Decision Maker – Easily build decision guides and trouble shooters with this jQuery script.
Business processes are getting increasingly more complex. To help people perform processes correctly we often resort to training or providing some type of reference material. that’s typically on the corporate intranet. Since the processes are often governed by a complex set of rules a person must read and remember all the different conditions and rules that must be applied to a process. If the process is complicated and not performed very often, the error rate goes up along with the number of support calls.
This article presents a technique that uses a jQuery function to enable process experts to create decision guide or trouble shooter by simply entering information in an HTML table using a visual web page editor. When the page is viewed, the jQuery script reads the table and presents the first question along with the options.
When a person clicks an option/answer, the script finds and presents the next question. This continues until the final answer is found. Each question is displayed below the previous question so a person can see the flow of questions and quickly take another course by skipping back to the first or any previous question.
Here is what the table might look like.
| # | Question/Heading | Options/Answer |
| 1 | What’s wrong with the printer |
|
| 2 | Does the printer make any noise? |
|
| 3 | How light is the print? |
|
| 4 | The printer needs to be replaced. Follow these procedures for requesting a replacement printer. |
The first column contains unique number from 1 to whatever is required. The second column contains the questions or a heading for a final answer. The 3rd column contains a bullet list of options for each question or the final answer. Each of the options in the bullet list has an id attribute that matches the number of the table row that’s presented when the bullet item is clicked. The HTML would be <li id=”3”>The paper is crimpled</li>. Since many visual editors allow authors to add attribute values it would not be necessary for an author to view the HTML code.
To utilize the script you need to:
- Add a link to the jQuery js file
- Copy and paste the function and css from the example page
- Add a table with id=”questions” in the table tag.
- Have an expert enter the questions and answers.
Including an “Don’t know” or “Not sure” option/answer with each question provides an opportunity to present information about how to find an answer to a question.
This electronic performance support system (EPSS) can help you to reduce process errors, improve service, and reduce support calls.
Is it possible to integrate this with a WordPress database of products to use the questions to search for products which meet specific criteria, such as length, diameter, etc?
Thanks,
Josh
Josh
The code is probably not well suited to a situation where a user has a specific quantitative need. For example, I need a 50 mm widget with a diameter of 20mm, But it may work well for a range of values like widgets with a length of more than 50mm. This code is good for a decision tree where the answer to one questions leads to more questions that may be unique to the previous question. If that’s what you are looking for you could build the decision guide in an HTML document as described in the article. Once a user has answered all the question the final results could be a link that executes a database query that returns the products that best match the needs determined by the answers to the questions in the decision tree. The nice think about using this decision tree is that a person can basically perform a boolean search, by just answering a series of questions. They don’t need to think about how to set a series of filters to return the products that may be of interest to them.
I hope this answers your question.
Josh
The code is probably not well suited to a situation where a user has a specific quantitative need. For example, I need a 50 mm widget with a diameter of 20mm, But it may work well for a range of values like widgets with a length of more than 50mm. This code is good for a decision tree where the answer to one questions leads to more questions that may be unique to the previous question. If that’s what you are looking for you could build the decision guide in an HTML document as described in the article. Once a user has answered all the question the final results could be a link that executes a database query that returns the products that best match the needs determined by the answers to the questions in the decision tree. The nice think about using this decision tree is that a person can basically perform a boolean search, by just answering a series of questions. They don’t need to think about how to set a series of filters to return the products that may be of interest to them.
I hope this answers your question.
Unbelievable, that’ s exactly what I was seeking for! You just saved me alot of work