Viewing and entering comments

When you call a participant, you may obtain information that is useful to other interviewers who call that person. For instance, if the participant is hard of hearing your may want to record this information so that the next person who calls the participant will know to speak slowly and clearly. Another time when comments are useful is when you arrange an appointment. You can record the reason why you made the appointment, and any special instructions the participant may have given you. This is particularly useful in business to business calling, where you may arrange the appointment with the participant’s secretary.

All comments are stored in the sample record and are displayed in the Comments box at the top of the interviewing screen. A note next to the box tells you how many comments there are. You can view the comments by scrolling through the text, but it is easier to click the edit button next to the Comments box to display them in a new dialog box.

Each comment is displayed on three lines. The first line shows the date and time (local to the interviewing server) at which the comment was entered, the server’s time zone, and name of the interviewer who wrote the comment. The date and time are shown in the “long” format that gives month and day names, which makes the information easy to understand regardless of the date and time format you are used to.

The second line shows the comment itself. If the comment is long, this line will be split over a number of physical lines in the dialog box. The third line shows the call outcome and, if the interviewer arranged an appointment, the date and time of the appointment in the format yyyy–MM–dd hh:mm. If there is more than one comment for a single call, only the last one has a call outcome.

You cannot change or delete these comments, but you can append new ones to them.

The Comments box on the main screen can display up to 2000 characters. If the total size of all comments exceeds this, the earliest comments are deleted and the words “*** Earlier comments removed ***” are inserted in their place. It is therefore a good idea to keep comments as brief as possible, perhaps by abbreviating or omitting commonly used words.

The Comments box normally displays comments in chronological order, but your administrator may have changed this if your company prefers newer comments to appear at the top of the list.

1 On the main screen’s Contact Details tab, click edit next to the Comments field. Alternatively, you can click the main screen’s Comments tab.

2 To add new comments, type them into the blank box at the foot of the dialog box. Text wraps automatically in the box; press Enter if you want to force a new line in the comment text.