My[Q]Box™ - Getting Started Guide

Getting started couldn't be any easier. Now that you have a Knowledge Domain, you are almost ready to start answering questions. The first step is putting a My[Q]Box where users can get to it and ask questions.

This guide will include setting up a web log or "Blog" which is a type of free web page that is easy to edit and set up. From this experience, you should be able to add a My[Q]Box to your web site, your marketing emails or anywhere else you can display HTML.

***** BEFORE YOU START, PRINT THESE INSTRUCTIONS *****

Creating a Place to Put a My[Q]Box (Using Blogger.com)

Because you can put a My[Q]Box in so many different places, this guide will focus on putting a My[Q]Box in a place that anyone can create for free. We will create what is known as a "Blog" or "web log" using the web based tools at Blogger.com and store the bog at BlogSpot.com.

Blogger.com is a free service that lets anyone create a free web page and manage it very easily. We are in no way associated with Blogger.com or BlogSpot.com, but they are a pretty easy place to create and host a blog for those who do not already have one. Minimum web experience is required.

A blog is like your personal journal on the web, open to view by the public. You post new entries whenever you have an interesting thought and Blogger.com formats and displays the page for you. By completing this guide, you will not only learn to use My[Q]Box, but hopefully you will be exposed to the growing and interesting world of blogging. Creating an interactive blog using My[Q]Box is extremely powerful, you get to speak to the world, and the world gets to tell you what it wants to know.

To create your new blog, visit http://www.blogger.com and find the "Start Now!" button. Click the button to begin create your Blogger.com account. Now look on the right of the "Blogger New" page for a grey box that says "You do not yet have any blogs" and click "Create a new blog".

Type in a title like "My Blog" (or whatever you like) and then enter a description like "My First Blog" (or whatever you like). Make sure you keep the blog public and click the "Next >>" button at the bottom right of the page.

On the next page, just leave the "Host it at BlogSpot" option selected and click the "Next >>" button at the bottom right of the page. On the next page, you must select the Internet address that will be used to access your new blog. This must be something unique; you can't use the same name as someone else.

REMEMBER THIS NAME!!!

You will need the Internet address you select to access your blog! Once you have selected a name, check the "I agree" box and then click the "Next >>" button on the lower right of the page. (Yes, as with any site, you should read the terms of service)

The next page allows you to select the template for your blog page. Select the "Jellyfish" template. Once you have selected a the proper template, click the "Next >>" button on the bottom right of the page and your blog will be created for you.

The Blogger Post tool will be displayed in your browser window.

Adding a My[Q]Box to Your Blog

To add a My[Q]Box, all you do is copy/paste the small piece of HTML below into the "Edit Post" window at the top of the page.

You will need to replace "KnowledgeDomainName" with the name of your Knowledge Domain.

If you opened a free account, then your knowledge domain name will be a slash followed by a number, if you opened a paid account, then you selected the name of your Knowledge Domain as you went through the sign up process. In either case, you were sent and email containing your Knowledge Domain name.

HTML for a simple My[Q]Box.
<!-- Start My[Q]Box --> <form method="POST" action="http://MyQBox.com/Answer.asp?D=/KnowledgeDomainName"> <input type="text" name="Q" size="50"> <input type="submit" value="Ask"> </form> <!-- End My[Q]Box -->
The HTML sent to you via email is an even better place to get the HTML code because it has the name of your Knowledge Domain already included.

Once you have the HTML for your My[Q]Box pasted into the "Edit Post" window, click the "Post & Publish" button just above the right side of the window. At this point, your My[Q]Box is live! You can access it using the Internet address you entered while creating your blog.

Open a new browser and view your new blog. The address to your new blog should look something like "http://yoursite.blogspot.com". You were told to remember this name when you selected it.

Your simple My[Q]Box should look like the one above.
Get a simple My[Q]Box working before you attempt to create one that looks nicer.

At the moment, your blog is pretty bare bones, but your blog is live and accessible to the world. You can create new blog entries by visiting http://www.Blogger.com at any time.

You will add answers to your new My[Q]Box using email and/or a web browser by visiting http://MyQBox.com where you should "Login to Your Existing Account".

Now that you have a live My[Q]Box on the Internet, ask your first question. You should Ask "What is your name?". You will receive your first answer, but because there are no answers available yet, you will get the default answer.

