How can I order my transcripts on-line? Why do you call your men's sporting teams the Nittany Lions? Can I pay my tuition with a credit card? What equipment do I need if I want to start composting? What SAT score do I need to be accepted at Penn State? My password doesn't work, what should I do? How do I apply for a scholarship?
Can one person know enough about Penn State to answer all of these questions, and more? Not likely. However, these represent only a small sample of actual questions people have asked the Penn State Webmaster.
As you might imagine, the Webmaster spent a considerable amount of time looking up the appropriate contact person to answer these types of questions, or the proper procedure to follow to get the pertinent information. In the meantime, the people who sent the messages had to wait for a reply because their questions initially went to the wrong person.
The staff of Information Technology Services (ITS) believed there had to be a better way to get questions routed to the appropriate person for a more prompt response. Thus, the AskPSU service was born.
AskPSU provides a service whereby each unit can develop a customized electronic postcard that will route questions to an email address (or addresses), or a URL (for on-line contact forms) specified in the creation of the postcard. To use the service, you do not need to know HTML, or any other scripting language. You may create your own unit postcard by simply applying for the service, and then filling in web forms to set it up. Once completed, you may link to it from your unit web page at the location where you would have directed inquiries in the past (such as a "Webmaster" or "Contact Us" link).
The decision to change the contact link at the bottom of the Penn State home page from webmaster@psu.edu to the "Ask Penn State" postcard was not easily made. The ITS staff responsible for reviewing and answering the Webmaster email first presented the idea of the service to the Provost, who believed it could prove useful to the whole Penn State community. The group then presented the proposal to the units at Penn State who received the majority of the forwarded questions originally sent to the Webmaster. Surprisingly, these units had experienced a similar phenomenon whereby they received numerous questions that should have gone to another unit, necessitating time and effort to redirect inquiries. This common experience underlined the need for this type of service.
So, how can you tell if your unit could benefit from using AskPSU? Ask yourself these questions:
If you answered yes to any of these questions, then you should consider taking advantage of the AskPSU service. It is free to any Penn State unit and can be set up quickly and easily by anyone who knows the functions of your unit and the persons responsible for those functions. Of course, should you choose to use the AskPSU service and create your own postcard, you should obtain permission from any of the contacts you specify before using their email address.
Please visit http://ask.psu.edu to apply for your form and view instructions on how to format it. You can also view sample postcards linked from this web site, or see them in use on ITS web pages http://its.psu.edu and http://css.its.psu.edu). Once you apply for the form, ITS staff members will verify your Penn State affiliation, create your form, and authorize you to access it for set-up and maintenance generally within 3 work days. Periodically, ITS will provide free training seminars that will walk you through the process of applying, setting-up and maintaining your AskPSU post card. You can look for these seminars on the ITS Training Services page by going to http://its.psu.edu/training/, following the link for "Technology Seminars," then browsing the seminars list.
If you have any questions about the AskPSU service, please visit our postcard at http://ask.psu.edu/css.html, or email us at cssweb@psu.edu.