QA review (change without reopening)

The QA (Quality Assurance) review function allows Supervisors and Administrators to work on a question without having to reopen it and without changing the allocation of the question or its Date closed (important for statistical purposes). QA review is accessed through the Actions menu list where it is shown with the informative name “QA review (change without reopening)”, but only appears there when it is applicable – when a question is closed, or when it is already in QA review status.

Supervisors and Administrators can use this function to correct aspects of the question effecting statistics, for example, when a question is closed they can change the Request type or the associated Categories, and, despite the changes, the statistics in relation to the staff member who worked on the question, and the date it was closed, will remain unchanged (unless the Supervisor specifically chooses to change those fields, but the form needs to allow Post date for the “Date closed” and “Allocated staff” fields to display and be changeable).

When a question is open and allocated to another staff member Supervisors and above can make changes to the question using Reallocate and Change, so QA review is only applicable to closed questions.

Importantly, QA review is the ONLY place where some characteristics can be changed e.g. Received date, and Date closed (both these can only be changed, and only show in QA review if the form in use allows Post date).

Work done in the QA review screen will be recorded in the History.

The QA review screen will display the question using the Request form that was used to enter the question, even if that Request form has since been taken out of daily use. However if the Request form has become invalid, or has been deleted, the system will use the first Request form in your list of Request forms to display the form.

When you use the QA review screen on a question, the question is placed into QA review status. You must save an action using the QA review screen if you want to remove that status. In other words, displaying a question using the QA review screen marks the question as in need of QA review. Saving that screen indicates that the QA review has been completed. You can use this status change to “mark” a question for later review as questions in QA review status are retrieved when you use the Search screen to search for question in Review status. This search retrieves both questions in QA review and questions marked as needing to be checked by a Work reviewer before the answer is sent out (Work review). Note that entirely separate processes are provided for these two review functions – Work review is designed to send the Answer to the client, but QA review specifically prevents correspondence with the client (and can only be used on closed questions).

If the question is in the KB, the QA review screen will show you when it was included and its review date. It will not change this information unless you tick the “Change KB status” box provided, which will show you the normal KB inclusion and review date fields so you can make new selections.

This screen can also be used to add or remove questions from the FAQ (Frequently asked question subset of the KB) using the “FAQ status” line (if it has already been included in the KB). If the FAQ concept has been configured into your system, including a question in the FAQ, means that it will appear in a special Frequently Asked Questions list in your web site (or, if you use it that way, to indicate that this is a KB entry that should be provided to your web master for approval before they include it in your web site).

Fields like “Closing status” that are mandatory for completion, but have been previously set, are highlighted by a coloured box immediately to the left of the field.  The coloured box provides a reminder that even though these fields have been previously set, they should be reviewed for correctness before saving this this screen.