Closing questions
Regular user closes question /send answer to the client
If your Answer is complete and you want to close the question (and usually send the Answer to the client), you should select “Close” from the Leave open/Close option and check that an appropriate Closing status displays. “Closed successfully” will normally be selected by default, however if the response method is “No response required” the status will default to “Closed – no response required”. Choose another status if appropriate.
Statuses that imply “Closed successfully” will allow clients to see the answer in the client interface “Manage this question” function, whereas closing statuses that imply unsuccessful closing ensure that the client cannot see the response in the client interface. Your choice at “Client contact confirmation” determines whether the answer will be delivered to the client, if response method is email. If the question has Response method “No response required”, the client will never be able to see the recorded answer, and you will not be offered the opportunity to send it, even if an email address is recorded for the client.
The system will then add all of the fields that you need to be able to close this question and allow the answer to be sent to the client. The fields that show are different according to your permission level and the type of request that you are dealing with. This section covers what Regular users and above see. A following section covers what Probation users and below see.
If your My preferences have the Auto start timer set to Yes, the timer will have been running the whole time that you have been in this screen. Whether it is running automatically or not,if your system uses the Time used field, be sure to check that the time showing accurately reflects the amount of time that you have just spent on this request.
Primary questions with open sub tasks cannot be closed, so the Close option will not show for those questions (a note will appear at the top of the screen explaining that the question cannot be closed until the open sub tasks are closed). This also means that the “Close without client contact” screen is not available for requests that have open sub tasks.
“Incomplete” questions cannot be closed. A validation message displays at the top of the screen when a request is incomplete and the closing options do not display. Use the link to the Change screen in that message to add the missing data (or provide some data to indicate it could not be obtained) so that the question becomes complete and the closing options show.
Using the Closing section of the Answer screen
If the closing options are not showing, check for a validation message indicating that the question is incomplete and needs more data added through the Change screen, or that it has sub tasks that need to be completed before it can be closed.
If the closing parameters are showing, go ahead and provide the information required in order to close the request:
Client contact confirmation describes how the client will be advised of the Answer. In the above example the system knows it needs to send an email to the client and is indicating so by displaying Client’s Name, if it knows it, and the email address/es to which the response will be sent (including cc: and bcc: email address/es if any have been provided).
Important – as you have chosen to “Close” the question, setting whether the Answer should go to the client using the Client contact confirmation box is important. If the answer is to go out, double check your draft Answer – fix any typo’s in the draft Answer box and ensure your answer is complete. This check is facilitated by the screen automatically expanding the Answer division if it is not already expanded, so that the draft Answer text shows.
If an email is being sent, the system also provides a [Preview email message] link that, when clicked, shows the email that will be sent to the client as a result of this action. This link provides a handy way of double checking the quality of your response as you will see what the client will see including how URL’s will be presented to them as clickable links, and perhaps even as tiny URL’s. This is just a preview so it doesn’t include any attachments. If you see a problem with your response, close the view of the email and make a change to the text you have provided in the draft Answer box.
If the response is not going out by email, the confirmation box will provide the contact details that the client wishes you to use, and a request that you contact them using those details. Also a tick box will be provided that you can tick to have an email sent to yourself to remind yourself to contact the client at a later time. You can prevent the email from going out if that is appropriate by selecting the “Answer email is not required” radio button (such as when the Answer has been provided in some other way like directly from an online database).
This confirmation box will not appear if the question you are working with is set to “No response required” or “External” (indicating that all correspondence in relation to this question is being handled outside of RefTracker), or the form used by the question specifies that an answer should not go to the client.
KB Status allows you to indicate whether the Question and Answer should be added to the Knowledge base. Your system administrator may have decided to include this question in the closing section of this screen for this type of request, in order to allow staff to indicate whether the request they just worked on should be included in the KB (which is a subset of the requests and answers in RefTracker that have been designated as quality answers). Requests do not need to be put in the KB to be retained for librarian reference. The selection you make here places the question in “KB review” status clearly marking the question as “Recommended for KB inclusion” so that it can be reviewed and included by someone with appropriate permissions at a later time.
