The Question form appears when an administrator clicks on the Edit link in the Edit Questions screen or clicks on Add Questions in the navigation bar. The form guides the user through all necessary steps to write and publish an FAQ. The steps are numbered and have short instructions.

Questions must be assigned to at least one of the displayed departments, topics, or subtopics. The assignment is made by checking the box next to the desired assignment. The tree control displays all possible departments, topics, and subtopics to which you can assign a question. Please refer to the Admin help for the tree control to learn more about it.

When a question is opened for editing, the tree control displays the current assignments. You can add additional assignments or remove existing ones.

Contributors have access to the Question form to add questions into the system. These questions will be automatically marked as pending. When a contributor adds a number of questions in a row, the Question form retains the assignment of the previously added question.

The Apply button makes the changes in the assignments effective. Checking or unchecking boxes in the tree control has no effect unless the changes are applied through this step.The question order controls are generated after you apply the question assignments.

If there is no change in assignments for the question, you can skip the first two steps.

Make the necessary changes in the question and answer fields. For new questions enter the information in the blank fields.

The answer field may contain HTML tags and HTML special characters. The HTML is interpreted as in a web page: you can include links and apply formatting to the answer.

To display example HTML code in the answer, use special HTML characters. Usually special characters in HTML start with an ampersand (&), but in the FAQ system these placeholders start with a pipe (|). For example:

|lt; displays as < (corresponds to &lt;)
|gt; displays as > (corresponds to &gt;)

This substitution is necessary for the FAQ system to display HTML characters correctly after being stored in the database.

The Preview Answer link allows you to preview how the entered answer will display in the search results. You can easily check your links and HTML markup. The HTML preview displays the answer exacly as it will appear in the search results.

Each topic and subtopic to which a question has been assigned has a separate question order control that displays all questions in a drop-down list in the current order. Select the order in which you want the edited question to appear.

Existing assignments show the current position of the question within the question order. New assignments have the default selection: Make this the first question. If you don't specify a particular order for a new assignment, the question is placed first in the list.

The question order includes pending and published questions.

Step five offers different options for administrators or contributors. See the Admin Help for Managing Users for details on administrator and contributor privileges.

Administrators
Administrators can change the publishing status of the question by selecting the appropriate radio button. Changes are saved by submitting the question with the Submit button. Prior to submitting, no changes are applied. The Cancel button aborts the editing process and returns administrators to the Edit Questions screen.

Contributors
When submitting a new question, a blank Question form reappears with a new question number. If you want to stop adding questions, use the Logout button. The Logout button returns contributors to the Edit Questions screen.

Question lock

While a question is edited by a user it is marked as locked. When another user opens the same question, a message is displayed that indicates that the question is locked by another user. The message includes the BU login name of the other user.

Make sure to contact the other user before you make any changes to the question. You can edit a locked question and make changes, however, you might overwrite the other person's work. Questions are unlocked once changes are submitted or the user that initiated the lock cancels the editing process.

A connection or browser malfunction can cause a question that is actually not being edited to appear as locked. Contact the other user to make sure no work is overwritten before you make changes.

Always exit the Question form using either the Submit, Cancel, or Logout button to unlock the question. Using the Back button of the browser or closing the browser window will leave the question marked as locked.