Summary screen

This is a specialised page for viewing a summary of the current facts known about a question and its history. It has four tabs that show the Details, History, Journal and Log information associated with this question.

For reference purposes, a summary of the current question is provided above the tabs of this screen so it can be seen no matter what tab you are using. The summary provides a Request group symbol to quickly identify the type of question, the first parameter 3.5 lines (as defined by hard returns) of the question text with a [more] link to see more of the text if there is more, an Item summary if the question relates to an item (in italics), the Request form used to enter the question, the current status of the question, and, if the question is allocated to a staff, member, the name of that staff member.

THE DETAILS TAB

You can use this screen to familiarise yourself with the known information about a partly completed question that you are taking over (in conjunction with the History screen). You can also use it to find out facts such as the client contact information for this question, who this question is assigned to, when it was received, when it was saved to the Knowledge base, etc.

The system automatically presents you with this screen if it thinks that you are about to work on a question that you do not know the details of – for example, a question in the pool or allocated to someone else.

Using this screen

The data in the Details screen is logically grouped into a Question Summary, Status information, Client data, Response data, Bibliographic data, ILL data and Workflow notes. Some questions may have no data in some groups (e.g. if a response has not yet been provided) and the headings for those groups with no data will not appear.

When a question is not currently allocated to anyone, and you are a user with permission level of Probation or higher, an I’ll respond now button will appear on the same line as each heading. If you want to start work on this question click I’ll respond now, and the question will be immediately allocated to you (some call this “claiming” the question), and you will be presented with the Answer screen.

Other question answering functions that you might want to use after reviewing the Details on this screen, can be performed by choosing the appropriate function from the Question action bar at the top of the screen.

Status information: Click here for a description of the meaning of each of the pieces of information in the Status group.

Note that the target date by which this question should be answered is highlighted in this section by a coloured asterisk symbol.

Question data: The description of each field shown in this screen will be the description defined for that field in the Request form used to enter this question.
Any attachments to the Question will also be shown in this area, together with a “Manage question attachments” link that allows more client attachments to be added, or existing ones to be removed.

Client data: Some client data is collected from Request forms and other data is collected automatically from the client’s web browser.

Response, Bib and ILL data: The description of each field shown in this screen will be the description defined for that field in the Request form used to enter this question.

Workflow notes:  This section provides a summary of all of the workflow notes made in relation to this question (the question correspondence). For a complete history (audit trail) of the work done on this question use the History link in the Question action bar.

The data groups in this screen can be expanded and contracted as required in order to be able to move about this screen more easily.

To expand a group click on the “+” sign to the right of the data group name.

To contract a group click on the “-” sign to the right of the data group name. Even when contracted the Question and Answer groups will still show only the beginning of the text from the question and answer, if they are long, with the ability to view the entire text by clicking on the [more] link.

Don’t forget that you can use the Ctrl f browser page search function in RefTracker – it is particularly useful to find specific words on this page.

THE CORRESPONDENCE TAB

This tab provides a listing of all of the events that have occurred on this question that are related to correspondence between staff and or the client. It provides a subset of the information provided by the history tab, and the ability to view it in different ways.

The Correspondence tab is arranged in three parts:
– A Question summary section that provides sufficient information to ensure you are looking at the correct question.
– A View event selection panel that allows specific events within the question’s history to be easily found. Make your selection and then click on View to see the subset you have selected. This section also allows the events being viewed to be limited to those containing words defined in the Notes section.
– and a list of the Question’s Historical Events that match the view criteria.
Information in this screen is arranged in three columns

• date and time that the event occurred
• the name of the person who performed this task  – it could be a staff member, the client, or the RefTracker system via a background task
• a description of the task followed by all the fields for which data was recorded by that task

THE JOURNAL TAB

The Journal tab provides a a summary of just the Historical transactions in relation to this question that contribute to its accumulated cost – both time and cost entries.

THE HISTORY TAB

This is an audit trail of all of the actions that have occurred in relation to this question. It uses the same layout as the Correspondence tab but includes more information – in fact it records ALL actions taken on that question and includes Resource, Category, Cost and time information that is not included in the Correspondence tab,

It also provides more extensive tools for finding individual entries in the History using the View selection criteria.