The Allocated staff communication screen

The Allocated staff communication function appears in the Actions menu for all staff when a question is open and allocated to a staff member other than the signed on user. It can also be used on closed questions, by supervisors and above.

You can use this screen to send a message to the staff member who is allocated the current question – for example, you may want to let them know about a resource that could be helpful, or a Supervisor might want to ask the allocated staff member if they need assistance when a question is nearing its target response date and is still not complete.

Once a question is closed, Supervisors and above can use this function to send messages such as “Well done!” to the allocated staff member, or they might use it to suggest additional areas of research in a way that does not imply that the additional research must be done. The comment will be recorded in the history without changing the allocation or the closed status of the question.

Type your message to the allocated staff member in the Message box.The Message field is QuickText enabled.Attachments can be added to your message using the “Add workflow attachments” link.Simply enter the message you want to send to the allocated staff member and click on Send as email. An email will be sent to them, clearly indicating that the comment is from you. A record that the email was sent will be placed in the History file for this question.
 

Exercise

Pick a question from the Open questions screen that is allocated to someone else and use this screen to send them a message e.g. “Just a test – but I could have been sending you some useful information that I found about this question, allocated to you” (don’t forget that you can use QuickText in this field).

Click on Send as email. And your comment will be sent to the allocated staff member using a preformatted email template.

The email sent to the allocated staff member

This is an example of the email sent to the allocated staff member. Yours may look a little different if your system administrator has defined a differently laid out template.

Note that it automatically includes your contact details. 

Also note that your email address is hyperlinked so that if the recipient clicks on it they can send an email back to you (their comment is sent as an email so it is not recorded in RefTracker – so, if you receive one of these emails you should only use this email hyperlink if the comment you are sending back does not have to be recorded in the RefTracker question – go into the question in RefTracker using the provided links, if as a result of this comment, you need to do some work on the question.

The email provides all known facts about the question, and the draft answer if there is one, so the allocates staff member can get right onto working on the response.