Managing user signons

There are two levels of staff that can use RefTracker – Full users and ServicePoint users. Your licence level determines how many of each type of user can be signed into the system concurrently, but the number of signons that you can set up is unlimited.  If you do not have any ServicePoint licences, the Users – ServicePoint options will not display in your system.


Full user:

  • exercises the full range of Q & A functions
  • can do the final steps of sending an Answer to a client and the Q & A pair to the KB
  • can be designated as a supervisor in the system
  • in one case for each system is designated as administrator
  • may be required to have their work reviewed

ServicePoint user:

  • exercises most of the Q & A functions that do not involve communicating with the client or a third party
  • may not send the Answer to the client or the Q & A pair to the KB, or reject a Q
  • is required to have any Answer the system allows them to provide, to be reviewed by their Work reviewer or Supervisor or above, before the Answer is sent to the client
  • DeskStats user is a special level of General user that can only use the DeskStats, and New functions – essentially it provides a specialist signon for those staff who primarily answer “on the spot” questions


Full users: The primary users of RefTracker are called Full users. They send answers to clients and have access to all of the functionality of RefTracker. User signons identify these users so that questions can be allocated to them and the system can automatically email them when it requires them to do work. There are several permission levels for reference users. Signons are used to define the way RefTracker will work for each user, and what functions they will have access to. There are four permission levels as follows, however you can adjust the functionality user by user:

  • Administrator: manages the parameters and resolves system issues as well as having supervisor and regular user capabilities.
  • Supervisors: check the work of probationary and general users as well as having regular user capabilities.
  • Regular users: have access to all staff functions for entering and answering questions. They can make decisions about putting questions into the knowledge database and have full access to searching both the knowledge and the work databases. 
  • Probationary users: can have work assigned to them and have access to most regular user functions, but must have their work checked by a supervisor before it can go to an end user. Basically they are reference users in training.

ServicePoint users: ServicePoint users are all the other users of the system, usually non research staff in your organisation. They must also sign onto the system but do not have questions allocated to them directly. Generally ServicePoint users are staff in positions where they accept questions but do not work on them themselves past the point of giving out standard responses from specific information sources like the library’s web pages and RefTracker Knowledgebase. There are two levels of ServicePoint user:

  • General users can search the KB, use DeskStats, enter new questions, and work on questions, but cannot do anything that involves communicating with clients or third parties. 
  • DeskStats users are a more limited version of ServicePoint users that only have access to the DeskStats, and New. The forms seen as available for use by this level of user are determined by the form designer – it is possible to user this signon level with DeskStats access denied which create a signon that allows the staff to record all stats through a form based interface.  Because this level of user can gather stats, give out standard answers and refer questions to other staff, DeskStats signons are often related to the service point rather than to the staff member working at the service point.

The Functions tab on each user’s signon allows Supervisors and Administrators to remove access to specific reference user functions that any particular user would normally be entitled to use, but does not need to. In this way the staff interface can be simplified or tailored for each individual user, in effect providing the ability to create custom user levels specifically to suit your organisation (and once you have created a level that suits your organisation, the signon Copy function makes it easy to replicate that level for other users).