New Features/Improvements
1. Librarian Attachments Saved
When a librarian attaches a document to an answer from within the Ask a Librarian module, the attachment will be virus scanned (no. 1 in Illustration 1 below). If passed it will be uploaded and stored on an OCLC server. The attachment will then be retrievable by any librarian with privileges that also allow them to see the transaction. The virus scanning is not synchronous, so may take up to five minutes to upload.
Upon successful scan, the attachment will be seen at the top of the transaction, and the name will be hot-linked (no. 2 in Illustration 1). If a virus has been detected, the document is not saved by QuestionPoint, and a notation of an unsaved attachment will be seen (no. 3 in Illustration 1).
Illustration 1: Attachment in Full Question View
Depending upon the OS/browser combination used by the librarian, and the software available to the user on their computer, the attachment link, when clicked, will either open automatically in a browser window or a dialogue box will appear giving the librarian the opportunity to open or save the document. The example in Illustration 2 below results from Windows 7 OS/ IE. Other messages may result from other OS/browser combinations.
Illustration 2: Windows 7 Open/Save Window
Important:
· If the transaction is deleted, the attachment will no longer be available for download.
· At this time, the attachment will not be available in Service History.
· The attachments sent with an answer will not be notated or available from the KB module.
Any attachment sent by a librarian with an answer will be reflected by a new icon in the questions list view.
Illustration 3: Attachment Icon in Questions List
2. Offline Reviews Improvements
All level of QuestionPoint managers (group, institution, Ask) will appreciate that Offline Reviews have now been updated with the Form Field Review improvements introduced in November. To achieve the ability to report on all form fields for any institution (or all institutions, if selected by a group administrator), no matter the form type, the genesis of the form, or the number of form versions, it is necessary to limit a single review to a single form type: email/walkup, chat/Qwidget, and SMS text message. Thus, the Session Type parameter now displays “—Select One –“ in the drop-down window, and there is no longer an All option.
Also, on the same page, date ranges are now inclusive. If you wish to request a review, e.g., for August 2011, enter 8/1/2011 in the first box (“On or after”) and 8/31/2011 in the second (On or before”).
Illustration 4: Page 2 of Offline Review Setup
On the third and final setup page for an Offline Review, the list of default fields and custom form fields to select from change, depending on whether the administrator has opted to report on email/walkup forms, chat/Qwidget forms, or SMS texting forms. As with the online Form Field Reviews (Transcript Reviews >> Form Fields), fields displayed on the left are tagged information (or metadata) about transactions, such as Date Entered, Patron E-mail Domain, Descriptive Codes, IP Address, and more. (Transactions received via texting do not, of course, actually have form fields, but they do have the possibility of metadata, such as Date and Descriptive Codes.)
To take full advantage of the more flexible and more accurate (if you change form fields over time) structure introduced in November 2011, your library should use forms built within the QuestionPoint Forms Manager in the Administration module.
Some important information to keep in mind with Offline Reviews (and Form Field Reviews where appropriate):
· The display on page 3 of setup of custom form fields (list on the right) depends on whether or not the library published a form in the QuestionPoint Forms Manager. All fields from self-hosted forms are automatically reported without an option to select fields.
· All data from self-hosted forms are reported under column headings (if the Excel format is chosen as the review format) labeled “Old Data 1,” “Old Data 2,” and so on, which correspond to the ID number of your self-hosted form (a number the QP system uses). Data is preceded by the actual field label.
· If you published a form using the QP Forms Manager but some of the transactions you are reviewing used a previous form, you will see both the published form fields as column headings and the Old Data columns. In Illustration 6, the transactions in the Excel file used a self-hosted form, but the library has published a form using the Forms Manager.
Illustration 5: Default and Custom Form Fields for Texting (top left), Chat, and Email
Illustration 6: Excel Review of Transactions from Self-hosted Form
3. Option to Include Patron Full Email Address in Form Field Review
Managers now have the option to include the patron’s full email address in Form Field Reviews (Ask >> Review Transcripts >> Form Fields). Whether the full address or just the domain appears depends on a new setting in the Administration module (see Illustration 7 below). The setting is on the General Settings page, under the Institution tab.
On the review setup page (Illustration 8), the Default Fields email selection option is “Patron E-mail” if the Administration setting is Yes for including the full address. The option is “Patron E-mail Domain” if the setting is No.
Illustration 7: Report Patron’s Full Email Address in Reviews – Admin Setting
Illustration 8: Report Patron’s Full Email Address in Reviews - Review Setup
4. Upside Wireless SMS Polling Frequency Increased
If your library offers SMS texting to your patrons through Upside Wireless, you can integrate those text messages into QuestionPoint. Information about that feature was released in November (see November Release Notes at http://questionpoint.blogs.com/questionpoint_247_referen/2011/11/questionpoint-install-13-november-2011.html). When introduced, QuestionPoint would poll the Upside Wireless web site every five minutes, for institutions that have integrated the two services. That frequency has been increased to every two (2) minutes.
Fixes
1. Descriptive Codes
A number of fixes were made to the Descriptive Codes feature.
· Default List Not Reported. If the default list of Descriptive Codes is being used (some 70 codes added by multiple sources between 2007 and 2010), they were not being reported in Form Field Reviews nor for Active data in Offline Reviews. That has been rectified and all codes, no matter the source, should be reported when requested.
· Group Admin Unable to Assign DCs. Group administrators (BME admins) were not able to set up Descriptive Codes for member libraries in the Administration module, even though libraries set their permissions for this functionality to Yes. This has also been rectified, and BME admins can now set up codes for all libraries that have given them permission to do so.
· Data Misaligned in Review. Since November 2011, if the Descriptive Codes option was not checked on the Form Fields Reviews setup page, every reported field following was shifted to the left by four places, thus reporting the data under incorrect headings. With this install, this misalignment has been fixed.
· Copied Transaction Loses Assigned DCs. If Descriptive Codes were assigned to a transaction that was then later copied to provide or correct an email address, the new, the codes did not carry over to the new, resulting transaction. All assigned codes will be copied to the new transaction after this install.
2. All New Transactions Indexed
There have been instances when transactions marked with the status of NEW at the time of the daily indexing of all transactions did not get indexed until some action had been taken. The cause of that problem has been discovered, and after this install, there will be no instances, going forward, in which such transactions do not get indexed. If you suspect that you have some older, still NEW transactions not indexed, you can open them and assign them to someone or add a note. That is sufficient activity for them to be picked up for indexing. All transactions, even those missed under the circumstance described above, will be indexed when they roll into the archive after 90 days of no activity.
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