EPRI contains several features for monitoring data quality and communicating via E-mail with users.
The system administrator's Location Page contains a button labeled "Send E-mail to Selected Locations." To use this feature the system administrator first selects in the box on the right-hand side of the page for locations to be E-mailed. In Figure 29 (30 KB), six locations that have not entered any data (as indicated by the 0% figure next to the check box) are selected.
Selecting the 'Send E-mail to Selected Locations' button displays the E-mail page with the "To" line automatically filled in with the selected locations (Figure 30, 17 KB).
Note that the system administrator has the option of emailing just data managers (i.e., users whose "Input Role" is Data Manager), just Emergency Contacts (Section 4.2), or both.
In order for E-mail to actually be sent, the system administrator needs to make sure the Web server is configured for E-mail. In addition, the system administrator needs to configure the 'To', 'From', and 'bcc' values for E-mail. As explained in the installation instructions in the Appendix, this involves editing a single text file.
An important task for the system administrator will be to determine the extent to which organizations have entered data and, as appropriate, followup with users to encourage timely data entry. To facilitate this process, the Location Page shows the "% complete" (i.e., the percentage of non-emergency fields that are not empty) for each location.
To send an E-mail to data managers for locations that have a low % complete figure, do the following:
The system administrator will also need to determine when data are "old" and need to be updated. As discussed in Section 3.1, each resource type has a 'Report Every ___ Days' attribute. Using this attribute, the Location Inventory report (Section 6) flags each out of date data item—these items are colored red and have asterisks on either side.
Based on a review of the Location Inventory reports, E-mails can be sent to the appropriate data managers to remind them to update their data. Alternatively, you can simply broadcast an E-mail to all data managers reminding them to update their data.
Note: to signal the system that data values have not changed and "old" data remain accurate, users can simply select "Submit" on the Inventory data entry pages.
As noted in Section 3.1, questions (i.e., data entry fields) about resources are grouped into two categories—emergency and non-emergency. If the system administrator is instructed to switch to 'emergency mode', s/he should send an E-mail to all data managers instructing them to complete the 'Emergency' questions on the inventory data entry pages.
Emergency data are viewable on the Resources within Radius and the Inventory Location reports (Section 6).
When the emergency has ended, the system administrator should re-set all the emergency data fields to 'blank'. To do this: