Console User Release Notes 4.2

1 Introduction

These notes include broad descriptions of the major changes to the Management Console for version 4.2. They are primarily targeted at the users of the Management Console; however, they are of interest to agent developers as well.

2 General UI Improvements

2.1 “Arrange By” in Listboxes

We have added the ability to group the elements in a listbox. The idea was to create an additional way to quickly visualize the elements in the listbox. It is essentially a collapsible sort, as shown below:

The user may elect to turn on the “arrange by” feature by using the listbox configuration menu (the wrench icon in the upper right of the listbox). If a listbox supports the feature, additional menu items will be visible showing the various ways the list may be arranged. The user may collapse the groups by clicking on them, and may toggle the state of all of the groups by shift-clicking (or right-clicking and selecting the “Collapse/Expand All Groups” item from the context menu.

The console remembers whether you turned on the feature across console sessions (it is saved with your user profile).

This feature is currently implemented in the following places:

· Knowledge Editor: Manage Topics, Manage Response Fragments and Approve Changes

· Task List

3 Knowledge Editor

3.1 Enabled Column in Manage Topics

There is a new column in the “Manage Topics” navigation list, called “Enabled”. It shows whether a topic is enabled or disabled (as of today). The column is sortable.

3.2 Procedural Topic Search

There several new search methods in “Manage Topics”, in addition to the existing “matching query” and “string search” methods already available in 4.1. They are generally functions based on simple heuristics that find common and useful sets of topics.

· Insufficient Natural Language Comprehension: Selects topics that have too few reference questions (and they are too long to be general). User provides a threshold.

· Find Topics with No Response: Selects topics that have no “response” field set at all. Optionally, the user may provide a search string to limit the search to topics that contain that string as well.

Additionally, agent developers may add new search methods by overriding the GetSearchFuncList() method and providing additional functions to call. See the specification “Procedural Topic Search” for more details.

3.3 Talk to Agent: Restart Session

In “Talk to Agent”, you may now restart the current user’s session by clicking on the “Restart Session” button in the upper right corner of the http-msm’s user interface.

4 Quality Analysis

4.1 Improved Task Analysis in Session Audits

Console users who perform or browse audits and have the “own tasks” role and the “create tasks” role may now do more sophisticated task creation within session audits.

When users with “own task” and “create tasks” see session transcripts in a session audit, they also see “add task” icons on the right side of the elements of the transcript:

When clicked, the “Add Task” dialog opens and allows users to directly create new tasks for queries and topics without having to create an unanalyzed session task and analyze it later.

4.2 Non-Evaluation Audits

We have introduced the notion of “non-evaluation” audits. These audits are exactly like normal audits, but you may not vote on them. They are replacing the “Session Search” component completely; as such:

· There is no longer a “Session Search” component

· Existing session searches will appear in Quality Analysis as non-evaluation session audits

To create a new non-evaluation audit, clear the checkbox near the auditor popup labeled “Allow Evaluations”. When creating a non-evaluation audit, there is no need to specify an auditor.

A new column is available in the audit listbox called “Eval” which shows whether an audit allows evaluations or not.

NOTE: You may not create a non-evaluation audit series, since the purpose of audit series are to track evaluation trends over time.

4.3 Preset Audits

In the “Create New Audit” page, there is a new popup called “Preset”.

Choosing a preset (besides “custom”) fills in predetermined parameters of the audit. For instance, choosing “poor matches” (the only preset so far) does the following:

· Sets the type to “query”

· Turns off evaluations

· Adds the filter “only include queries whose match score is less than 50”

All other parameters are left alone. Changing any of the parameters of a preset will switch the preset popup back to “custom”.

The console remembers that an audit was created as a preset, and a new column in the listbox called “preset” allows users to sort by preset to quickly find their preset audits.

NOTE: Presets can be defined in the qa_config.xml file for an agent. See a console management developer for more information. “Poor Matches” is defined in the javascript and is always available.

NOTE: Presets are not available in audit series.

5 Task List

5.1 Session Summary in Task Summary

In session tasks, we now display the first several exchanges of the session in the task summary pane (to allow users to quickly see the content of the session without jumping into analysis):

5.2 Add Task Dialog: Pre-Analyze Query Tasks

In the “Add Task” dialog, console users who have the “own tasks” role may pre-analyze query tasks.

If the user has that role, he will additional fields in the dialog to pre-select an analysis (and supporting information):

The “analysis” popup contains the values “none” (no pre-analysis), “add new topic” (the user must provide a new topic name), or “custom” (the user must supply an explanation). Note that the user may not find another matching topic (to do this kind of analysis, the task list is necessary).

This dialog change applies to creating tasks from both session audits (see “Improved Task Analysis in Audits” above) and query audits.

