Virtual User Group: notes of August 2011 meeting

The latest QuestionPoint virtual user group meeting was on 3 days at 3 different times (August 30, 31 and September 1) and attended by a total of 98 QuestionPoint librarians. Each meeting was facilitated by a member of the product team: Carol Bonnefil, Susan McGlamery, or Paula Rumbaugh. To listen to the recording of the September 1 session, access either the streaming version or the file (requires an Arf player).  Here are the PowerPoint slides used for all 3 meetings:

Aug 11 user group

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Meeting notes:

We opened the meeting with an overview of the QuestionPoint community. We then discussed the enhancements to QuestionPoint’s Policy Pages, introduced in the 21 August install, including (1) , linking from specified fields in the Policy Pages to the WorldCat Registry and (2) new fields in the Policy Pages. Additional details on the 21 August release are available in the Release Notes published in this blog. We noted the revisions to the Policy Page guidelines and the latest Policy Page day, which we celebrated on September 2.

We then reviewed the new features and enhancements of the past year, including customized wait messages for chat queues and the knowledge base as a web service.

The update ended with a look to the future and what we are planning next for QuestionPoint. Based on our user survey (summer of 2010) we have identified several new initiatives, including a new texting option using Upside Wireless, further optimization of QP for mobile devices and improved forms management and form field reporting. We also announced plans for two pilot programs to test two new features: the ability to accept attachments from patrons and to forward email messages directly into QuestionPoint.

Following are some of the questions that were asked and answered during the three sessions.

Qwidget:

• Further development of the Qwidget to accommodate Android versions. This can be a moving target, but development continues for various devices, including additional Android versions and the iPad.
• Do you have technical experts who can help us set up the Qwidget for Facebook? Our [email protected] can help a great deal, and they will pass any questions they cannot answer on to one of us in the product area.
• Is it possible to have a practice Qwidget? Suggestions include placing the Qwidget on your intranet, with an organized practice day, or on any page that’s not publicized.

Full Transaction Searching:

• Is it possible to have full transaction searching on the Review Transcripts area? In order for libraries to perform actions on search results (such as Follow Up), the search is not available from Review Transcripts, as this area does not permit actions on questions.
• Will transactions search allow me to see questions that belong to other libraries? Yes, if you had a “relationship” with that question then the transaction will be searchable.

Chat:

• Are wait messages only for when patrons are not picked up? Yes. We do not yet have automated “still searching” messages.
• Why can I not see the IP address for Qwidget sessions? If the Administrator has set up the Qwidget to permit IP addresses to be gathered, the IP addresses are seen in the “Review Transcripts”area. They are currently not available in the Chat monitor.
• Are our scripts at the institution or the group level? In a cooperative situation – where the librarians may be answering questions from non-local patrons, the chat librarian sees the patron library’s scripted messages at both the group and institution level. The chatting librarian always sees his or her own personal scripts and institution’s scripts.
• Is it still recommended that we assign descriptive codes ONLY to questions from our library’s patrons and NOT other library’s patrons? Yes, if you are a member of the 24/7 Cooperative.
• How can our librarians practice chat? See the the practice link on the My QuestionPoint home page.

Policy Pages:

• A comment from one librarian for everyone: it is very helpful if everyone puts out a username and password for their databases/access to catalog & pages. When we do NOT have that, we are limited in what suggestions we can make to students.  For members of the 24/7 Reference Cooperative: it is very helpful if you can provide access to your databases to Cooperative librarians – this helps the Cooperative provide better service.
• Another librarian urges all 24/7 participants to link to a list of all databases available at the library. If you cannot provide a link, then do list your databases in the policy pages.
• After linking to the Registry and then clicking to enlarge the map, the wrong location was displayed. It is possible that your institution Registry maps the center of the zip code area rather than your address. This may be because the geolocation utility originally used to populate the Registry field used the coordinates of the center of the zip code area rather than the exact address. Suggestion: Copy from the Registry instead of Linking. This uses the address rather than the coordinates. You may also manually input the address. The WC Registry editor at your library can use the easy fix in the Registry to correct the map. Contact [email protected] for more information.
• One attendee used Google map’s code to embed the map in the policy pages directly, rather than linking to the Registry.
• Is it possible to embed more than one map in the Map field? No, not at this time. 

Miscellaneous:

• Are there plans to provide the option to mark a New question as Active? When a patron responds "thank you" to an answer, the question doesn't need more info/action, but stays in the New list. We keep our questions open for about 2 weeks. Questions do go from bold type to regular type after they’ve been opened. We have logged this enhancement request for later review.
• Are there plans to modify reports to allow us to export data to Excel? Highlight, copy, and paste into an Excel cell is usually faster and just as good as an export. But we do have this enhancement logged.
• Can we call the knowledge base something else? Absolutely. Please feel free to call any patron-facing feature whatever you like.
• What about other new additions we would like to see? We are following the 2010 QuestionPoint survey responses closely and are happy to say we’ve implemented or are actively working on the top 6 or 7 options. We hope to do another survey next summer.
• How do we set up email notification? This is done in the Administration module, Institution tab, Settings link.

Many thanks to all who attended!