Thanks for the fast responses! I've been playing with the system a little bit more this morning (and plan on it for a couple more hours as I want to rollover to this new setup as quickly as possible for all the great new features) ... Here are a few more things I've come across ...
When a dictation is downloaded from Express Delegate into Express Scribe (ES) there is a dispatch issue. If you don't type anything (no notes, no word document) and click the dispatch button - then you get the dispatch to delegate window. If you link a word document to the dictation (which is how our work is done) via the word templating feature, when you click the dispatch button you get the send by email window instead of the dispatch to delegate. This might actually be within Express Scribe, but I am going to post all my findings in one post rather than spread them out between forums.
Yesterday, it seemed that when a dictation was assigned a "pool" via a rule, it was moved to the "assigned" queue and when it was downloaded by a typist it would move to the "transcribing" section. Today when I tested, it remains in the unassigned after both being assigned a pool via a rule and after downloading it (via automatic incoming) whereas it should have moved to the assigned pool and transcribing pool respectively. I have made no changes to the configurations other than installing the new v4.28 of ES. I can't really think of a logical explanation for this so if you need any more information that can help you troubleshoot - let me know and I'll send it off or post it =)
For the deadline feature that you plan on implementing into Express Dictate - I have some concerns on how that will affect a businesses workflow. Specifically, if we allow too much influence on the "urgency" of a dictation from a dictator, then it could have detrimental effects on a companies overall workflow and output. To draw a picture, a client dictates and flags it as high priority and sets the deadline to a date in the past (which the system allows for). When it enters our system, it is now flagged as both high priority and overdue, which should technically boost it to the top or very near it according to how you calculate urgency (Quote from online help: "Urgency is calculated using priorities, deadlines, and the relative ages of dictations.") So, by doing this they have effective bypassed the workflow policies that we have instituted. I know this is a bit of an exagerration, but it's a scenario to simply illustrate my point. From a business perspective, the client can have limited influence on the turn-around times and this functionality exists - low, normal and high priorities. The deadlines, I see, as a tool for management to ensure that contractual and internal policies are met - rather than a method for cleints to "bump" their dictations to the top of the pile. So, I would prefer to see this feature implemented into Express Delegate rather than Express Dictate.
I have a suggestion on how this could be done - but still has a potential drawback.
My first thought on implementing this, is to allow managers to set default deadlines for "pools" based on priority. So, when creating/modifying a pool - a manager/admin can set the turn-around time in fields marked "low", "normal" and "high". Then when a dictation is assigned a pool, either manually or automatically via a rule, then it would add that time to the dictation time and that in turn becomes the deadline. The potential drawback for this method, is how to handle the changing of pools once it has been assigned. I would suggest that the old "deadline" would just become superceded by a newly calculated deadline based on the new pool (as it's calculated from the dictation time, the effective deadline would be the same as if it was assigned that pool initially - and turn-around time is met accordingly).
One last request, specific to ES, is to have more flexibility in the naming of files when using templating. Our clients request our files to be saved in a specific naming format. In order to fully utilize the new Express Delegate system - it would be great if we could have the same flexibility in naming the document much in the same way we can name dictation files in Express Dictate (ie. file name format in Express Dictate - %userid%-%filenumber% %filename% by %username% for example). I can provide further details on what type of fields I would like to be able to include, if this is something you will consider implementing.
oK, I lied - this is my last suggestion lol ... and this is piggy-backing off of one of your thoughts in your reply to my original post. In Express Delegate there is a configuration screen already for e-mail. I had originally thought this was to send notifications of completed work (or status updates) ... but from your reply, I may have jumped the gun. An idea, if not already in the works, would be to check boxes on a user's screen to optionally receive notifications of completed work. I say optionally because some clients have a large amount of work they can put through in a day and I'm sure they don't want to receive an email every few minutes as new work is completed lol. Another idea, is to send an "end-of-day" status report of all work that was completed and assigned, etc ... again if this is of interest, then I can definitely elaborate further ... =)
Almost forgot to answer your question regarding the uploading of corrected documents. The scenario we specifically face is usually that a portion of the dictation is unclear (due to background noise, muffling, etc) and we mark the unsure transcribed text with ? ... example:
? the quick brown fix jumped over the fence ?
Silly example, but we then send the document as such and also comment in the email informing the client to check that document and feedback with what the correct text should be. We then correct the document and resend it. In Delegate, a feature to upload a corrected document is a must for us because we do medical transcription - and if the information remains incorrect there could be legal issues we face.
That's all for now ... Thanks again!
Cheers!
M.
