What is EPSS Designer

EPSS Designer is a Lotus Notes database application that can be used to record and organize the information required to design and develop an electronic performance support system. EPSS Designer provides a comprehensive methodology for collecting, categorizing and organizing information about tasks, decisions, key business terms and reference information. Once you have collected this task information, you can use EPSS Designer to record basic design decisions such as the form of performance support (Intrinsic, Extrinsic or External).

With EPSS Designer, you can easily record, organize and update

EPSS Designer Components

Tasks and Procedures

You can use the Task view to add and edit Task and Procedure records. A Task is an identifiable process that achieves an objective and produces a result. Some tasks may consist of two or more identifiable steps or procedures. In this case, you can add a Task record that describes the overall process and then add Procedure records that describe each step in the task. You can even create sub-procedure records if it is appropriate to describe the component steps of a procedure. In some instance, a task may be very simple and will not require procedure records.

Within these Task and Procedure records, you can identify the reference information an employee may need to perform the task or procedure. You can also identify the type of performance support that will be provided to enable the employee to perform the task or procedure.

Decisions and Conditions/Actions

You can use the Decisions view to add and edit decision information. These records contain information about the decisions an employee must make to perform a task. You can use the Condition/Action records to document and visually illustrate a simple decision algorithm. A

Condition record documents each individual factor or condition that affects the outcome of the decision. A condition is stated in terms of an answer rather than a question. For example rather than posing the question: "Is the car blue?", in EPSS Designer you would add two condition records. One that describes the condition "The car is blue." and another for "The car is not blue." An Action record shows the final outcome of the decision process and indicates the action or task that will occur as a result of the decision. Please see the EPSS Designer sample database for an illustration of a basic decision algorithm.

In the course of designing an EPSS, you may create an opportunity to re-design a task or business process. With EPSS Designer, you can identify the task records that represent both the previous process and those that reflect the revised process.

References

You should use the Reference records to document the specific pieces of reference information an employee may use when they are performing a particular task or making certain decision. These pieces of reference information could be contained in several sources, such as a procedure manual and a policy directive. With the EPSS Designer Reference records, you can identify the current source(s) of a particular piece of reference information and the proposed new source and method of support (Intrinsic, Extrinsic or External).

Terminology

To begin to perform work for an organization an employee will generally need to acquire an understanding of the key business terms. With the EPSS Designer terminology feature, you can record the definition of all these terms and identify the process by which an employee will come to learn or understand these terms.

Database

If your EPSS will included an integrated database system, you can use this component of EPSS Designer to identify the database tables, the fields and program screens that will be used to input and display this data.

Follow-ups

With this feature of EPSS Designer, you can attach a follow-up note to most records. You can use these follow-ups record to make notes about any questions that may occur during the documentation process. You can view these follow-up notes by status and by the name of the person who made the note or who will perform the task described in the note.

Performance Support Type

Once you have gathered and organized all the relevant job related information, you can make decisions about your performance support strategies. In the Decision, Task, Procedure, Reference and Terminology records, you can record the form of performance support (Intrinsic, Extrinsic and External) that will be provided to the employees.

Folders

The design of many performance support systems is based on the use of some type of index that an employee can use to find and select the task they need to perform. Some system may contain more than one type of index For example; an EPSS could have index of tasks and an alphabetical subject index.

If your system will use an index based navigational interface, you can use the folders to organize your indexes. With this feature you can click the "Move to Folder" button to manually copy a decision, task, procedure, terminology and reference record to an index folder. The EPSS Designer sample database contains a subject index folder. Please refer to your Lotus Notes user guide for more information about adding new folders and subfolders.

Lookup Values

EPSS Designer contains several user definable lookup tables. You can use these tables to identify the performance support devise that your system will contain. These devises could include features like wizards, online help files, tool tips, etc. These lookup values are stored in the EPSS Designer Lookup file, a seperate Notes database file (LOOKUP.NSF)

Field Descriptions

You can view a description of each field in a EPSS Designer document (record) by selecting the "ON" option in the "Field Description" field that appear just under the title of each record. You can turn-off this text by selecting the "OFF" option.