Welcome to the first in a series of QuestionPoint tips. These tips have been compiled by the QuestionPoint team after reading every feedback, comment and support message that has been sent to us since the QuestionPoint software was released in March 2006.
Many of these tips apply directly to QuestionPoint while others fall under the heading of good computer practices. We hope you find these helpful and remember that Help is always the best place to check first when you have a question. And it’s just a click away using the Help link at the top of every page in the QuestionPoint system.
Our first set of 6 tips come from our After Hours staff and deal with some of the best practices they follow as they serve the large number of simultaneous patrons that they work with.
1. Always reboot Your Computer Before Your Shift
By doing this, you’re freeing your computer’s memory which will help improve your computer’s overall performance as well as QuestionPoint’s.
For a Windows XP computer, here are the steps to follow before each shift:
1. Click Start
2. Click Turn off Computer
3. Click Restart
2. Limit the number of open or minimized Internet Explorer browser windows
The chat monitor runs in an Internet Explorer browser window, If you have more than two IE windows opened, your computer slows down to figure out which IE window gets which traffic from the Internet. This makes QuestionPoint appear slow.
One suggestion to help limit the number of Internet Explorer windows is to use IE only for QuestionPoint and use another browser such as Firefox or Netscape for researching your patron’s questions on the web.
3. Limit the number of other programs running on your computer
When monitoring chat, it is critical to run only those programs that are essential for helping your patrons.
4. Only have one patron in a co-browse session at a time
Running more than one co-browse session on your computer at a time consumes a lot of your computer’s memory and makes it very likely that IE will crash.
5. Always end your patron chat sessions when they are done.
Chat sessions that have been ended but not closed create unnecessary strain on QuestionPoint.
6. Always use the Log Out link in the chat monitor when ending your shift.
As always, your comments are valuable to us so please feel free to post your feedback to these tips below.
Look for the next set of tips on Nov 22.
The QuestionPoint Team
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