Activating an Interview/call

You can modify an interview's scheduling parameters, but before you can do this you must first “activate” the interview/call. You can then schedule the call, assign a person/group to the call and modify a number of other parameters in one step. You can activate a single interview/call or a number of interview/calls simultaneously.

A special assignment type allows you to activate interview/calls while assigning these calls only to people who belong to specified groups. This type of assignment is called a "Multiple Group Assignment" (go to Assigning Calls to Multiple Groups for more information).

Note: When an interview is activated, all the specified parameters COMPLETELY REPLACE the old parameters that existed before this activation was executed.

Interviews can be activated for a single person, for a single group, or for a selection of groups.

Activating an Interview

1. Select the required interview (or a number of interviews) in the list in the Call Management window.
2. Right-click the selected interview/call (or any interview/call in the selection), and choose Activate Selected Onlyor Activate the Entire Listfrom the shortcut menu.

The confirmation dialog is displayed.

3. Click Yes to confirm the action.

The appropriate Activate page opens.



Figure 1 - Activate dialog

Using this dialog you can modify the following interview/call properties:

• Call priority
• Shift type
• Extended status
• Time to call
• Interviewer / interviewer group assigned to this call
• Enable the disabled calls as part of the activation process if the selected interviews include some that are disabled.
4. Modify the priority of a call using the Call Priority spinbox or type the value directly in the field.
5. Modify the Shift Type using the Shift Type drop-down list. Choose a value from those specified for the current survey. The default is "Any valid".
6. You can change the Extended Status to any of those available in the Extended Status Code Group currently specified for use with the survey (use the Extended Statuses parameter on the Survey View > General tab).
7. Time to Call indicates the starting moment (date and time) of the period when the call is to be delivered to the interviewer.

The Set to Now checkbox overrides the date and time values and starts the call delivery procedure the moment the Activate button is pressed.

8. If one or more calls you are activating is disabled, you may need to enable them. To do this check the Enable disabled calls box. Any disabled calls that are to be activated as part of the activation process will then be enabled. By default this box is cleared.(go to Disabling and Enabling Calls for more information)

Note that both enabled and disabled calls can be activated, but disabled calls are not delivered to the interviewer until they are enabled.

The last field contains the list of interviewers/interviewer groups in the form of a hierarchical tree. This is an optional parameter. You can select any combination of interviewers/interviewer groups in this tree. Use the Shift key to create a multiple selection.

You may leave the activated call unassigned (when you make no selection in the interviewer / interviewer group list). In this case the call will be delivered to the first available interviewer from those assigned to this survey when the specified time is due. If there are no interviewers currently assigned to this survey, this call will be delivered as soon as one appears.

Note that if the quota controlled call delivery is turned on in Forsta Professional Authoring then an extra interview/call property check is performed as part of an activation procedure.

If a quota is defined and enabled for the survey in Professional Authoring (the "CATI delivery when quota not full" option is enabled in quota settings for this survey), the call activation procedure performs the following check for each call to be activated:

• For calls that fall into each defined quota cell, the activation procedure checks if that quota cell is already full. If the quota cell is not full yet, the call is activated. If it is full the call is not activated, but its extended status remains unchanged. Be aware that in this case this call will remain in the "Not scheduled" list.

Note that calls that were "not activated" due to the above reason, are still regarded as "successfully activated" calls, and they are included in the total count of successfully activated calls in the Activate... progress dialog (see below).

9. Click Activate to confirm the interview/call property changes.

The Activate… progress dialog opens. If any selections are made that are not supported, the CATI Supervisor system will display a warning message and stop the Activation process. No further interviews will then be activated. For example, if you attempt to activate an interview for a combination of groups and persons, the following warning message is displayed.



Figure 2 - Warning message displayed when a wrong selection is made

10. Click OK to close the message, then to restart the process create a valid selection and repeat the Activate... action.

Monitoring the Operation Outcome

This and a number of similar operations can involve processing a large number of records, and any errors will prevent the operation from being completed. The CATI Supervisor system provides a monitor window that shows the main details of the operation and indicates the outcome.

Figure 3 - Example of the activate operation monitor window - operation completed successfully

The following information is displayed in the monitor dialog.

• Progress bar - displays the percentage of the processed records.
• ID - the Activate operation ID.
• Status - shows the current operation status: Not started means the operation has not commenced yet, In progress means the operation is in progress, Partially completed means all records were processed but some failed to be activated, Complete means all records were successfully activated, Failed means no records were activated.
• Start time - operation start time and date (uses the local timezone settings).
• End time - operation finish time and date (uses the local timezone settings).
• Progress - shows the current operation state. Various messages indicate the number of currently processed records, summarize the operation outcome and list any errors that may have occurred.

The picture below shows an example of the monitor window displaying information regarding the operation in progress.

Figure 4 - Activate operation monitor window - operation in progress

The Progress field shows a short summary on completion. An operation may not finish successfully; the following unsuccessful outcomes are possible:

• Partially completed operation.
• Failed operation (an error has occurred).

Note that the Activate operation is assigned the "Failed" status only when ALL selected records could not be activated.

If an error message is presented you should first re-check the operation parameters. For example, the Activate operation may fail if the specified time is outside the selected shift type. Correct any errors found then retry the operation. If the error persists, contact the support team.

By default the Close when operation finishes box is checked and the window closes automatically when the operation is finished. Clear this box if you want to keep this window open - note that messages displayed in the Progress field could help you to discover the reasons behind an operation failure.

If the Close when operation finishes box is deselected, click the X button to close the monitor window. Otherwise the window closes automatically after a short delay. When the Activate operation is finished, the interview list in the Call Management dialog is refreshed and the selected interviews/calls are activated.