Every question that goes unanswered generates an email message sent to you. The email will have the subject "Question Unanswered:". Do not reply to this email, it was automatically generated and the reply is useless. Double click the email to open it, you can work in the preview, but we have found that the preview window doesn't handle the "Tab" key properly, so just open the message and save yourself the aggravation.

In the top section of the email, you are told when the question was asked and by whom. Often you will see that the name of the person who asked the question will only be an Internet IP address. This indicates that the user has never registered a Screen Name with My[Q]Box and as such is anonymous. The context of the conversation is also given, but you can ignore that for now, it's for more advanced users.

You are also shown the [Q]Base that failed to answer the question and the question exactly as the user typed it. You are then asked to answer the question if you know the answer.

The next section of the email asks you to correct the user's question, stating it in the most concise manner and correcting any grammar or spelling errors that may exist.

This section then asks you to enter the keyword(s) from the question. This is an optional step, but one that adds a great deal of accuracy to your knowledge base. As stated in the email, you select the word or words that are most important in the question. At the same time, you ignore the common words.

For this example, assuming you used the question "What is your name?", you might want to use "your name" as the entry for the Keyword(s). You would not want to use "What" or "is" as they are very common words, but "your" and "name" actually hold the majority of the meaning in the question. Some will debate if "your" should be included, we leave that up to you to decide.

For this example, use "your name" as the Keyword(s).

The next thing you need to do is to enter the answer to the question. The email will include a field as shown below to enter your answer, so simply type in the answer to the user's question. You might want to type something like "My name is Mike." as the answer. You would of course use your own name.

The final section of the email lists the [Q]Base to store the new answer in and is pre-populated for you. All you need to do is enter your Screen Name and Password and click the "Save" button.

Be patient, sometimes the confirmation screen will take a few seconds to appear. If more that a few seconds pass, you may want to check any open browsers for one containing the title "Save Answer". Sometimes the operating system reuses open browsers making it harder for you to find your results, but if you look, they are there.

When you save your new answer, you will see a screen that looks something like the image below.

You can see that the answer was saved and if you like, at this point, you can close the browser and you are done. But you are now fully logged into the [Q]Server Tools and you have access to a wide range of features and tools.

The "Edit This Answer" tool lets you expand what you taught by adding links, speech or even spell checking your answer. The "[Q]Base Report" is used to look at all the answers in your knowledge base as well as to edit, copy, delete or listen to the speech associated with each answer.

Click the "[Q]Server Tools" button to return to the main [Q]Server Tools menu. Use the "Log Out" tool to end your session, or simply close the browser.

Well, that's it, you are on your way to constructing your first knowledge base and answering questions automatically. It really wasn't as hard as you thought it would be was it? The rest of this guide is dedicated to exposing you to the full set of tools and capabilities of the system. Don't freak out, there is a lot to read, but you can read it when you have the time and need, there is no reason you have to instantly know about every feature of the system to get a great deal of benefit from using it. You will find there are manuals, videos and lots of examples to help you along. Good luck and enjoy!

Thanks for signing up, have fun and welcome to the My[Q]Box family!!!

More Help

If you access the [Q]Server Tools, you will gain access to a number of additional resources to help you learn to use this system. (http://tools.myqbox.com or you can select the Login to Your Existing Account link from http://MyQBox.com)

This main page of the system is the key to accessing every feature that the system has. Learn it well and you will be capable of creating incredibly powerful and accurate knowledge bases.

At the top of the [Q]Server Tools page, you will find a great deal of helpful information. At the upper right, you will find a My[Q]Box that can answer your questions about the [Q]Server Tools or about My[Q]Box. (It points to it's own [Q]Base and is bound to the My[Q]Box [Q]Base)

You will also find a link to redisplay this getting started guide as well as the "Tools Help" link which shows each tool with a short description of the purpose of that tool. You will also find the current version number with a link to display the "Changes" made to the system over time. This can be a very handy tool as it may contain information beyond what is included in the manual.

The "Menu" scrolls the page to hide the top of the page and display as many of the [Q]Server Tools as possible.

On the right, you can see who is logged in and the [Q]Base that is currently active. If you look at the status bar of your browser as well as the title bar of the browser, you will also see the currently active [Q]Base listed. If you click the name of the person currently logged in, you can edit their profile.

