QP user group meeting: June 25, 2007

The QuestionPoint user group met on Monday June 25 at the Library of Congress, from 3:30 PM to 5 PM. Approximately 70 people attended.

After introductions, Jeff Penka and Susan McGlamery presented a QP update (Download 2007_ALA_QP_UserGroup.ppt). Jeff discussed the latest install, June 3, including: offline reports, the new Patron chat interface, and the Forms Manager. A more complete discussion of these features may be found in our blog posting for May 31: http://questionpoint.blogs.com/questionpoint_247_referen/2007/05/new_features_an.html

After the update, chair Nancy Huling requested that attendees write down on blue index cards any concerns or ideas for improvement for QuestionPoint. On yellow cards, attendees were asked to note the things they liked about QP.  The cards were then collected and read aloud by QP User Council members Beth Cackowski (NJ) and Julie Strange (MD).  Jeff and Susan addressed some of the comments.  Here is a summary of what the user group attendees noted on their comment cards:

Blue Cards: Suggestions for QuestionPoint

From 24/7 Cooperative members, co-browsing, response time problems, and policies and procedures were mentioned more often than anything else as complaints. Too few patrons are configured to make use of co-browsing, or co-browsing does not work well with too many sites. Work with multiple patrons sometimes still creates concerns about response time, as transcript displays may lag behind patron pick-up or switching between patrons. Policies and procedures are critical to a successful cooperative, but some felt there were too many to remember.

Additional complaints were made about:

Cooperative

• Difficult to understand reporting options
• Issues with closing transcripts

In General

• SPAM
• Not enough administrative control for groups
• Not enough information soon enough about plans for future installs
• Ineffective documentation and training

Most blue card comments were expressed as requests for enhancements. Mentioned by more than one person were:

• IM Integration
• Retention of data for more than 90 days
• Ability to search current database
• Among other requested enhancements were:
• Link to KB from chat monitor
• Ability to refer to more than one person
• Notify patron of referral
• Add own descriptive codes
• Branding for the local service
• E-mail multiple patrons at multiple addresses

Yellow Cards: What do you like?

These comments ranged from “international reach” to “indicator light for patron’s chat connection.” Users present most often commented on:

• Software stability
• 24-hour coverage enabled by the Cooperative
• QuestionPoint staff in general and Cooperative staff in particular
• Other areas receiving your kudos were:
• Individual chat features
• Quality control provided for the Cooperative
• Effective training, timely communications, and friendly support
• Statistics and reports

Jeff Penka and Susan McGlamery addressed some of the comments with updates and plans for future releases. Jeff also mentioned some of the technical hurdles that make some requests, for example IM integration, particularly challenging.

While we always need to take stock and get reality checks, we can probably truthfully say that most of your complaints or enhancements requests have already been logged and either await evaluation and prioritization or have been noted as important but requiring more significant resources and investigation than are possible in the short term.

And we appreciated your “yellow remarks,” too! They have provided us a pat on the back and the determination to meet needs and expectations. Thank you!

Another discussion at the meeting of note was how to get updates that have been posted to the blog. We took down suggestions and plan to meet next week to explore what we can do to push postings and follow-up comments out to your e-mail boxes.

Please add your comments below!

Comments

[Nancy Foley]

Did we really ask to be able to E-mail multiple patrons at multiple addresses? In any case, I don't see one suggestion I thought was very popular - the ability to "broadcast" IM to all chat operators monitoring at a particular time. Thanks. Nancy