Last updated: January 2022

Introduction

“Home Team First” (HTF) is a staffing model that allows you to support students from your college directly outside of your normal askON shifts. When connected to your HTF queues, all questions from visitors at your college will be routed directly to you. You will not see chats from visitors at other colleges, and chats from your college will not be visible to regular askON staff (unless they are not answered within 90 seconds, at which point they will roll over to the main all_colleges queue).

Visitors still connect using the regular askON buttons, but because you are only supporting visitors from your college, you can sign into LibraryH3lp and connect to your HTF queues at any time, even outside of regular askON hours. Only your college’s askON buttons will be activated.

If you have any questions about HTF staffing, please contact Lauren (lrupert@ocls.ca).

Connecting to HTF Queues

The sign in process to connect to your HTF queues is similar to logging into LibraryH3lp for your askON shift. The only difference comes to queue selection under staff assignments.

• When you are staffing HTF, deselect the all_colleges and all_backup queues and select your college-specific queues (there will be 3-4 depending which college you are from):

Open

• When you are staffing a regular askON shift, select only the all_colleges and all_backup queues:

Open

Communicating Your Shift

When you are staffing HTF, you will still be able to see everyone signed in for askON shifts and they’ll be able to see you - you just won’t be able to see each other’s questions. To minimize confusion, please do the following to communicate that you’re here for your own college’s queue only, not a regular askON shift:

• Change your status message - to do this, click on the “is doing this” field next to the status button at the top right of your screen and enter your college name. Your colleagues will be able to see this in their contacts menu and know that you’re not staffing a regular askON shift. If you’d like, you can also include the hours for your shift.

Using Backchat

With so many operators logged into LibraryH3lp at once, backchat can be noisy and distracting. While you are staffing HTF, please refrain from using backchat as much as possible to keep it clear for regular askON staff who may need to transfer chats or ask advice from colleagues at different colleges. Instead of using backchat:

• Please indicate that you are staffing HTF using the status method above. There is no need to sign into your shift in backchat

• If you are communicating with colleagues, please use the private message feature. To send a private message, click on your colleague’s username in the Guests & Contacts bar:

Status, Stepping Away, & Breaks on HTF

If you need to step away from your computer while staffing your college’s HTF queues (even for just a few minutes!), please make sure you fully log out of LibraryH3lp and log in when you return. If you are the only staff member from your college currently staffing, you may also wish to notify the operators staffing the main queues.

Even if you expect to be gone for only a minute or two, logging out is the respectful thing to do for both visitors and other operators. If you remain logged in, other operators won’t know you have left. Remaining logged in will also lead to longer wait times for visitors since HTF questions only roll over to the main queue if they have been unanswered for 90 seconds (which is the maximum ideal response time on askON).

Please do not change your status from available at any time while you are staffing. This can lead to confusion and frustration because other operators may not know if you are available to take questions or transfers. Do not use busy, away, or extended away.