QC Plus: Rating reports

There is a lot of talk about voting and rating reports in QualityCentral on the newsgroups at the moment. A common issue is that people don't truly understand what each of these items are for.

I'm going to focus on report rating for this post because I've just unwillingly changed the user interface to QC Plus. About 3 days before the version 1.0 release because of this discussion.

First disclaimer: I like the original implementation of rating a report interface. If you know what rating a report means, there is nothing wrong with the user interface. If you don't take the time to find out what rating a report means, you could mess it up.

If you don't take the time to find out what the brake pedal does, you could die.

The new user interface is now the default user interface for report rating. You have to use the new interface at least once, before being able to revert back to the previous (or alternative) interface.

The changes made

1. Where possible when rating a report the text now mentions Quality. So instead of "Rate Report" it is "Rate Report Quality". Will that help, probably not.
2. The Rating / Voting group visible when viewing a report is now captioned as Feedback. When rating a report you are providing feedback to a) the report creator b) other users and c) your friendly neighborhood sysop.
   
3. Where previously you clicked on the value you wanted to rate a report, you now have to click a button captioned "Set Quality". Unfortunately Set Report Quality didn't really fit so a compromise for the caption text had to be reached. Will be interesting to see what the German translation of that text will be!
   

When you press the Set Quality button the following dialog displays:

Second disclaimer: Text isn't final. If you have suggestions feel free to post a comment or email me (available in profile).

You then select the radiobuttons text that you think best describes the quality of the report; then click OK. If you are playing the numbers game - "rating value") "rating string"

1. Useless
2. Poor
3. Average
4. Good
5. Excellent
   

If you want the old, better and more efficient (my opinion naturally) interface back - check the I prefer to use the alternate rating interface. The option only sticks when you click OK - so that is like confirming you now understand what rating a report really means!

I've also updated the help file that ships with QC Plus to include further detail and a little FAQ about rating the quality of a report. Clicking the link will take you to that specific page.

Naturally even with such a dialog guiding the user, abuse or neglect can still occur.

Clear as mud, eh?