[tirrigh-heralds] New Heraldic Client Tracking System - http://www.tirrigh.org/heralds/clienttracker

[Quentin Martel]

Greetings unto the Great Principality of Tir Righ!

 

 

I come before you all today to announce a new service that your College of
Heralds has created for Tir Righ - the Client Tracking System!

 

The Client Tracking System (CTS) is an on-line tool that tracks the entire
life of every heraldic submission in the Principality, from the moment that
a person comes to a herald and says that he is interested in registering a
name, device, or badge, until it is registered by the Laurel Sovereign of
Arms.

 

The idea of the tool is to fill in gaps of time that currently exist in our
process. For example, let's look at a client named John the Smith. John
talks to his local herald and says that he wants to register a device.

 

Previously, that herald would help John design his device and tell him about
the 6 pieces of paperwork that need to be filled out, the cost involved, and
where to mail the packet. The College of Heralds may not hear another thing
from John until that packet arrives at Lions Blood, the An Tir Kingdom
submissions deputy.

 

With the CTS, we have a record of when John started his process. If 6 months
goes by and no packet has been sent to Lions Blood, we know about it and can
call up John and see how his heraldic submission is coming along. Maybe it's
doing fine and he just hasn't sent it in yet. Maybe he's stumped on
something and needs help. The only way to know is to talk to John and the
only way we can know to do that is to have a record that he's working on his
device.

 

The CTS is exactly that record. It is designed to be a visible record of all
of the heraldic submissions of the Principality. If you have a submission in
process, your information should be on the CTS. If it isn't, please contact
the College at collegeofheralds at tirrigh.org and let us know! For the first
time, you - the client - can look up a page and see where your heraldry is
in the process from start to finish. 

 

 

Here are some frequently asked questions about the Client Tracking System

 

Where is it located? 

The CTS is entirely hosted on the Tir Righ server at
http://www.tirrigh.org/heralds/clienttracker 

 

What does it track exactly?

We keep the name, branch, and contact information of every herald and client
in the system. For the submissions themselves, we track the client,
consulting herald, type of submission, notes, and 8 different key dates in
the submissions life cycle: Start, Sent to Kingdom, Published in the ILoI,
Returned by Kingdom, Passed by Kingdom, Published in the LoAR, Returned by
Laurel, Passed by Laurel (registered).

 

That's a lot of information! Do you need all of it?

Yes. This system is meant to be able to tell if someone, for example,  sends
in their packet and it gets lost in the mail. We would know that if a
submission started and never got a Sent to Kingdom date. We'd call the
client and find out what was going on. The other dates are similar. In a
perfect world, many of them are not needed. But we all know that registering
heraldry is far from perfect!

 

Is the personal information protected?

Yes! All personal information, phone numbers, email addresses, and such are
protected by password and not available to the general public. The public
can see that, for example, Stefan of Lions Gate is in the process of
registering a name and device, but they would not see his phone number or
email address.

 

This sounds like a lot of work for some poor herald to try to track everyone
in the Principality. Won't we burn someone out with this?

No, this project won't go away due to burning someone out. It's a completely
distributed system. It's built to allow every consulting herald in the
Principality to add, edit, and delete the information in the database.  The
Consulting Herald of Tir Righ, Theocharista Red Flame, is in charge of a
team of heralds who have the responsibility to keep  the information in the
system current and updated. Every consulting herald in Tir Righ is charged
by the Silver Yale Principal Herald to help enter and keep current their
client's information. And every client is encouraged to check their
information and send updates to collegeofherlads at tirrigh.org.

 

We have not built a neat project that lasts only as long as the person
behind it keeps working on it. We've tried to build a system that will be
useful and will continue being used for many years to come.

 

How is this being administrated? If there are problems, how can we address
them?

This tool is under the jurisdiction of the Consulting Herald of Tir Righ,
currently Theocharista Red Flame. She was also the founding Baroness of
Seagirt and is a member of the Order of the Pelican. if there are issues,
first bring them to her. Past her, follow the normal SCA chain of command
through Silver Yale, currently HL Quentin Martel, and the Coronet.

 

We welcome any and all feedback. The entire point to this tool is to give
you, the clients of Tir Righ, the means to help us smooth the process you go
through in registering your heraldry. We want to help see to it that your
submission does not get lost in the cracks of the system and that you and
every other client in Tir Righ are helped along the path to registration as
quickly and painlessly as possible. We can only do this with your help!

 

 

Please take the time to check out
http://www.tirrigh.org/heralds/clienttracker today! We have over 100
different submissions in the system already and the number is growing every
day!

 

Thank you all and please feel free to forward this message to any mailing
list that you feel needs to hear it!

 

- HL Quentin Martel

Silver Yale Principal Herald of Tir Righ

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