The Contact client workflows

In addition to being able to work on the Answer in the Answer screen, you can use Contact client and Note workflows as part of the process of achieving the answer.

The Contact client and Note processes can be used from the Answer screen, or by accessing them directly from their entries in the Answer menu list in the Question action bar.  The Answer screen remembers whether you last used the Contact client or Add a note functions expanded or contacted and displays them that way next time.  Staff will want to contract them if they, more often than not, just send a quick response and then close the question.

Workflows allow sub processes like client correspondence to be fully integrated into the RefTracker question answering process – no need to find special forms and handle them separately, or to be looking for a string of emails in your, or other staff’s, email in and out boxes.  All the actions towards providing a response, including correspondence with the client, are in RefTracker.

The Contact client workflow types are as follows.  By default they can be used by all Probation users and above, however your System administrator may have removed some of these Functions if they are not applicable to your work:

• Copyright declaration – sends information about copyright obligations, requesting an acknowledgement.
• Query to client – sends a request for further information, such as a clarification request, advising that a response is required to allow the request to proceed.
• Inform client – sends an update to the client with no implication that a response is required.
• Partial answer – sends an update AND adds the content of the update to the draft Answer so that the final answer can include all information provided as partial answers.

When using the Answer screen, you can select and use a Contact client workflow at the same time as working on the Answer.  Click the appropriate radio button for the workflow that you want to use.

When you access a Client Contact workflow from the Answer menu list, the screen displays with the correct workflow already selected.

Enter the message that you want to send to the client (or that you have sent to the client by other means) in the Formatted text box. A Client contact confirmation box will be displaying to indicate the communication that will happen, or needs to happen, when Save/send is clicked.  If a Client contact confirmation box is not showing, this type of request has been set to not require that type of correspondence, or the client has specified that correspondence is not required.  Client contact ONLY occurs if a Client contact confirmation box is showing with the send option selected.

Some workflow types may have QuickText associated with them. The QuickText may be automatically inserted when you choose that workflow type, and can be selected from the QuickText button at the right of the Formatted text box buttons.

If you choose a Contact client workflow type, and then decide you no longer need to do a Contact client workflow, simply choose the “None required” button, to prevent the workflow from occurring and from being recorded.

If you choose a Contact client workflow type, and then decide you have chosen the wrong one, simply click the correct radio button.   The text you have entered will be retained, and the correct QuickText for the new workflow type will then be available. If all the text showing for your originally selected workflow was entered via an Auto QuickText.  It will not be saved.  If there is Auto QuickText associated with the workflow that you are changing to, a popup will ask if you prefer to have what you have typed, replaced by the Auto QuickText.

If you start using a workflow and then realise that this is actually the last correspondence you need with the client and so you need to close the question (and send your text as a final answer), use the [Change to draft Answer].  [Change to draft Answer] moves your workflow text to the top of the draft Answer box, and moves any attachments you have added to that workflow to Answer attachments.  It also sets the Progress/Closing option to Close so that all you have to do is check that the copied text fits nicely with any text that was already in the draft Answer box, and the Save and Send.

When you click on [Change to draft Answer], a popup lets you know what is about to happen, and gives you the opportunity to change your mind.

Any text you have entered in Partial answer is moved to the top of the draft Answer box and any attachments are moved to be attachments to the draft Answer.  Also the system presumes that you are about to close the question and send the answer out, by automatically selecting the Close function.

The [Change to draft Answer] function can also be used with all the Client contact workflows like Inform client and Query to client making it easy to turn what you have written into a final answer no matter which function you initially choose. The Inform client function is now the only function that offers direct use of the Close option and that is because it provides an option to send a quick response back to the client without sending the whole answer, such as when a client reopens a question and it is not appropriate to resend the whole answer – for example when the client asks “Can you please confirm that your search went back 5 years.”