How do the built-in client activity questions available for client surveys work?
When you post a client survey to eCenter Direct, you have the option to include standard client activity questions, as shown in the next graphic. These questions, when answered in the affirmative, result in the addition of a milestone, award, and/or loan record to the WebCATS database on behalf of the responding client.
There are three categories of client activity questions that can be included in your survey (in addition to any custom questions that you write):
- Milestone questions
- Award question
- Investment question
Note: If you're looking for detailed instructions on the process of creating and distributing surveys, see the FAQ titled How do I create, post, and advertise surveys?
Milestone Questions
By default, WebCATS offers several standard milestone questions for you to include in surveys. These questions parallel WebCATS' built-in milestone types. In fact, for almost every milestone type in your database (built-in or custom), your WebCATS administrator can create, edit, or remove a standard survey question. This is done by editing global milestone behavior from the Manage|WebCATS Configuration command (found in WebCATS' left-hand menu), as shown in the next graphic.
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When a client responds affirmately to a milestone question, WebCATS automatically creates a milestone record for the client containing whatever information the client provides on the topic. In addition, if it's a question that affects a field on the client record, WebCATS will also update the client record with the new milestone information. For example, if you were to include the standard "Have you received 8(A) certification?" question on a survey and a respondent answered that they have, not only would an "8(A) Certification Obtained" milestone record be created for the client, but the client record itself would be updated with this information.
Award & Investment Questions
WebCATS offers one standard award and one standard investment question for you to include on surveys. As with the milestone questions, when a client responds affirmately to an award or investment question, WebCATS automatically creates the corresponding record type in the WebCATS database.
There are two global configurations that affect the built-in award and investment survey questions:
- Award/Investment Duplicating Checking. Found under Manage|eCenter Configuration, this global configuration determines eCenter's behavior when a client submits award or investment information that duplicates information already in WebCATS. From this setting, you can choose to have eCenter perform one of the following actions:
- Never check for duplicate award/investment data (thus allowing duplication).
- Provide a warning to the center (via e-mail) when duplicate award/investment data is encountered. The duplicate award or investment record is still created in WebCATS, but the heads up from eCenter allows you to compare the records and delete one if necessary.
- Prohibit the client from submitting award or investement data that eCenter deems to be a duplication of existing data. Only the client is informed that the data they just submitted is deemed to be a duplicate; they are then instructed to contact their center if they feel this is in error.
- Lock Records. Found under Manage|WebCATS Configuration, this global configuration can be used to ensure that your center receives credit for awards and investments reported late by clients. For example, if you set this configuration to the date that represents the first day of your current reporting period (e.g. 7/1/2010) and a client were to report an award they won six months earlier than that, WebCATS would automatically use the date configured in the Lock Records field as the award record's Reporting Date (rather than typically defaulting the Reporting Date field to the same date as the Award Date). Since this is the field used by the DLA 1806 to calculate awards, this ensures that you still receive credit for the award.
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