Managing locations

The Locations function defines the client and staff locations used by RefTracker. Every question must have both a staff location (otherwise known as Receipt location), and a client location, so you must have both set up in your system – you can have as many staff and client locations as you need, however you need only have one location, and it can be both a staff and a client location.

• Staff locations are the places where library staff work (Library locations e.g. branches or service points within branches). The function allows for opening hours and the time zone of the location to be defined for each of the staff locations. Each staff member that uses the system will be associated with one staff location (which they can change using My preferences)
• Client locations are places where clients submit questions from. The function allows for the time zone of the location to be defined, and the service relationship between the clients at that location and a specific library location to be defined. For example, you may want all questions received from your Tasmanian clients to be addressed by your Melbourne library – the service location for the Tasmania client location is then the Melbourne staff location.

The benefit of setting up Locations is that you can obtain statistics on the questions coming in from the client locations and arriving at the staff locations.

Staff locations can also be used to allocate questions coming to that location to staff servicing that location. Staff must belong to one, and one only, Staff location but they can change their Staff location as necessary by using My preferences.

There is no need to set up a Location for questions coming in from your web pages or your online reference system, as questions coming in from web pages and online reference systems can be obtained through their Received via value, but if you wish to allocate questions to specialist staff based on them being allocated to these services you should set up a separate Location for these questions and staff.

Organisations that are not interested in the location of their clients (often public libraries fall into this category) may simply set up their main library location to be a combined location, or they might set up a single client location called something like “client” or “online users” that uses the same time zone as their main location and is linked to a “staff location” called something like “Online service” from which staff from all locations can pick up questions.

When only one client location is configured in a System, the Client location concept is automatically configured out of RefTracker – for example, the Client location drop down boxes do not show in the New question or DeskStats screens.  Similarly if only one Staff location is configured, the need to enter any Staff location information is automatically configured out of your system.

For customers using more than one language: Please note that there is ONLY one Location code table in multi-lingual systems.  This means that you will generally enter the location name in the location’s local language, for example, the Location of an office in Munich Germany would be entered into the Location table as München and would be seen as such by all user’s.  Bi-lingual countries such as Hong Kong can enter a location’s name in both languages for example  “City Hall Public Library 大 會 堂 公 共 圖 書 館”. This is a deliberate design decision.