Pre-Population

To be sure that users get answers to every possible question, you may want to enter every question that you can imagine. Unless you already have an FAQ, this is usually wasted effort. Before you ever added a My[Q]Box, you accepted that users questions went unanswered, so why now must you assume the opposite?

Let your users tell you what to add, each time you answer a question for one user, you build the Knowledge Base for all users. The default answer, given when no matching question could be found, lets the user know that they were the first to ask the question and that the users question was sent to you.

Only add questions that are general in nature, and as such are likely to be repeated. Adding questions/answers that will never be used again is a waste of effort and simply slows the system down and increases the likelihood of an incorrect answer being given.

The My[Q]Box system is very good at matching questions that have similar meanings. It is however only a set of rules and formulas, so it does not have the same capabilities as a human being. Often, when taught properly, it will produce very few wrong answers and match questions with just the right level of looseness.

There are a number of things that you can do to improve the accuracy and value of the system. First and most important of all, you can teach using short, concise questions. It is said that a question well stated is half solved, so only teach well stated questions. If you teach a question with excess meanings attached, then it becomes more difficult for a user to type a question that will match.

For instance, the question "What is your name?" is a far better question to teach than "Hey, can you please tell me your name?". The added meaning associated with all those extra words means that a user will need to express a very similar meaning if a quality match with a high level of certainty can be found.

The system will easily match a users question with excess meaning (long detailed questions) to a question stored in a [Q]Base if the stored question contains less meaning (short and concise) then the question being asked. Roughly speaking, you can assume that shorter questions in a [Q]Base are easier for a user to match than longer ones.

If you focus on only adding questions that use good grammar and are worded in the most concise manner, you will need to add the fewest questions and will construct the most accurate knowledge base.

If you notice a question gets asked that you think has the same meaning as a question that you have already answered, then when you answer the question, use a special function called the *SameAs() function.

Here is an example: Suppose you teach the system to answer the question "What is your name?" but you have some Spanish speaking users who insist on typing "¿Cuál es su nombre?".

You would teach:

Q> What is your name?
A> My name is Mike.

Then you would teach:

Q> ¿Cuál es su nombre?
A> *SameAs("What is your name?")

Now when one of your Spanish speaking users asks "¿Cuál es su nombre?", the system will answer just as if they had typed the question "What is your name?". This example was given only because it was a clear and obvious example. It si not advised that you try to include multiple languages in any [Q]Base. (My[Q]Box supports any language that can be typed on a standard keyboard)

Another example would be a good way to handle the question "Who are you?". The direct meaning of that question is not the same as "What is your name?", so it is unlikely that the system would find an answer. If you added "Who are you?" as a new question and used *SameAs(), you could direct the system to find the similarity in meaning.

Q> Who are you?
A> *SameAs("What is your name?")

Contractions, Punctuation, Lexicons and Synonyms

When a user types in a question, it is automatically cleaned up. Some capitalization and punctuation is corrected automatically, and most contractions are expanded. Spelling is checked and the thesaurus is checked for each word in the users question.

A full description of the question matching process is given in the How the [Q]Server Works document. One of the key steps in matching questions is changing words with a lexicon and defining synonyms. You can save a great deal of teaching by using the lexicon and synonyms to expand the usefulness of existing questions.

The Lexicon is used to define industry standard abbreviations. The Exact Lexicon requires that the user type exactly what is entered, being case sensitive. The Near Lexicon and Synonyms are not case sensitive.

Synonym entries differ from Lexicon entries in that they represent secondary ways to look at words or phrases. Enter a lexicon entry of "it=My[Q]Box" and you are saying that every time the user types "it", the user always means "My[Q]Box". The same "it=My[Q]Box" entry as a Synonym means that the user may mean My[Q]Box when they type "it", but not necessarily.

Managing Your Knowledge Domain

You don't have to work on your knowledge domain all alone. You can give others access and even control what they can and can't do. Use the "Manage [Q]Base Experts" tools found in the "Administration" section of the [Q]Server tools to add new experts and assign them rights.