5.3 New Filters

Users may now filter by comment and by analysis. The filters (available in “Additional Filters”) are case-sensitive string searches in the respective fields. It is NOT a keyword search (that is, users may not enter a list of comma-separated words and search for any or all of them).

5.4 Task Creators May See Created Tasks

In the past, users who only had the “create tasks” role had trouble going to the task list component and viewing the list of their created tasks. This has been fixed.

5.5 Task Editing is Limited to the Owner

Task editing is now limited to the owner of the task. Exceptions:

· Any user (who has a task list role) may add a comment to a task

· Any user who has the “manage tasks” role may reassign a task

6 Usage Reporting

6.1 Scheduled Delivery of Usage Reports in Excel Format By Email

PLEASE NOTE: This feature is only available on deployments on Windows boxes (due to the required libraries).

The console now has the ability to periodically generate Excel 2007 (.xlsx) files of various sections of the usage reporting data for an agent, and e-mail those generated files to a group of usage users.

In usage reporting, console users with the “manage scheduled reports” role can see a new command called “Scheduled Reports”.

Clicking on the command takes the user to the scheduled report subcomponent:

Schedules are similar to audit series in that they create objects periodically on some given schedule. Schedules have the following properties:

· The Owner: the creator of the schedule. The owner can add and remove recipients.

· The start date: when to begin generating reports (this date may be in the past, the present or the future). If the start date is in the past, all reports from that date to the present will be created at once to “catch up”.

· The frequency: determines what time frame to use for usage data in the report, as well as how often to generate the report (and the send the e-mails). The possible frequencies are:

o Every day: generate usage reports every day for the previous calendar day

o Every week: generate usage reports every seven days for the previous seven days

o Every month: generate usage reports every month for the previous month (no matter how many days are in the month)

· The recipients: the list of people who should receive the generated report. These users must be console users whose username is an e-mail address and who have the “view usage reports” role.

· The usage section paths: the list of sections of the usage reporting interface that should be included in the reports. Each path consists of a particular choice of tabs in the usage interface (e.g., “All Entry Points->Volume Summary”).

· The generated reports: once a report is generated, it is e-mailed to current recipients, and is stored for future reference (clicking on a generated report in the UI will download the report to the local machine).

Schedules may be suspended and resumed (once resumed, they will generate all missing reports since the suspension).

NOTE: a user may remove himself/herself from a schedule at any time (although only an owner may add a recipient).

NOTE: adding a recipient only affects generated reports going forward (old reports are not e-mailed to the new recipient).

7 Server Management

7.1 Edit BMD.conf

NOTE: This feature is only available to users with the “admin” (superuser) role and should be used with extreme caution.

In “Server Management”, there is a new command to edit the bmd.conf file from the console. The page provides a simple edit text that contains the body of the bmd.conf file.

NOTE: Passwords are shown encrypted, and any clear text passwords saved will be re-encrypted before saving.

7.2 Update Agents

NOTE: This feature is only available to users with the “admin” (superuser) role and should be used with extreme caution.

In “Server Management”, there is a new command to allow admins to “resurrect” a machine that has a bmd.conf, but needs to re-checkout all the agents. This can happen when a machine dies, and the bmd.conf is transferred to a new machine with a clean build, but no agents are checked out on the machine.

7.3 View Active Users

This command allows console users with the “View Active Users” role to see other “active” (i.e., logged in) users on the same console. A user may only see users with a subset of the roles of the requesting user; the rest are aggregated into a count.

This feature is also available in the “Lock KMS” page of the Knowledge Editor.

8 Other Features

8.1 “Functional” hyperlinks and onclicks in Session Transcripts

When session transcripts are displayed (in Task List session analysis and Quality Analysis’s session audits), any existing links (<a href=…></a>) or onclick elements (<span onclick=…></span>) now “function”. When clicked, they open a modal dialog that displays the content of the href or onclick. In the case of hrefs, we allow the user to follow the link.

8.2 HTTP MSM: Session Timeout

There is a new method of creating a countdown which will clear the transcript window after a specified amount of time. This is different than the normal session timeout, where the user’s session is marked complete, or the user profile purge, where the user’s data is written out to the user profile server. This timeout was created to allow sensitive information (such as financial or medical or other personal information) to be hidden from prying eyes on an idle session.

When enabled, the user is notified that the session will expire in a certain amount of time (default is 5 minutes). After a certain amount of time (default is 2 minutes), the user is presented a warning that the session will expire soon:

Dismissing the dialog indicates the user is still there, and resets the timer. If the user remains idle, the transcript is cleared, and the user is notified:

All messages and timeout values are configurable in the defines.txt file.

NOTE: If the http msm for a particular agent implements a “print transcript” or “save transcript”, this transcript should also be cleared when the window transcript is cleared (but since we do not control the code of the various http msms in all the agents, we did not implement that --- as we move those features back into the default http msm, we will implement that then).