Using New with Close now (enter and close immediately)

By allowing both the question and the answer to be entered on the one screen, New in Close now mode provides a handy option for handling questions/requests that do not necessarily need further research, or cn be completed quickly.  Some forms (those with ♦ after their name) will be specifically designed to be closed as they are entered.

When you select Close now, the closing options for the Request form that you are using will display allowing you to enter closing statistics such as Expertise, Category Comments, Number of items, and Costs/payments, as defined as relevant by your System administrator for that particular type of request.

An important use of this feature is as a mid way process between full forms and DeskStats where DeskStats cannot collect enough information – for example in libraries that bill, even for short services, New with Close now can be used to collect enough client contact details to be able to send a bill together with a short description of both the Question and Answer to justify the work done. Another common use is for statistics in relation to training provided (name of training course, trainers name, date training was held, man-hours of training provided, etc).  A third common use is to gather statistics for services that you want timed (using the Time used clock function) such as services delivered by phone or via online tools such as desktop sharing. The form layout of the Quick screen means that a series of questions can be asked, answers provided, and the question closed, capturing exactly the detailed statistics that will be required for later analysis.  Even though the question will be closed some of these special uses will not even appear to have an answer – for example Survey responses, or records of training provided.

When a question is closed on the spot in this way, all of the dates and times (Target date, Received date, Last updated date, Objective response date, Date closed, and Last useful date if it is being recorded) for this question will always be recorded as the same date and time.

New question form designed to take advantage of Close now

Your System Administrator can design Request forms specifically for use with Close now (♦), and when they do this they may “Hide” the Answer field. Hiding the Answer field provides a form with a series of questions only – the Answer field does not appear in the Closing division of the form.

Using this “New with Close now” technique provides a handy intermediate level between New and DeskStats where the details of a service can be recorded, even if there is no specific Answer associated with that action. 

DeskStats provides a very efficient way to record statistics about services that are completed on the spot, but sometimes more details of the service need to be recorded than can be recorded with just the click or two that it takes to record a statistic in DeskStats. For those services New with Close now provides an efficient way to record their details. For example you might have a New with Close now form that collects all the details of training courses that you provide – type of course, date delivered, number of hours spent on preparation, number of man hours of training delivered (there is no Answer as such). Similarly, as per the example below, the Answer field will be hidden when the form is designed to record the results of a survey.

Example uses for New with Close now

Because the New screen with Close now (♦) allows the question to entered, answered and closed all in the one screen, and as explained above, the Answer field can be hidden when that is appropriate, it provides a very powerful and flexible tool. The best way to describe its power is to describe some things that the New with Close now screen has been used for. These examples may inspire you to think of things that you could ask your System administrator to set up:

• In legal libraries New with Close now is used to record a very short description of the question and the answer, as well as the matter number details so that the work can be billed to the appropriate client with sufficient details to describe the work that was done.
• A customer that uses Skype for their online reference service, solves the problem of stats and transcripts not being available from Skype, by cutting and pasting the Skype conversations into the Question field of a New with Close now form. If the service is completed in Skype they simply close the question in New with Close now. If follow-up is required, they add the follow-up details and allocate the question to the Unallocated questions pool for research staff to address with an email response. (Altarama’s RefChatter provides an online/chat way that requests can be answered with stats being automatically gathered.)
• New with Close now has been used to record the details of training courses provided throughout the year so that an analysis of numbers of attendees and total training hours delivered for each training course offered, can be easily produced for an annual report.
• New with Close now can be used for recording the details of surveys being conducted at the circulation desk – Have you visited the library on any other Sunday in the last 6 months? Are our Sunday opening hours convenient for you? etc.
• New with Close now has been used for staff feedback about their use of research resources – Research topic? Age group of the client? Were appropriate resources found, in the library? On the internet? Are there any resources you would recommend we purchase as a result of this research?
• There are myriad other uses for the New with Close now screen. Can you think of one for your organisation?