Using RefTracker with desktop sharing/meeting apps

Desktop sharing/Meeting app sessions can be delivered independent of RefTracker and the stats collected using DeskStats. Or, you can set up a form that creates a Skype or MS Teams link, or, a form or widget that allows clients to provide a link to any desktop sharing personal meeting room, that creates a link in RefTracker that can start the desktop sharing session. Using these latter processes, the statistics are automatically gathered.

Meeting room software has now become ubiquitous.  Individuals have personal meeting room links that they often use in preference to phone calls, and information services now have new tools that give them the ability to chat, call, or “meet” with their end users, without leaving their desk. Desktopsharing/meeting rooms provide a way of communicating with the added benefit of being able to provide assistance via screen sharing – this is an important new tool for information request answering services.

For customers using Skype or MS Teams please see the following pages (for Skype and Teams) for additional ways of working with these products.

The Meeting room link field

RefTracker provides a Meeting room link field that can be included in request forms and the RefTracker widget, allowing requesters to provide their meeting software link, so you can chat, phone, live meet or provide online desktop sharing assistance via the meeting software, just by clicking that link in RefTracker.

Here’s an example of a form that uses this new link:

Here’s an example of a widget that uses the link:

When a request is received with a meeting room link (it can also be created when an email is received into RefTracker and additional contact information is added via a Dynamic Lookup), the meeting room link is presented as a clickable link.

Staff can just click the link to open that meeting room application.  Where the meeting room software provides an option to chat (Skype and Teams), it will open in chat mode so you can then negotiate moving to a call or desktop sharing session with the client/requester. If you hover over the “Connect to meeting room” link you can see which product is going to be opened in the bottom left of the screen. 

Note that on some occasions a user will have entered something like “I prefer Zoom” into this field and this will not be hyperlinked – only URL’s entered in this field will be hyperlinked.

You can also see details of the Meeting room link in the Details tab.

System administrators can add the “Meeting room link” field to any form (including the “Quick Question Widget” form).  It can be as an optional additional contact method, or, the new “Meeting app” Response method can be used to make this the preferred contact method.  If it is the preferred contact method it will show directly in your RefTracker screens so you can just click to start a conversation.  If it is provided as an optional contact method, it will show in the additional client contact details accessed via the [. . .] link in the client contact details.  To make it more easily accessible, when this is the case the System Administrator can have it display in the primary contact details by editing the ContactSummary.htm file at System>Utilities>Administration utilities>Template editor (text).  Ask your Altarama support representative for help if you need assistance doing this.

For those (special libraries) using Dynamic Lookups and a corporate meeting product like Teams where these products are replacing phones – you may want to add your end user’s personal Teams URL to your Dynamic lookups data so you can contact them via Teams with just one click in RefTracker.  Usually, the Teams URL can be calculated from the data already being provided in your lookup file so just ask your RefTracker representative for help if you want to do this: https://teams.microsoft.com/l/chat/0/0?users=<emailAddress>