Infrequently Asked Questions about our transition to OCLC's new Flash Chat Software

Most of the questions on this page came from the Flash Chat training held at the L-net Summit, January 27th. If you had a question at that training, but don't see an answer here, let Emily know (emilyp@multcolib.org, 503.988.5433). As librarians continue practicing with the new Flash software and new questions come up, please pass those questions on to Emily and we'll continue to get answers from OCLC and post questions and answers here. We plan to begin using the new Flash software on March 18.

Questions

1. Is it possible to tell a patron what a url is without actually pushing the page to the patron?

2. When a patron sends a message the transcript bounces back to the beginning of the transcript so the librarian has to scroll down to the end to see the recent part of the conversation and the newest message from the patron – will this be changed?

3. What is the meaning of the 5 red dots that display in the Chat Monitor window? Sometimes these dots change to words, such as the message in red letters “patron has ended session” (or some similar wording) even though the patron the librarian is practicing with has not ended the session and is still connected.

4. The patron can only enter text by hitting send. Can it be changed so that the patron can just hit "enter"?

5. Could the resolution options be made visible all at once (drop down menu), so the librarian knows what options are available without having to scroll through them (followup by me, followup by patron’s library, answered, etc)?

6. Some librarians have been able to send web pages while cobrowsing, but there is nothing in the transcript to reflect that a page has actually been sent. The patron really does receive the page, but the librarian didn’t have confirmation that a page was sent from looking at the transcript. Sometimes the transcript will display a page sent message, after a long delay, or after refreshing.

7. Librarians have found it confusing that after opening cobrowsing, they can still enter a url in the regular url box, but it won’t send.

8. Will the software display well for both patrons and librarians regardless of how their screen resolutions are set?

9. Why does an exclamation mark display in front of some patron’s names?

10. Can the customer's question submission form window close automatically after submitting a question?

11. Can we get an indicator of patron connection status?

12. When closing a question, there is no longer an option of checking a box to leave a patron in cobrowse. Will patrons be disconnected from a database that we’ve logged them into?

13. Is it possible to get a resolution code for prank calls?

14. The display for scripted messages is very small – can it be made bigger?

15. Are patrons expected to change their IE options and clear their cache for the software to work well?

16. Hitting “enter” instead of the send button puts an extraneous paragraph return in the chat box.

17. When we begin global monitoring, how many patrons can we expect in a typical two-hour shift?

18. How does the flash chat software behave with screen readers? Is OCLC going to make the software accessible for persons with print or vision disabilities?

19. As an enhancement, can the red arrow work everywhere on a page? This would be useful for highlighting drop-down menus and search boxes.

20. In flash, if a librarian enters text in a search box in cobrowse, whether in a search engine, catalog, or database, the patron doesn't see the text in the box unless the librarian clicks on the page outside the box. Librarians are asking if this can be changed, as an enhancement.

21. How do we add scripts and urls?

22. The "another patron" pop up box keeps popping up when several people are practicing at once and interrupts a session because the librarian needs to click ok each time a new patron submits a question.

23. While cobrowsing a database, librarians get a pop up warning them that they are leaving a secure internet connection.

24. When selecting a queue to monitor, one of the options is "BME Queues" for our Oregon queues. What does BME stand for?

25. The message "Currently there are '3' active chat sessions ahead of you" that patrons see when they connect for a chat session - what queues is this referring to? For patrons who don't want to wait, could a link for our email service be added to this page?

26. Also, I got this comment from a librarian during a training: "As a patron, I have to click in the box every time I want to type a message. This doesn’t seem to be intuitive. Sometimes I type a message and hit send before realizing that my message wasn’t appearing on the screen. It was puzzling when my message never got to the librarian". Can you comment on this?

27. When we transfer a call, what other librarians will we see? L-net only? Or others in the global connection?

28. When using IM only, could the flash monitor be stored in the system tray, not in the main toolbar? Can we be logged in to flash, monitoring 0 queues, but have our names display for other librarians to IM us?

29. We've been told that we'll experience fewer disconnects with patrons in flash than we did with the old egain software and this is one reason why it's not necessary for us to have the symbol we had in the egain software for a disconnected patron. What it is it about the flash software that will mean fewer disconnects? The statement about fewer disconnects sounds like a marketing statement for the software and we'd like to hear more specifics about this.

Answers

1. Normally any web address entered in the text box will push the page to a patron, but there are a couple of ways around this.