However, if you have permission to place the question in the KB, once you click on Submit you will be automatically shown the KB review screen which allows you to check the Request and Answer text that will be put in the KB, fix any typo’s and remove any references to private information. See a later section for an example of this KB review screen!
The fields that then display are all about obtaining additional statistics before the request is closed:
Expertise (one type of expertise used to answer the question, or perhaps a READ scale type evaluation of the difficulty of responding to this question, if used by your organisation)
These fields allow you to add closing classification information. Your organisation may not use any of these fields, or may use just some, according to their applicability to the type of request that you are handling. Your organisation may even have labelled these fields with different names according to the sort of data that needs to be collected by your organisation, for example, the multi-selection Category field might be called something like “Subject” and the “Closing comment” text area might be called “Billing Description or “Number of items”. This drop down box, may have another name in your system.
Categories (any number of subject or authority controls according to how your library uses this field, if they use it at all). This Multi-select box, may have another name in your system.
Closing comment (any alphanumeric comment or data, up to 2 million characters long – displays as a 2 line text area with QuickText available – that you might wish to collect on closing, if used). This text area, may have another name in your system.
Closing note (any alphanumeric comment or data, up to 200 characters long, if it is used. It displays as a text box for which your browser’s autofill will operate. It will usually be used for collection of data that is similar every time, such as file numbers or details of payments received, as the autofill will suggest your commonly used text (as opposed to the Text area where QuickText allows a range of standard text to be quickly inserted, or even auto-inserted – for example billing descriptions). This drop down box, may have another name in your system.
Number of items (numerics only) allows the number of items delivered with a response to be collected – number of attachments, documents, samples, etc.
Costs (and payments): If your administrator wants you to be reminded to enter costs/payments as you work on questions they can include the costs/payment function here. They will do this where it is relevant to the particular type of request that gets entered using the Request form you are currently using. If this section has not been included you should be able to record costs and payments using the Record costs (and payments) screen available under Actions, as that screen opens in a separate window so it can be used at any time.
When closing a question the Costs and payments table looks like this (but your system might only provide the options to enter costs):
Use this Costs and Payments section in exactly the same way you would use the Record costs and payments screen.
Notice that the current total of costs, payments and Balance owing are displayed to indicate the closing costs and payments that might be required. These totals do not include any last minute costs, so there are three cost and payment lines provided for entry of these last minute costs and payment actions.
If you are billing for staff time, the cost of time for your last closing step will not be included until AFTER you close the question – so, if you are billing time, make sure you process the payment AFTER you close the question.
Resources allows the resources that were helpful in providing this step of the response to be recorded, if your organisation uses this concept for this type of request. Different Resources may show for Requester service requests, as opposed to Internal tasks. (System administrators set the Resources that show here, in the Resources code table.)
Only when you are happy that the Answer is letter perfect and the closing information has been correctly completed, click on Save or Save & send. According to your selections the response email will be sent to the client and the question will be closed. See the client interface manual for an example of the response email that is sent to the client.
If the question is not already allocated to you, the system will also allocate the question to you when you close a question, as you have taken ultimate responsibility for this question by closing it. You will be noted as the staff member who provided the answer and you will be the one who is notified if the client needs additional information.
Exercise
In the Leave open/Close selector, choose “Close” and notice how the extra fields are added.
Note that even once the extra fields are added, you can still go back and improve your Answer, or even decide not to close the question after all (by choosing the “Leave open” option).
Provide appropriate answers to the newly presented closing fields, and when you are happy with your Answer and selections, click on Save or Save & send to save your information, close the question and send the answer to the client (if you have chosen to do that).
When a General or Probation user codes the answer complete
Probation and General level users cannot close questions from the Answer screen unless their System administrator has specifically allowed it for this type of request. When they cannot close the question they are, instead, advised that the question and response will be referred to their Work reviewer.
When a General user or Probation level reference user chooses the “Close” option in the Answer screen, they are presented with a text box for entering a note to their work reviewer.
