Installation planning
This section covers the steps involved in taking your installed RefTracker system, whether the system has been installed in-house, or as a hosted system, through to successful live usage. It supplements the information that has been provided in the rest of this manual about how to configure the features of RefTracker to suit your needs.
The remaining steps to going live
The following lists all of the remaining steps that you will need to consider after the Administration training and setup assistance, before your RefTracker system will be fully live. You can consult with your Altarama Project Manager, in order to implement them::
- Create signons for all of the other staff who will use RefTracker
- Create signons for all of the other staff who will use RefTracker manual to reflect changes brought about by the use of RefTracker’s efficiency features. The contents of your policies and procedures manual will be individual to your specific service and should address issues such as the type of questions that will be accepted by your service and the amount of time that staff should be applying to specific types of questions.
- Provide a training course for your reference staff in the policies of the service you will offer and the standards of response that you will require, using RefTracker to re-inforce implementation of policies. RefTracker is easy for staff to learn using the provided help, but an introductory course for staff that shows them where to find the most common workflows used in your environment will provide a head start.
Staff wanting to undertake self-paced training will find the following documents useful:
DeskStats Overview and Training
Staff Operations Overview and Training - Provide a familiarisation period where RefTracker is used amongst your reference staff only.
- Part of this familiarisation period time should be used to enter the standard responses that you are already using (your FAQ file), into RefTracker) as KB entries or QuickText entries.
- Review the results of the familiarisaiton period. Does any of the RefTracker setup need to be amended (Parameters and Request form layouts for example)?
- Go Live internally in stages, adding use by reference desks, then other staff. This will allow your other staff to become familiar with the system before client usage begins.
- Once your other staff are familiar with the operation of the system, prepare your client interface for use by reviewing the client interface parameters (6.x parameters), associated text files, and Request forms, and deciding whether you want to make the whole client interface available or simply just some of its pages.
- Have your staff test out the client interface links that you place in your web pages. Remember that the more obvious the links are, the more your service will be used.
- Review your policies for client usage in light of the initial client usage period, and reset if required. Amend system settings if required.
- Go live with usage of the service by clients on your Intranet, and on the Internet if you plan to provide this service.
- Take this opportunity to market your service!
Example implementation draft timetable
The timetable for installing RefTracker will be different for each customer. The following timetable shows how a Standard hosted installation with on-site training can be performed in minimum time, and provides information as to how to adjust the plan for difference scenarios. Your RefTracker Project Manager can help you create a realistic plan for your particular scenario:
Day 1 Order is received
Day 2 Planning pack is sent to customer
Day 4 Section 1 of Planning pack is received from customer completed, so installation can proceed
Day 6 Standard Hosted installation is created (add an extra day for Premium or premium secure hosting)
or install set is shipped to your IT department for in-house installation (allow time for your IT department to do the installation – the installation can be done in four hours but they will want longer to plan it).
Altarama enters the information in your Planning Pack section 1 into your system as a starting point for the setup assistance and Admin training sessions.
Day 8 – 9 Administration training and setup assistance can begin – two days if on-site training, otherwise 1.5-2 hours of webinar training on each of the following four days, with “homework” to be done between each session. You will have at least one working form by the end of this training/setup assistance.
The Administration and training and setup assistance covers the following topics. It is more of a workshop than a traditional training course as its objective is to create a system that meets your needs based on discussion about how you will use it. Attendees should be all of your RefTracker system administrators and someone who can make decisions about your reference policies:
– a detailed look at how questions come into RefTracker and how they are answered with the objective of determining how each process will (or will not) be used in your organisation.
– Using the information learnt in that first discussion, review the Location and parameter settings in your system, and how to set user preferences.
– An overview of how Request forms are designed in RefTracker, and information about how fields can be created to meet your specific needs using the Code tables and Data dictionary.
– Design a couple of Request forms to meet your needs.
– review how the forms will work – what will be the operating procedures that you teach your staff. Do the forms actually meet your needs – adjust if necessary.
– review the administration tools that allow further customisation such as the built in css editor and email template editor. Adjustments using these tools need to be made after the training session.
Days 10-14 Create any additional forms that you need, and have a group of staff designated to test the forms and answer workflows. This is an important period where you can ensure that real questions are being handled correctly by the setup, and to make any changes that prove to be required.
Do you need to make any changes to the email templates?
Days 15-19 Develop/improve your own reference policies during this testing period.
Day 20 When your policies are set ensure that your example user signons at each level are correctly set up to reflect those responsibilities, and copy them to create all the other users that you need.
Day 21- 24 Develop your in-house training based on your policies and the RefTracker workflows that you choose to use. A document is provided on the RefTracker supportsite that you can adjust for your own internal training.
Days 25 -26 Deliver your internal training
Day 27 Go live
Marketing your new RefTracker service
The installation of RefTracker provides an opportunity to market your service.
Try these for some promotional catch phrases
“Stop searching – start finding! Ask your librarian at www.<yourDomain>/reftracker”
or
“Got a Question? Get an Answer from your librarian! www.<yourDomain>/reftracker”
And some text to go with them –
“Ask a question though an Internet search engine and you’ll get thousands of possible answers. Ask a librarian and you’ll get the two or three answers that matter most.
That’s what library professionals do. They find the right information and they find it fast.
And now the library professionals at your library are as close as your web browser, no matter where you are.
Submit questions in the library, over the phone, and now, via the Internet, and receive quality answers from your library professional.
Obtain instant answers from our databases of relevant questions and information, obtain feedback on research being done for you. All part of the service at your library.”
“Finding information on the Internet isn’t always as easy as it’s made out to be. Librarians are the ultimate search engine. They know how to find information and they know how to tell whether information is accurate, current and from a reliable source”.
Try these for some marketing ideas
– An integrated campaign might start with a catchy name for the service and a logo that can be used as a consistent access point to reference services from your web pages. The name and logo can then be used to promote the service in all the usual ways.
The logo should be used throughout your web pages as an easy access point to your reference (or assistance services). Link it directly to RefTracker, or link it to a page that describes all of your reference access points – desk, phone, email (link to RefTracker), and online (with a link to that service if you offer one).
-Use your catchy phrase, the service name and its logo in posters around your organisation and in the library.
-Supplement the poster campaign with matching promotional items eg bookmarks, mouse mats, tee shirts, etc.
-Give away business cards showing ALL your library contact details, so clients can have your contact details in their wallets – a variation on this one is to make the cards peel and stick so those who want to stick the contact details to their school folders or to their computers, can do so.
-Insert the service name/logo on every library web page to provide easy access to your library’s reference services. Supplement it with “Librarian available now”, or similar, to encourage users that a relatively fast response is possible.
-Use the logo/service name in the promotional material at your OPAC terminals, and include usage instructions in your OPAC help cards.
-Send announcements to newspapers and staff newsletters – don’t forget the “What’s new” part of your web pages.
-Train staff so that they can talk about your new RefTracker reference service at all of the library’s service points, and during library tours.
-Provide a client interface demonstration at a launch to your client audiences e.g. Friends of the library, with a question being found in the knowledge database and a question being submitted, progress checked, and a response received from a librarian.
-Provide lessons in use of the client functions to library visitors during the first few weeks of the service.