.

Please contact your administrator if you need to update your account settings or if something looks incorrect. Only individuals with administrator roles can update user accounts.

Changing Your Password#

To change your password while signed into VA Explorer:

  1. Click your name in the upper right-hand corner of the navigation bar; a dropdown menu will open.

  2. Click the “Change Password” option within the dropdown menu.

  3. Enter your current password.

  4. Choose a new password, following instructions to enter a valid password twice.

If you do not know your current password, sign out of VA Explorer and click “Forgot Password?” You will be instructed to enter the e-mail address associated with your account, and VA Explorer will send an email with a link allowing you to reset it.

Using the Analytics Dashboard#

All users can view the VA Analytics Dashboard to see information on the VAs (filtered to their level of permissions and access) that have successfully been assigned a cause of death. To do so, click “Dashboard” in the navigation bar to view it.

The VA Analytics Dashboard is a dynamic, visualization-based dashboard that helps you explore cause of death data. It has three global filters that simultaneously update all graphs, maps, and statistics found in the top left of the dashboard page and directly above the heatmap. The global filters include:

Specific descriptions and usage info for select filters available via the VA Explorer dashboard#

Filter

Description

How to Use

Death Date

View analytics for a specific date of death time frame

Choose the time frame you want to explore from the Time Period dropdown menu (ex. Within 1 Month, Within 1 Year, or Custom)

Cause of Death

View analytics for a particular cause of death

Choose a cause of death or a category of causes (ex. Infectious, NCD, etc.) from the Causes dropdown menu

Location

Filter analytics to specific location(s)

Choose specific geographic regions using the province/district selector and location dropdown or click a region on the map.

Viewing Dashboard Components#

The Dashboard includes several visualizations, including:

  • A dynamic heatmap showing geographical trends, with ability to filter for regions of interest. Found in the bottom left of the dashboard page.

  • Cause of death plots. Found in the top right of the dashboard page.

  • Death distributions by age, gender, and place of death (“demographics”). Found in the bottom right of the dashboard page.

  • Cause of death trends over time. Found in the middle right of the dashboard page.

Searching for and Reviewing Specific VAs#

All roles have some level of access to search for and review specific VAs. To do so, click “Data Management” in the navigation bar to view the Data Management page.

The Data Management page shows a paginated table of all the VAs in the system your account is eligible to see. For more information about your account and eligibility, see Viewing Your Account Profile. On the Data Management page, you can search or filter available VAs with the following parameters:

Specific descriptions for each VA property available to filter with#

Field

Description

ID

The unique numeric identifier assigned to the specific VA in VA Explorer.

Interviewed

The date the VA interview was conducted. If your account does not have PII access, you will see “Date Unknown”.

Facility

The facility where the VA was collected. If facility information is missing, you will see “Location Unknown”.

Deceased

The name of the deceased individual. If your account does not have PII access, you will see “Subject Unknown”.

Deathdate

The date of the individual’s death. If the VA is missing this information, you will see “Date Unknown”.

Cause

The cause of death assigned by coding algorithm. If the VA has not yet been coded, “Not Coded” will be displayed. A VA is “Not Coded” if the algorithm has not been run or if error(s) prevent the VA from being coded.

Warnings

The count of warnings generated by the coding process. An example of a warning you might see for InterVA5 is: “field ageInYears2, age was not provided or not a number.

Errors

The count of errors generated by the coding process. An example of an error you may see for InterVA is: “Error in age indicator: Not Specified.”

In addition to searching and filtering, users may also have access to the following actions depending on their permissions:

  • Sort VA table data by column value by clicking any of the column headers. Clicking again reverses the sort order of the column

  • Download VA table data by clicking the “Export” button to be directed to the Export page with your search parameters automatically filled into the export form.

  • View VA details by clicking the “View” button on any individual VA. See details below.

Viewing Details for Individual VAs#

When viewing a specific VA, the resulting page may show a couple of tabs at the top below the VAs ID. Users with permission to change VAs will also see the option to repair the VA via an “Edit Record” button. See Repairing VA Errors & Warnings for details on editing VAs. Quick navigation options to automatically scroll to the top or bottom of the VA responses is available via the floating action button in the bottom right.

Record#

This tab is always visible and shows the VA questionnaire data, including:

  • The question ID corresponding to the WHO standard instrument

  • The text of question associate that pairs with each question ID

  • The response or calculation for each question

By default, all empty fields are hidden so that only questions with answers are shown. Revealing these is possible by unchecking the “Hide Empty Fields” box in the top right of this tab.

Coding Issues#

This tab will become visible if the individual VA has any warnings or errors associated with it.

These warnings and errors can be applied during data import or, more often, after processing the VA for cause of death.

  • (Errors) these are issues that either VA Explorer or a coding algorithm has determined is severe enough to totally prevent CoD assignment. They will need to be corrected.

  • (User Warnings) these are issues that should be addressed because they potentially block CoD assignment or the accuracy of the assigned CoD but are not quite as severe.

  • (Algorithm Warnings) these are warnings specifically provided by the algorithm after assigning a CoD that indicate the assignment may not be accurate. Fixing these increases the accuracy of CoD assignment. This tab will be visible if the individual VA has been edited or updated in any way since its initial import.

Change History#

This history provides for transparency, record integrity, and protection from misuse for VAs and will take the form of an audit trail, a table of all changes, with each row showing

  • The date of the change

  • The user who made the change

  • The fields before and after the change

Additionally, this tab will contain two action buttons:

  • (Reset to Original) To completely reset the VA to the state it was in at the time of original import. (Note that for this action, change history is still preserved)

  • (Revert Most Recent Change) To erase or undo the change described at the top of the change history table (organized by most recent changes first)

Duplicate VAs

If your system is configured to automatically flag potential duplicate VAs, you may also see a yellow warning banner above these tabs. This banner alerts you that VA Explorer has flagged this VA as a possible duplicate. Please consult with an administrator or data manager to determine any actions to take for potential duplicate VAs.