LDRPS (Living Disaster Recovery Planning System, an established name that predates Strohl’s ownership of the product) serves a niche market in the field of Business Continuity Planning (formerly called Disaster Recovery). It’s a powerful database system that enables its users to capture a broad range of information and then build detailed plans that are implemented immediately in the event of a disaster, such as a fire or an earthquake, or any other business "outage."

User feedback indicated that standard online help was often not used and that occasional users had difficulty learning and using the product.

LDRPS has two classes of users. One class, who administrate the system, use it frequently and typically learn to value its rich functionality. The other class, the majority of users, use it infrequently. They typically know little or nothing about business continuity planning, build very few plans, and find themselves frustrated by the same rich functionality of the system.

Purpose

We realized that an EPSS was needed to coach occasional users through the few plans they needed to build. The EPSS would contain appropriate generic information, be customizable by the plan administrator, and also provide a monitoring function for the administrator to track the status of a large number of plans.

Solution

We created a customizable coach to guide occasional users through LDRPS and show occasional users precisely what they need to do. The formal name of this coach is Plan Assistant, but everyone calls him Fred.

Fred comes equipped with several sets of generic instructions that reflect best industry practices, which were developed by consultants in the area of Business Continuity Planning. The information Fred displays is customizable through another tool, available to administrators, called Plan Assistant Builder. The plan administrator controls the tasks, the windows that are summoned, and the specific instructions.

After Plan Assistant has been customized, Fred greets the occasional users when they launch LDRPS, presenting them with a checklist of tasks they need to complete.

Task lists delineate what each user needs to do and keeps track of their progress. When a task is completed, it receives a check.

When they select a task, Fred takes them to entry window where they complete it. In this way, the challenge of navigating through this powerful system evaporates. Once on the appropriate window, they are presented with specific instructions.

The tasks in this particular activity are presented at a high level. Users obtain more specific information and clarifications by clicking View Guidelines, and instructions on how to use the software by clicking How To.

The How To button takes users to a list of task help topics determined by the window in which they are working. These instructions have fewer steps than those in the previous help system, because no navigation is necessary. Users are precisely where they need to be. The View Guidelines button provides them with carefully modularized domain knowledge tailored to help them complete their tasks. The to-do list, instructions, and guidelines can be customized by the administrator through Plan Assistant Builder. In this way, best practices and increasing knowledge can be presented to users as they need it, in the course of doing their required work.

Using Plan Assistant Builder, the plan Administrator can customize the domain knowledge presented to Plan Assistant users. Domain knowledge is divided into instructions and guidelines.

At the end of each task, users indicate whether the step has been completed. If it has, Fred’s main menu puts a big red checkmark next to the step. And then on to the next step, until each plan is complete.

Fred provides the additional benefit, for the administrator, of providing an up-to-the-minute tracking mechanism of the status of all the plans using Fred. Each time a user completes a task, this information is relayed to the administrator automatically through the LAN or WAN on which the system resides. Plan Assistant Builder consolidates this information and displays it graphically.

To make the completion status of plans accurate, tasks can be assigned weights to reflect their relative effort to complete. A "Days to Uncheck" feature also ensures that tasks that need to be performed at various intervals are kept up to date.

Plan Assistant has been on the market for too short a time for us to capture statistics on improved performance. Our Support Services desk has noted a lessening of calls on fundamental and navigation issues that were attributable to lack of familiarity with the product, but these have not yet been quantified. Plan Administrators have commented to us that their users find their tasks much easier to perform with Fred’s assistance, and they appreciate the ability to customize instructions and terminology and to provide guidance to their users in a just-in-time, just enough manner.