You can track the activity of your account using the reports. The monthly report, which is only available at in the domain level [Q]Base is an overview of all activity. The daily reports allow you to see exactly what is asked and how it is answered. The [Q]Base Report is used to edit, delete or copy answers.

You have the ability to create as many [Q]Bases as you like. Use the "Create Sub-[Q]Base" tool found in the "Administration" section of the [Q]Server tools to create new knowledge bases. It is recommended that you use a sub-[Q]Base for each subject you add answers for. By breaking the knowledge into small manageable parts, you gain much greater control.

Use the "[Q]Base Bindings" tool found in the "Administration" section of the [Q]Server tools to bind the domain level [Q]Base to each of the sub-[Q]Bases. This way you have no knowledge directly stored in the domain level [Q]Base, but it has the ability to answer questions from all of your sub-[Q]Bases. Using this method, your knowledge base can become huge and will still be very fast and highly manageable.

Control the Look and Feel of your Answer Pages

There are a HUGE number of options that allow you to customize how your answers are displayed. Use the "Answer Page Look & Feel" tool found in the "Administration" section of the [Q]Server tools to control every last detail about how you present answers to your users.

The page is broken in to five separate sections:

Banner Options
This section controls what is displayed at the top of each answer page. It also allows you to add JavaScript at the top of the page and as part of the <BODY> tag. You can use the "Custom HTML" to completely define the look and feel of your answer page. This allows you to create an answer page that looks exactly like the rest of your site. This is a highly recommended actions and gives your answers the most professional look and feel.

Answer Options
This section controls how the answers are displayed and most importantly, how a if speech is used. Speech is a really cool option, but it has it's pros and cons. Users love speech in general, but they tire of it quickly and long term it can be more of a distraction than a feature. Speech also makes displaying answer pages take much longer, as a speech file must be downloaded each time a question is asked. If you do use the speech option, keep your answers very short and concise to keep the size of the speech files to a minimum.

Submit Options
It is important that you understand the options in this section. Depending on the amount of traffic you expect, these settings can give your users a great deal of power to ask for exactly what they need. They can also cause you to be overwhelmed with responsibilities and buried in the submitted questions waiting for answers. The default settings are a great place to start, think hard before allowing users to submit questions directly. If you allow it, your users will expect timely responses.

Matching Options
Here you control how accurate you want the system to be and what you want the system to say when no answer can be found. The higher you set the confidence threshold, the closer the meaning of users question must be to an existing question in a [Q]Base before an answer will be given. If you set it too low, then you will deliver wrong answers regularly, but if you set it too high, then you will need to answer a much larger set of questions. The default setting should suffice most of the time.

If your making a medical site, you may want to set the threshold very high and select the first option in the "Answer Selection" section. If your adding this to a personal Blog, then a confidence threshold setting of 55% to 65% may add a bit more humor to the answers and let you answer the fewest questions to get started. Settings below 50% are never advised,

My[Q]Box Options
Every answer page should allow users to ask a follow-up question. To do this, you will need a My[Q]Box on the answer page itself. This can be added automatically using the options in this section. If you create a custom look and feel, then you will need to include a My[Q]Box in your design.

Converting a [Q]Base into an FAQ Page

Two special web pages exists that you can use to generate the full list from any [Q]Base. The only difference in these two pages is that one is designed to be displayed as a full page and includes a heading and the other is designed to be displayed in an inline frame and does not include a heading.

Each of the pages requires that you include the name of the [Q]Base to reference using the "D" variable. This is just like a when you create a My[Q]Box and pass the name of your domain ([Q]Base). Below are example URLs for each page. The examples show all the questions that can be answered from the "/MyQBox.com/AboutMyQBox" [Q]Base.

http://myqbox.com/AllQuestions.asp?D=/MyQBox.com/AboutMyQBox

http://myqbox.com/AllQuestionsNoHeading.asp?D=/MyQBox.com/AboutMyQBox

Summary

The User Manual available from the [Q]Server Tools can help you as you expand your needs. With the powerful [Q]Server Tools, you will be able to build an advanced, highly accurate and efficient set of Knowledge Bases, bind them together, use Lexicons and Synonyms to expand the number of ways that questions can be asked and use the "Answer Page Look & Feel" tool to create exactly the type of answer page you wish to serve.

If you have questions… ASK!
That is why there is a My[Q]Box on nearly every page!