If you open cobrowsing, urls entered in the text box will be sent as text, therefore the page will not be pushed.

Urls entered in the text box require the http: or www prefix. If you leave these off, the url will be sent, but the page will not be pushed. An example is entering “google.com” – the patron will get the url, but the page will not be pushed.

2. This will be fixed in the Feb. 12 release of the software.

3. The red dots by themselves mean nothing, but they will change to words when a patron takes an action. I haven’t been able to duplicate this in testing, but expect that this will also function correctly with the Feb. 12 realease.

4.. This will be fixed in the Feb. 12 release of the software.

5. A drop-down menu is not possible, but the display is changing so that 3 options will be viewed at once.

6. OCLC will speak to the developers about this problem. We’ll post a reply when we receive one.

7. This may be something we’ll all need to get used to with practice – when cobrowsing is open, the text box only works for sending text messages, not for page pushing.

8. It is recommended that screen resolutions be set to higher than 800x600. Resolutions below that will work, but there may be horizontal scroll bars for patrons and distortions for librarians.

9. An exclamation mark displays when a patron sends a new message to the librarian.

10. This will be fixed in the Feb. 12 release of the software.

11. This will be added, however connectivity is much more stable in this environment so patron disconnects should be much rarer.

12. If the patron uses his own library card to log in to the database he will not be logged off. If we use our own card to authenticate for the patron, he will be logged out of the database. If the librarian authenticates for the patron, it is best to not close the chat session until the patron is finished searching the database.

13. We’re limiting our resolution codes to 4 (answered, followup by me, followup by patron’s library, and practice). However, there is an “inappropriate” code under “Descriptions” – you can use this for prank calls.

14. We currently have 26 scripted messages. With so many, we can’t change the size of them, but we’ve tried to make it easy to find scripts by putting them into categories (Busy, Hello-Goodbye, Reference Interview, and Warnings).

15. Patrons don’t need to make any adjustments to their computers. We’re in the process of getting information on ideal conditions for the software and will post that when we get it.

16. This can’t be fixed, but can be prevented by using the “send” button.

17. Here’s the response we received to this question from Susan McGlamery:

"The number of calls varies greatly by day of the week, and time of day. Weekends are less busy than weekdays (but since there are fewer librarians online during the weekend, the back up staff is much busier on Sat/Sun), and of the weekdays, Wednesday is the busiest. Last Wednesday the busiest times were between 4 PM to 5 PM PT (137 sessions), followed by 2 PM to 3 PM (123 sessions)"

OCLC does not expect us to take more than one out of state patron at a time.

18. Caleb addresses this issue in this blog post:

http://www.oregonlibraries.net/staff/index.php/2006/02/28/theme-l-net-and-assistive-technology/∞

19. This is not possible – the red arrow will only work next to a link.

20. It’s unlikely that this can be changed. In addition to clicking anywhere in the web site window, hitting the tab key will also make the text in the search box visible to the patron.

21. To add scripts and urls:
You’ll see options in the blue toolbar for adding your personal scripts, scripts for your library, and web sites. The scripts used by all L-net libraries are listed under “Shared Scripts”.

22. A new install for March 12 allows each librarian to turn off the pop up alerts for her login. A green link at the top of the librarian monitor window gives the librarian control over pop ups in the software.

23. This pop up has a box that can be checked saying don't warn again. Check the box to stop receiving these pop ups. It may be necessary to also tell the patron to check that box to avoid the pop ups.

24. Base Management Environment - not particularly meaningful to us, but apparently it means something to OCLC.

25. There was much confusion about this message and, for the time being, it has been replaced with this message:
"Hello, Patron.
Thank you for your question! There may be a brief delay while we connect you to a librarian. We will be with you in just a moment."
OCLC may bring the old message about the number of people waiting back at some point, but not until it has a clearer indication of what the wait time really might be. We've also requested that the patron's screen open to a viewport, allowing the patron to see the L-net page that used to open in the old software, http://www.oregonlibraries.net/about.shtml∞, while waiting for a librarian to pick up the call.

26. This problem was resolved with a recent install. The cursor now automatically appears in the patron's chat box after sending a message.

27. When transferring a call, we'll see all librarians currently logged into flash, including cooperative and backup librarians.

28. No reply from oclc yet.

29. OCLC says "the basis of it lies squarely in the fact that since the software supports more browser types and is html based, we DO expect there to be fewer disconnects. Naturally, as the internet gets more and more locked down by firewalls, network security etc. its a constant game of cat and mouse for us!"