The document outlines improvements in the Ask an Expert 2.0 platform, including the introduction of user groups, a simplified assignment process, and enhanced accessibility for question submission. It highlights the importance of tagging expert areas and establishing geographic parameters for question handling while also addressing privacy options for question submitters. The timeline for the rollout of these features is approximately three weeks, with a demo site already operational.

1. Ask an Expert 2.0
Ben MacNeill
eXtension

2. Big Picture
• Sharing/Public (opt-in)
• Groups
• Simpler assignment rules and interfaces
• Better mobile
• Better search
• Better notifications
• Evaluations

3. What I’m
Covering Today
• Groups
• Categories, Tags & Areas of Expertise
• Getting Questions into AaE
• Assignments
• Openness & Privacy

4. Groups
• Groups were created from:
• Every widget
• Every primary “Area of Expertise”
• Question Wrangler community

5. What can you
do with Groups?
• Assign questions directly to a group
• Groups can decide if they want a “Question
pool” or individual assignments
• Define geographic region and only accept
questions that match it
• Decide if the question submitter has the choice
to make their question public.

6. Categories, Tags &
Areas of Expertise
• The category hierarchy (49 terms and
growing) didn’t work well.
• Each expert’s “areas of expertise” have been
converted to tags for that expert.
• Sub-categories for each “area of expertise”
have been converted to tags for that group.
• The tagging UI is designed to make it easy to
use existing terms.

7. Getting Questions
into AaE
• Current model
• the multi-purpose Ask form on
www.extension.org
• Individual Ask widgets embedded in
thousands of pages across the web

8. The Goal
• The trend: widget submissions are
outstripping www submissions
• Continue to increase the number of
questions that come in through dedicated
widgets

9. How
• Existing widgets
• Group’s Ask form (each group has a
dedicated URL)
• A generic Ask form (which sends questions
directly to the QW group)
• Every piece of content on www will have a
link to the group’s Ask form or include its
embedded widget.

10. Question Wranglers
• Will handle groupless questions
• Will handle location non-matches
• Use the new reassignment UI to assign to
the best Group or Expert

11. Simplified Rules
• Questions from widgets or via Group Ask
pages are assigned to that Group.
• UNLESS the group has defined a
geographic area. Non-matches go to the
QW Group.
• Questions submitted through the generic
Ask form are assigned to the QW group

12. Automatic vs Manual
• Automatic assignments are only based on
question source (i.e. which widget/form)
and geographic location.
• Manual reassignments use tags and/or
geography to find a matching group or
expert.

13. Groups and Experts
• Define locations (for automatic assignments)
• Define tags (for manual assignments)
• In the future, may experiment with tag-based
automatic assignments

14. Openness and Privacy
• Public sharing is opt-in
• Questions can be marked public, and are publicly
searchable and browsable
• Robust GA tracking baked into Public questions
• Limited Group Expert profiles are publicly viewable
• e.g. default: Ben M.
• Ability for the public to comment

15. Who Controls Privacy?
• The submitter can choose to make a
question public
• Experts can choose to make public
questions private
• Groups can choose to give submitters the
option (default is private)
• All existing questions will be marked
private when migrated to AaE 2.0

16. Time Line
• 3 weeks out (hopefully)
• The demo site is running:
http://dev.ask.extension.org
• The look and feel is an evolving design

17. Thanks!