Sometimes associates wonder why something is set up the way it is or additions have been made. Sometimes they don’t like the change – sometimes I don’t either. However, occasionally Tony Alessandra gets a request with rationale from one of his customers (a private label site like Assessments Now) and it make sense to him. However, it means changing the code for everyone. Any unique or special requests that he does not think are of interest to the majority of clients can sometimes be added individually for a customer at an additional cost. Sometimes the change in code is too much. To date, I am the only one who had invested extra funds to have multiply languages available. My investment has run into thousands of dollars. Tony is getting more requests for this and is looking into how to better set up the system and coding but he has told me he won’t provide translation. Here are two questions that relate to the master set-up by Tony.

1. One of my students used the second choice for observers. That is, sending a private e-mail. The strange thing is that the system generate the same link to all e-mails you create. Yes you are importing a universal link to use in your Outlook (or other email program) – otherwise if you want individual links, then you have to create them individually through the system as a unique link must be associated with a specific email and name. How can you then track who has answered? You can’t – that is the drawback of using this option but often the benefits outweigh the disadvantages. It forces the sender to explain in his or her words what they are asking of others. This feature was a request from another customer of Tony’s as a result of ways to deal with firewalls without any extra difficulty of having to involve an IT department. It is also a way to get around issues of observers who do not have access to individual email accounts but can get on a terminal. Finally, it really does guarantee confidentiality and privacy which is definitely an issue for some people and some organizations. (See third note.) Associates have no way of knowing who or how many observers have been sent out anyway.

2. The choice “For Follow up only” was shown in the “send invitations” list. Shouldn´t that option be locked when you send out assessments for the first time? In a perfect world yes, but that is not how the system works. The system developed had four categories but only three (to my knowledge) had ever been used by any of Tony’s customers. I too had not used it as I felt it “overloaded” the graph. After giving it some thought, I decided to label this fourth option as something unique to our site. That is why it is marked “For Follow-up only”. So far, it hasn’t seemed to be an issue and I do not plan on investing additional costs to myself. However, if I get any serious complaints from the Associates, I will consider removing permanently. Clients if they are interested in follow-up would then have to purchase a new assessment and manually compare the two graphs.

3.   Associates have a “similar” option as the observers who can use a universal link. It is called the “Invitation Link” and you can create two at any point in time. It is NOT turned on for most of you because if you create it (and it can be easily removed) anyone can use it and take the assessment and use up one of your credits. The better option, if you have quite a few people to send it to, is to import the names and emails via an excel spreadsheet. This feature is also off by default so let me know if you want either of these features turned on. We had thought about using the excel spreadsheet for your members but decided that the universal link had more advantages AND if they really wanted to get someone’s input then typing it in individually so that it could be track was a better approach.