Setting Up Remote NIPO CATI Clients

NIPO Fieldwork System Version 1.14

Setting Up Remote NIPO CATI Clients

Remote NIPO CATI clients are workstations that are not located in the company network. Remote workstations like these are used in a CATI @ Home setup where the interviewer uses an installation of the NIPO CATI Client at home to perform their interviews. Typically a CATI @ Home configuration uses a dialer that first calls the interviewer and then permanently connects them with the call center, and then connecting the interviewer with new calls. Use of a dialer is however not mandatory.

Since interviewers connect remotely to the NIPO Fieldwork System with little more than an interviewer ID used for identification, an additional authentication method is used to decide whether the interviewer is allowed to connect. There are two authentication methods:

An interviewer authentication key which can be set (and subsequently revoked) per interviewer. The personal key is the easiest to use, but requires setting up a key for each interviewer and cannot limit what surveys the interviewer has access to.
A listed authentication key. Listed authentication keys are linked to workstations rather than interviewers. Listed keys can both be used for individual workstation and groups of workstations, although in the latter case no remote telephone number can be set. Revoking an authentication key that is used by multiple workstations denies access to all workstations using that key.

Setting up the authentication keys is discussed in the next two paragraphs.

To enable remote connections, you will need to open up a single port for incoming connections on the company firewall. This port needs to be forwarded to the port on which the NIPO CATI / Web Master listens for incoming connections. The NIPO CATI Client must use the PureTcpIp protocol for this connection.

Note:
The NIPO CATI / Web Master considers a connection 'remote' if the first two octets of the incoming IP address are not the same as the first two octets of the IP address of the NIPO CATI / Web Master.

To connect a NIPO CATI Client application using a specific authentication key, the -KEY parameter is used. In addition to this parameter, it is recommended to use the ? parameter to allow remote interviewers to select a survey to work on themselves, because otherwise remote interviewers will have to wait for the supervisor to notice their availability. You also might want to set up a telephone number so that the dialer knows The example below assumes that the key in use has been properly set up in the NIPO Fieldwork System.

Example startup parameters for a remote NIPO CATI Client

ODQESU.EXE -KEY "C73EB2EEEBE668F1687A143CA4DED" /N 123.45.67.89:7001 /P PureTcpIp

You can use the multi-installer to set up workstations for remote NIPO CATI Clients. First set up the installer to point to the correct IP address and port number using the required protocol, and enable interviewers to select their own survey. When the multi-installer is created, you can edit the OdQesSetup.ini for each interviewer and specify their personal authentication key using the Setting keyword in [Transfer:OdQes]:

Example authentication key in NIPOSYS.INI

Setting=C73EB2EEEBE668F1687A143CA4DED