QuestionPoint: 24/7 reference services

QuestionPoint Service install Sunday Sept 27th beginning at 0:00 AM EDT

QuestionPoint will be brought down at 04:00 UTC/GMT Sunday Sept 27th (00:00 a.m. New York; 5:00 a.m. London; 8:00 a.m. Dubai; 9:30 a.m. Delhi; 2:00 p.m. Sydney). We expect the service to be unavailable for 6 hours.

We will be installing and testing elements designed  to address the recent peformance issues, as well as retiring the librarian html chat monitor, as described in a previous posting.  It is imperative that you end any in-progress chat sessions at least five minutes prior to the scheduled service interruption to avoid sudden communication interruptions to your patrons and potential "hung" sessions. (You will be unable to click on any in-progress sessions to get information to communicate with the patron.)

When service is restored (10:00 GMT, 6:00AM  New York, 11:00 AM London, 2:00PM Dubai, 3:30 PM Delhi, 8:00 pm Sydney) , please check your "New" questions lists for any interrupted chat sessions or unanswered email questions.

If you experience any outage after the projected service restoration, please contact your Customer Service Provider for further assistance.

We are sorry for any inconvenience the downtime may cause.

The QuestionPoint Team

HTML Chat retirement date is upon us

On September 27, 2009,  at 00:00AM EDT (4:00 UTC/GMT)  QuestionPoint will close a chapter in its history by reitiring the original librarian html chat monitor. We have been messaging this upcoming change for several months, and provided links to information and trainings covering  the flash version of the librarian Chat monitor.(http://www.questionpoint.org/education/index.html) 

As you all know, QuestionPoint has grown considerably in the last 4 years, and it is no longer feasible for us to maintain 2 different chat architectures. The flash-based  chat monitor has been a part of QuestionPoint for 3- ½ years, and current and future development is concentrated on that product.  On Sunday Sept 27^th, all links to the html chat monitor will be removed from the program In addition, all options and schedules for setting up chat coverage via self-managed “virtual cooperative coverage groups”  will be removed.    If your library was using such a group to share chat responsibilities, and you have not yet moved to using Queues and Flash Chat,  you need to contact Carol Bonnefil at bonnefic@oclc.org to review your groups structure and arrange for us to set up a Cooperative Group within the Flash structure OCLC .

No 24/7 Cooperative libraries are affected by this, nor are any previous 24/7 Reference libraries.  In fact, the majority of QuestionPoint libraries have moved to flash chat over the last 2 years. If you do have any doubts about which version of chat you have been using, here is a screenshot of the My QuestionPoint page with the "Launch html chat" link circled and X’d  in Red. That is going away, and you will need to begin using the "Launch Chat" link that is boxed in Green.