When they click on Save or Save & send an email is sent to their Work reviewer asking them to review the answer and send it to the client. When this happens the question is placed in a special closed status called “Work review”.
Questions in Work review status appear in the Open questions screen but they can only be worked on by the allocated staff member or their work reviewer (the ID column in Open questions will show the ID as <User>/<WorkReviewer> e.g. jw/sf), or Supervisors and above. All other users will be told they do not have permission to work on this question if they try to use functions like Answer or Reallocate on this question.
Email to work reviewer
This is the email that a Work reviewer will receive when a question is recommended for closure by a General or Probation user.
As with all RefTracker staff emails, the Work reviewer can click on a hyperlink in the email to go directly to the RefTracker function that they need to use to perform the work requested. Normally they would use Answer to review the work that has been done, send the answer off to the client and make a decision about KB inclusion. However, as part of the work reviewer’s role is mentoring, they might also like to use Allocated staff communication to send an email back to the probation user advising them how they can go about improving the answer themselves (this request will be included in the History of the question). The email back to the probation user will include a link to allow them to go into the question and work on it again.
A new question to continue examining the Answer function
The question we have been working with is now closed as a result of the actions taken in the previous sections, however there are many more aspects of the Answer screen and answering process that we still need to examine. So we need to create a new question to use with them.
So please refer back to the earlier part of this manual on using the New screen, if need be, and create a new question. It doesn’t matter which request form you use, but the simplest Basic request form, if you have one, will do in this instance. When you are asked how to allocate the question, choose “I’ll respond now”, which will present you with the Answer screen, and we’ll be ready to learn more.
Exercise
Enter the new question, and use “I’ll respond now”, so that the question becomes allocated to you and you are taken to the Answer screen. Move onto the next section where we will examine more of the features of the Answer screen.
Imported email closes question
Another way that questions can be closed is via an email sent to the designated Answer email importing address When this is done, the email body and any attachments are saved as the answer (so the answer is searchable), and the question is closed and allocated to the staff member who sent in this answer email. An “External answer review” status can be set so that questions that still need staff to add their time used and any other closing data, are highlighted. An email reminding staff to add their time and other closing data can also be sent.
Your System administrator will advise the email address to which answer emails can be sent, if this option has been set up for your system. Whenever you use this function you will need to be sure that the correct RefTracker question number has been included in the Subject line of your email
You might use this new function to update and close a question in scenarios such as the following. :
– If you are sending an email to the client from outside of RefTracker, that contains the answer – just cc, or preferably bcc: your new Answer email importing address.
– If you forget to copy an answer email sent directly to the client, to your answer email importing account, just Forward the sent email to your answer email importing account. Forwarding an email sets the sender as you so RefTracker will get the right information about who closed the question.
– If you receive an email from a third party indicating they have sent the response to the client, you can forward the third party’s email to your answer email importing account to have the question updated and closed. In this case you can even add further comments to this email before you send it as the entire body of this email, including the forwarded email body, will be saved as the answer to the question. You will be set as the staff member who closed the question (not the third party).
– Forwarding an email as an attachment (with $import in the subject line), to the Answers email importing account is helpful if you have to close a number of questions for which you have sent separate answer emails out, during the day. By sending all of those emails as attachments to one email and putting $import in the subject line, you can close several questions at once. Forward as an attachment is also useful if you want to forward an email sent by someone else and have the other person recorded as the staff member who closed the question.
It is important that you read the full features of how to use the Answer email importing address – see the “Email imported that provides an answer to an existing question” section in How questions for follow up arrive in your system.
Expertise (one type of expertise used to answer the question, or perhaps a READ scale type evaluation of the difficulty of responding to this question, if used by your organisation)
These fields allow you to add closing classification information. Your organisation may not use any of these fields, or may use just some, according to their applicability to the type of request that you are handling. Your organisation may even have labelled these fields with different names according to the sort of data that needs to be collected by your organisation, for example, the multi-selection Category field might be called something like “Subject” and the “Closing comment” text area might be called “Billing Description or “Number of items”.