Educator on-line status check

dteg

Prepared to create a little web gadget to check which educators are on-line (where that information is available - one or two choose not to display). Would anyone be interested in using this, or would I be wasting my time?

doktormandrake

Think it sounds useful

dteg

Four more positive votes and I'll do it 🙂

stephenmiller

http://community.giffgaff.com/t5/Submit-Great-giffgaff-Ideas/Educators-on-Duty/idi-p/2157419

Marked not suitable

"If a member wants to contact an online Educator, please use the 'report content' function. If you PM anEducator there is never a guarantee on when we will reply."

dteg

Fair enough, but there seems to be conflicting advice around. That one says to use the Report function to contact, others give a link to a list and say to work through the list until you find one that's on-line and contact them. This proposal was a shortcut to the latter, but if that's outdated advice and the Report is the way, then cool 🙂

stephenmiller

There's been a couple of ideas submitted about how to tell if an educator is online and they both say use the inappropriate content option. Personally I always use it rather than going straight to an educator and they're always super fast to respond that way, you could be waiting hours if you go the PM route but if you have a non-urgent issue that you want one to chase up then there's no reason you can't go straight to an educator 🙂

dteg

Phil Little advises similarly in the main help forum. First time I've seen it mentioned there, and I follow pretty closely. Sounds wise though 🙂

clearbluesky

Just because they are online now doesn't mean they won't have gone home between you checking and messaging them.

rong42

i always think the best way to get in touch with an educator, for anything urgent, is to use the 'report content' function (as this goes to all educators, and it will be picked up by whoever is on duty the quickest)

I've also added the educators as my friends, so I can see if they are online or not easily, but i don't think the online/offline indicators are always that accurate

http://bit.ly/ggeducators this is a download for an excel file from jamesd2010, which shows which educators are online (use date last visited as guide)

andylamb

If you want to see what Educator is online, then add them all to your Friends list under "About Me" in the community.

Then, just by clicking on the "About Me" link you can just look down your friends list and see if their online status is green.
This works for everyone except for Hazel, who sometimes hides her status indicator.

dteg

It's a good idea adding Educators as friends, if responding proactively on others' behalf, however if direct contact (rather than report content) is still preferred, it's not so viable for individuals having trouble and wanting to pursue by themselves.

oldyorkie

@dteg wrote:
It's a good idea adding Educators as friends, if responding proactively on others' behalf, however if direct contact (rather than report content) is still preferred, it's not so viable for individuals having trouble and wanting to pursue by themselves.

Agreed .... I have educators listed as friends, and contact them directly when raising an ongoing issue for a member who is struggling, but for anything else I use the report option.

To contact them for any old thing is not advisable and also bypasses the natural chain..... agents are there for a reason - and you can bet your bottom dollar that anyone trying to jump the queue will simply be passed back to the agents anyway - and rightly so...