Operating Viewpoint

There are two parts to the Viewpoint system, Viewpoint Online and Viewpoint Offline, Offline will only be used in a situation where there will be no internet access at the time a young person is interviewed.

Viewpoint Online

There are two parts to the Online program, the Management Console, where professionals will create and manage the users and analyse the results, and the Viewpoint Questionnaire part, where young people and adults will answer the questions.

The online questionnaire can be completed in three different styles, Viewpoint Interactive, Viewpoint Survey and Viewpoint Direct, each of which have different requirements.

All versions of Viewpoint Online will operate on Windows Operating Systems from Windows 98 onwards.

The browser recommendation is Internet Explorer version 6 or later.

Viewpoint Interactive also requires Adobe Flash version 8 or later to provide the graphics and the Flash Games. Flash is not needed for the Management console or Viewpoint Survey or Direct, the images used in Survey are animated gifs.

An optional installation is the Microsoft SAPI5 speech engine. Speech is used in the management console to test the pronunciation of certain words and also in Interactive and Survey to read out the questions, responses and any typed text. Use of a speech is certainly recommended, but most Windows installations will come with some, but not all, of the SAPI5 voices preinstalled, so it is likely that speech will work even if the full SAPI5 speech engine is not installed.

An online installation bundle is available at www.vptol.co.uk/download comprising of Flash player and SAPI5 speech engine but a test is recommended beforehand as it may be possible to use Viewpoint without the need for any installation work.

As Viewpoint Online is an internet application the hardware requirements are minimal, the browser and Flash player version are certainly more important. A minimum requirement would be 256 MB of RAM and a soundcard.

In terms of internet/network requirements a broadband connection is required with minimum of 256k for an individual Viewpoint Interactive questionnaire, but less is required for the other Online applications. In a classroom environment or where there are multiple connections to Viewpoint Interactive a faster connection is recommended. It is difficult to make definitive statements about minimum hardware and network specs as many factors are involved.

In a Citrix/Thin Client style network the Flash player will propagate over the network so can run from a central location, but speech needs to be installed on each local machine, which could be an issue on a true dumb terminal.

Any popup blocker will also need to be configured to allow access to www.vptol.co.uk on a machine that will be accessing the Management console.

Viewpoint Online operates over a secure connection, so any firewall must allow https traffic.

Viewpoint Offline

The Offline application runs in a Windows environment and would require the Offline software to be installed (available at www.vptol.co.uk/download). The program employs Active X so has to run in Internet Explorer version 6 or above.

Offline is a replication of Online Interactive questionnaire so Flash Player and SAPI5 speech engine are installed as part of the Offline installation. To use Offline the manager/professional would download the profiles of the young people they are to see from the Online site. The downloaded file needs to be pasted into the Offline folder on the laptop, so the user will need to have modify or Full Control permissions over the Offline folder. If the Offline laptop has internet access the manager can download the file straight into the Offline folder, or if there is no internet access the manager will have to transfer the file manually, possibly via removeable storage device such as a USB memory stick. After the interviews are completed the process is reversed, with the responses being uploaded onto the Online site for analysis purposes, so can either be uploaded directly from the laptop or would have to be transferred via removeable storage device to a machine with internet access.

In terms of hardware spec the Offline requirements are similar to Viewpoint Online Interactive, with 256Mb of RAM recommended, but the better the spec the better you can expect performance to be.