We will install a QuestionPoint upgrade this Sunday that will include new features and fixes.
Please be advised that the QuestionPoint service will be unavailable for one hour: 0600 – 0700 (GMT), Sunday, August 21. It is imperative that you end any in-progress chat sessions at least 2 minutes prior to the scheduled system outage to avoid sudden communication interruptions to your patrons and potential "hung" sessions.
When service is restored, please check your "New" questions lists for any unanswered email questions. If you experience any outage after the projected service period, please contact your Customer Service Provider for further assistance.
1. New
1.1 Reports in Drop-down Navigation Menu
A Reports item has been added to the drop-down navigation menu in the upper right of every QuestionPoint page. Clicking on this will take the user directly into the Reports module, to the same default page as if s/he had clicked on the Reports tab from the My QuestionPoint home page.
1.2 Policy Page Enhancements
The following enhancements to the Policy Page feature of QuestionPoint are the first of a project to more closely integrate QuestionPoint with other OCLC services to reduce duplication and inconsistencies across an institution’s services and take advantage of centralized sources of data.
The WorldCat Registry is a database maintained by OCLC for libraries around the world. All QuestionPoint libraries have an institution record in the Registry. The information in your institution’s Registry record can be changed at any time by an authorized person(s) from the library. You or other administrators in your library can request edit access to the Registry or other OCLC electronic resource services at http://www.oclc.org/us/en/access/prepare.htm.
Several data elements in the Registry – such as institution name, address, home page and catalog URLs, IP addresses, and more – are used by several OCLC services. This data may be read directly from the Registry, eliminating the need to maintain such information in multiple places.
New text, forms, and buttons in the Profile module. The QuestionPoint Profile module, Institution Services tab, Inst Info link, displays two new fields:
OCLC Symbol, which displays the symbol associated with your library
WorldCat Registry Record, which displays the name of the Registry record associated with your library.
If this information is not correct, you can click on the Correction Form link to report the error.
New text, forms, and buttons in the Policy Pages. The Policy Edit Page (renamed from the current Policies page) includes instructions at the top of the page. They describe:
o How to see the Policy Page Guidelines
o How to see the same view the chat librarian will see
o How to view the Registry record associated with your account and how to request a change if that is not correct
o For Cooperative libraries only: instructions for submitting your completed policy page
A new button on the blue bar beneath your library’s name, the View WorldCat Registry button, opens the entire public view of the Registry record affiliated with your institution in a new window.
Link to WorldCat Registry record field or copy data. Seven policy page fields are linkable to similar fields in the Registry. The linked fields are highlighted in light yellow in the policy page edit view. To view data in your associated Registry record, click “edit” on one of the highlighted fields. This will display the link to the Registry data, which is viewable when you click the accompanying arrow.
The advantages of linking to your institution’s Registry data are that you won’t need to rekey data and any updates to the linked Registry field will automatically be reflected from your policy page when chat librarians view your policies. Rather than link directly to the Registry data, -you can instead copy the information to your policy field. Once the information is copied, you can then place it wherever you want or edit it. Copying does not provide automatic updating should that information change for your library.
If your library currently has no data in one of the linkable fields in the Registry, a message appears in place of data: “This WorldCat Institution Registry field has not been completed or the data has been deleted.” Your only option is to cancel and return to the field edit page. (You cannot update your library’s Registry information directly from the policy page.)
Once linked, a new Unlink button replaces the Edit button for that field. You cannot edit that field without first unlinking it. Note: If you already have considerable information in a linkable field and you then link the field, the linked data replaces all existing information. However, if you wish to return to the previous manually entered information, just click the Unlink button.
Finally, a new Reset button has been added to the field edit page. While entering and editing information in the field, the Reset button will return the contents to what it was, provided you have not clicked the Save button.
New fields for the Policy Pages. Three new fields have been added to the Policy Edit Page:
· Map follows the Locations field. Linkable
· Wifi Access? follows the Available Technology and Equipment field. Linkable
· e-Books follows the Databases field. Not linkable.
As always, libraries that participate in the 24/7 Reference Cooperative should consult the Policy Page Guidelines for each field to learn about the specific contents and/or the nature of the contents expected by the users of the policies .
The new Map field will render a Google map based on the data in this field. If you link to the Registry, the map is based on the latitude-longitude coordinates stored in the Registry. If you copy from the Registry, the actual address stored there is copied into the field, and the map is based on that. Finally, you may enter your address manually in the field; the map will then be based on the address you enter.
The Wifi Access field can hold any information you wish to display there. If you choose to link to the Registry, you will simply get a “Yes” or “No”.
The e-Books field will hold whatever information you think chat librarians will need. Please consult the Policy Page Guidelines.
Hotlinking URLs no longer requires HTML. Until now, in order to hotlink a URL in the policy page, the editor needed to enclose the URL in “href” HTML code, then specify the actual text to be hotlinked. It is now only necessary to enclose the URL in angle brackets, for example: <http://www.anywherelibrary.org>. This will then appear to users of the policies as a hot link.
What will happen to existing policy pages? There will initially be no change to existing policies. Only policy page editors will note the new instructions, buttons, and highlighted, linkable fields. URLs for which editors have used HTML code to hotlink them will still appear as hot links. If you are happy with your policy page as it now stands, you need do nothing.
2. Fixes
2.1 Reports of Sessions
Session reports no longer link incorrectly when you have not set a date range. The default when you first open a Report of Sessions is based on all data currently in the 90-day database. If you click any of the numbers, you no longer receive the “Invalid” error message with table data that includes transcripts not requested. Instead, you will receive table data that exactly matches the hotlinked number you clicked on.
2.2 Full Transaction Searching Highlighting
Currently keywords in a librarian-to-librarian message are not highlighted when they are used as search terms. With this install, they will correctly highlight.
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