Ask-JGI tracker#

In order to track the progress of individual Ask-JGI queries, and to gather information for reporting purposes, new emails received in the Ask-JGI mailbox automatically generate a ticket on the so-called Ask-JGI tracker, which can be found here.

Filling out the tracker#

The tracker is really important for JGI because we use it to report back on the value that the helpdesk provides, which allows us to keep running it!

See below for more info about filling out the tracker. Some of the fields update automatically, but it is the responsibility of the Ask-JGI PhD student handling the task to keep their queries up to date.

Status#

  • New: A new query has come through and needs replying to and to be assigned

  • In progress: Manually set a query to “In progress” when you have sent something to the querier and are waiting for them to respond

  • Updated: A query gets automatically set to “Updated” whenever the querier replies to an email, helpful to nudge you to check it

  • Paused: We set a query to “Paused” in situations where we do a bit of work for someone and then they say that they will want more help in the future. A common example is we do a small bit of work with a subset of someone’s data, and then they go off to collect more data before getting back to us.

  • Resolved: We mark a query as “Resolved” when we’ve finished it. Make all the other tracker fields are fully updated before doing this. Ideally we use this at a clear conclusion where we finish a query and get a nice thank you email, but sometimes researchers forget and even if we send a chaser email asking if they need any more help, they don’t reply! In both cases, it’s fine to mark something as resolved.

ID#

This is a unique ID number assigned to each Ask-JGI query and cannot be changed. This is useful for keeping track of which query is which.

Date updated#

No need to change this one, but useful to let us know when we were last emailed.

Who#

This is the email of the person who contacted Ask-JGI. Occasionally, if someone else signposts directly via email to Ask-JGI, then the email of the person who first emailed/cc-ed Ask-JGI gets put in this box automatically. For example, a full time member of JGI staff might redirect smaller pieces of work to the Ask-JGI helpdesk. In this case, we would want to manually update the “Who” field to be the email of the person with the query, not the email of the JGI staff member who did the signposting.

Query name#

This is by default the subject title of the email but ideally in the tracker we want it to be a brief summary of what the query is about to make it easier to access. Frequently we get emails with generic titles such as “Data science help” or “Statistics question”. In these situations, it’s a good idea to manually change the query name to something brief but specific. For example “Astronomy Computer Vision” or “NLP Topic Modelling for Influencers” might be good query names.

Assigned to#

This is where we manually assign who is keeping tracking of queries. You can manually assign up to two people, including JGI Data Scientists.

Notes#

This is where we keep track of what’s been done for the query. It’s good to put the date of when you do something and a brief summary, for example: “23/09: Met with James and agreed to write code, awaiting on their data”. It’s useful to be able to see what has already been done so that if needed someone else can take over the query. It’s also good for being able to check when we last did something if we’re waiting on a response from the querier.

Query topic#

This refers to the broad area(s) of data science that the query is about. There may be more than one - e.g. a query may be about both Statistics and ML. This needs to be manually filled in!

Task for Ask-JGI#

This refers to the type of action that will be undertaken by the Data Scientist(s) assigned to this query. There may be more than one - e.g. a query may require both Technical advice and Signposting. This needs to be manually filled in!

Faculty#

We try to keep track of where our queries are based at the University of Bristol to see who we’re helping and how much. This involves looking them up and entering their faculty and school.

School#

This follows from the faculty section, the faculties and schools have a colour code overlap, so once you’ve entered the faculty, you can see which schools are within that faculty.

Time taken#

This is for keeping track of how much time the helpdesk has spent on a query. This includes meetings, writing emails as well as hands on technical support. If there are two people working on a query, then the time taken is their combined time. This shouldn’t really exceed a day (~7 hours) except in special circumstances. Updating this as you go and keeping the querier up to date on this is very important!

Date opened#

This automatically tells us when the query started.

Impact?#

In the rare cases where some work from Ask-JGI has additional, visible impact, we add it here. Past examples include when data visualisations we make end up on conference posters or in papers and when work done resulted in an Ask-JGI students being made co-author on a paper.