Automatic allocation by RefTracker

When questions are auto allocated:

Staff with Availability No are excluded
The system then discounts all staff who do not match the Location or Request type you choose at Allocation type
It then discounts all staff who do not match your Allocation method selection (the levels of staff to be taken into account
It then keeps only the staff members with the lowest number of open questions allocated to them
If more than one person qualifies for allocation, the question is allocated to the staff member who has not been allocated a question for the longest period of time

RefTracker automatically allocates a question when allocation by “Automatic” is chosen. When this option is chosen the system takes the following into account, in order to find the right staff member to allocate the question to:

it only ever allocates questions to appropriate staff who are Available (according to their availability setting in My preferences). So, if you are going on leave, set your Availability to No, and you will not come back to a stack of urgent questions!
it finds all of the staff who are appropriate to answer this question, by applying the allocation regime specified in the form (or as overridden by the librarian in the new question screen). The Automatic parameters are specified in two parts:
1. The type of allocation:
  - System (anyone anywhere in your system) (default),
  - Location (only librarians at the same Staff location at which the question arrived), or
  - Request type (by matching the type of question to the Preferred request type settings in each librarian’s my preferences).
2. The method of allocation:
  - Hierarchical (Systems administrators are excluded from the allocation selection process),
  - Democratic (Systems administrators and Supervisors are excluded from the allocation selection process),
  - Egalitarian (all levels of users are taken into account in the allocation selection process) (default).
it then takes the number of open questions currently allocated to a staff member into account, and where all else is equal, will allocate the question to the staff member for who the longest amount of time has expired since they were last allocated question.

These parameters should result in the most appropriate available staff member with the least questions allocated to them (the least busy one), being allocated the question.

If the system cannot find an appropriate staff member to allocate the question to (such as when there are no staff with their availability set to Yes), it will allocate it to a System Administrator who can then allocate the question manually.
When the system allocates a question it will always send an email to the staff member advising them that they have been allocated the question (see upcoming section that shows an example of this email).

Note that the Automatic Allocation mode can be removed as an allocation option by disabling it in the System>Code tables menu>General codes>Allocation mode code table.

The concept of allocation: Allocated to you = you are responsible

No matter how a question becomes allocated to a staff member, the system records the allocation by recording the allocated staff member’s ID against the question. In the Open questions screen shown above, questions with an entry in the ID column are “allocated” to the staff member with that ID.

When a question is allocated to the “Unallocated pool” it is said to be in the “unallocated questions pool”, and it does not have an assigned staff member ID associated with it i.e. the ID column is blank.

When a question is allocated to the pool of unallocated questions, an email is not sent on arrival of the question into the system and so a staff member must be monitoring the Open questions screen to see new questions arrive, and either work on them, or reallocate them to the most appropriate staff member.

Unallocated questions stay unallocated until they are specifically “re-allocated” to a staff member, until a staff member uses the “I’ll respond now” button in the Details tab of the Summary screen or until a staff member records some work on that question (for example by saving some work in the Answer screen). By being the first person to save work into a question, the system presumes that the staff member is taking responsibility for the question and automatically allocates the question to them.

So what does having a question allocated to you mean? If a question is allocated to you, it means that you have responsibility for answering it, on time. If you are not the right person to answer it, you should reallocate it to another staff member (more about reallocation later in this manual), who will then have responsibility for ensuring that it is answered, on time.

You can work on questions allocated to another staff member (for example, contribute information that you might already know about a topic), but the question will remain allocated to the originally allocated staff member unless you specifically reallocate the question. So etiquette demands that if you wish to take over responsibility for a question, you should use the reallocate screen to reallocate the question to yourself, and send an email to the originally allocated staff member letting them know that they no longer have responsibility for that question.

However if you close a question allocated to another staff member, the system will automatically reallocate the question to you. The reason for this is because you have taken the ultimate responsibility for this question by closing it – note that the implications of this are that, should the client decide to re-open the question it is you who will be notified of their need for additional information, and if you contribute it to the KB, it will be noted in the KB that it was you who contributed this question to the KB.

New question: Confirmation email to client

When a question arrives from the client interface, or when a staff member clicks on Save in a New Question Request form, according to the choices they have made in the form, the system will:

save the question in the work database
send the client (all email addresses in the client email, cc:All, cc:Conf/Ans, bcc:All, and bcc:Conf/Ans fields) an email confirming receipt of the question (if this is specified in the Request form design) and
allocate the question to a staff member and send them an email advising them that they need to work on the question, or
place it in the unallocated questions pool. If your service uses this feature, a staff member will be monitoring the Open questions to triage unallocated question like this, or your System administrator will have designed the request form to send a notification of arrival email to a specified email address (often a shared email address that staff monitor).

The screen print above shows the email that is sent to the client confirming receipt of the question, when such an email is sent. Emails such as this that are sent to clients can be seen by staff in the History tab by clicking on the [View email message] link for that Event.

Note that this email also provides a target response date (optional, defined in the Request form design by your System administrator), and a link that allows the client to easily check on progress in the mean time – the link provides access to the “Check on existing question” function in the client interface which allows questions to be cancelled and changed and the status viewed (for more information about this feature see the separate client interface manual).

New question: Allocation advice email to a staff member

This screen print shows the email that is sent to the staff member, when saving a question results in the question being assigned to another staff member. Emails such as this that are sent to staff members can be seen by other staff in the History tab by clicking on the [View email message] link for that Event.

Emails advising allocation of new questions to staff member’s arrive with the type of question, and the question number clearly indicated in the subject line of the email, for example a Local history question will arrive with the heading like “New Local history question assigned to you (question # RD158936)”. Your System administrator can also set the Priority code table so that if a question arrives with High or Low Priority (whether selected in a form or indicated by the priority of the email imported) the Allocation email to staff will be sent with the appropriate High or Low priority.

Note that this email not only shows the question that has been asked, but ALL of the other information that was recorded with this question, including the client contact information.

It also provides hyperlinks to the RefTracker functions that the staff member might want to use to work on this question (just click on the appropriate one e.g. Answer, and it will take you directly to the RefTracker Answer screen – though you may be asked to sign in on the way there if you are not already signed in).

The delivery of this email, and the links that it contains, means that staff members do not have to be in RefTracker monitoring for the arrival of new questions, all day every day. They can rely on RefTracker advising them when new work arrives for them.

Exercise

But in the case of our exercise, we chose “I’ll respond now”, which allocates the question to yourself, and does not send a staff email as it provides the opportunity to work on the answer immediately by bringing up the Answer screen. The Answer screen is what should now be showing on your screen, and we will investigate it soon. But for now we are going to continue investigate the functions for adding details of new questions.

New question: Notification advice email to a staff member

Sometimes, when a question arrives and is not allocated to any particular staff member, your System administrator may have designated that a Notification email should be sent.

This sort of email will generally go to a shared email account so that anyone monitoring that email account can pick up the new question.

Notification emails provide the question number and all the information that was saved about this question, as well as hyperlinks that allow the staff member to go straight to that question. Your System administrator can also set the Priority code table so that if a question arrives with High or Low Priority (whether selected in a form or indicated by the priority of the email imported) the Notification email to staff will be sent with the appropriate High or Low priority.