Getting Your Account Created

Once you have purchased a subscription to TotalQA® you will need to contact Image Owl customer support to perform the initial setup of your account.

Image Owl customer support will set up the following items for you:

• Create primary user account.
• Create sites for your institutions.
• Populate the site with machines.

Primary User Account

This person will be able to create users, edit site, and machine names, and be the point of contact for the account. 

Image Owl customer support will request the following information from you:

• Primary User Name
• Email
• Phone Number
• User Name (used for log in)
• Password (you may change this later).

If you are signed in as the primary user (owner) you will be able to set notifications for your account.

Click on the username in the lower left corner of the screen to open the account settings. Towards the bottom of the settings the notifications appear.

You may choose which roles will receive notifications on upcoming calibration expiry dates and which roles get notified for overdue QA schedules. Note that users must be associated with a site to receive notifications.

Sites

For each physically separate facility in your institution please provide the site name as you would like it to appear in the software and any initial notes you wish to associate with the site. Users with administrative rights may edit the names and notes at any time.

The default standard temperature and pressure settings for the system are 22℃ and 1013.3 hPa. You may also specify mmHg as your pressure units in which case the default standard pressure will be 760 mmHg. If you need a different set of standard temperature and pressure values for your locale please set them up in this section.

For more information on editing site information see: Manage Sites and Machines

Machines 

Please provide the following information for each machine for which you have purchased a subscription:

Machine/ Room Label

• Site
• Machine Type

• Linac
• Brachytherapy
• CT
• Other

• Machine Notes

Users with administrative rights may edit the label and comments at any time.
For further information see: Site and Machine Management

Energies

The energies that will be used throughout the institution's QA operations should be established next.  There are global energies already setup in the system. If you wish to compare an energy dependent measure with the user community you need to use the global energies. You may set up custom energies if the global energies do not meet your institution's needs.

For further information see: Adding New Energies

Users and Site Assignments

It is important to set up each person who will be using the system with a separate account. Each user has a role that defines what functions they can perform.

For information on roles and setting up user accounts see: User Management

Each user should be assigned to sites in the Manage Sites page. Users will only be able to work with machines and QA templates for sites to which they are assigned. Users can be assigned to multiple sites.

For more information on assigning users to sites see: Assigning Users to Sites

Setting Up Measurement Devices

Adding Measurement Devices

After setting up users, the measurement devices should be added. For more information on adding measurement devices see: Managing Measurement Devices 

If a piece of equipment is not on the supported list it can be accommodated by designating the equipment for manual entry. Please provide the following details of unsupported QA devices to Image Owl Customer support so that they can be added to the development schedule. 

• Manufacturer
• Model 
• Notes and Links 

Setting Conversion Factors

Some daily QA devices require conversion factors to be added to properly scale the output. To do that go the Manage Conversion Factors page and add the conversion information.

For more information see: Adding Conversion Factors 

Creating QA Templates

Templates are groups of tests that can be customized to meet your institution's needs

You should review your existing QA protocols and any new ones you wish to add to your regimen by machine in your facility. Note that a template can be reused for multiple machines throughout the institution or each machine can have a unique QA protocol. Note also that in some circumstances it may make sense to break a QA protocol into multiple templates especially where different people are responsible for different parts of the protocol.

QA protocols should be categorized for later scheduling as:

• Daily (e.g., Morning Linac Checks)
• Monthly (e.g., Monthly TG142 tests)
• Annual (e.g., Yearly tests for state regulators)
• Ad-hoc: Schedules performed on an as-needed basis (e.g., Your facility does not use its HDR equipment daily but is required to run a test each day the equipment is in use).

For each unique QA protocol, a QA template should be created and saved.

For further information on creating and saving templates see: Create and Manage Templates 

Assigning and Scheduling Templates

Once templates are created they need to be assigned to each machine. In this process, the roles that will perform the QA will be determined along with the desired schedule and warning limits overdue QA.

For further information on assigning and scheduling templates see: Managing Schedules

Schedule Settings

Schedule settings allow you to pre-set many of the attributes that are stored along with the measurements. For example, if the MU’s and dose rate are always the same for a daily output test these can be pre-set.

The measurement devices that will be used with the template can be assigned at this stage as well.

For more information on Schedule settings see: Schedule Settings 

Baselines and Tolerances

The tolerances and baselines for each assigned template can be customized or they can be assigned standard TG142 tolerances. Action limits are intended to be limits that would halt clinical treatment until resolved. Tolerance limits are intended to indicate conditions that warrant investigation but not suspension of clinical treatment.

For more information on setting baselines and tolerances see: Manage Baselines and Tolerances 

Ready to Perform QA

Once the system has been set up it is ready to use to conduct QA operations.

• The Performing QA Schedules and Entering Data page will show QA schedules that are upcoming, due and overdue.
• The Review QA page shows QA that has been performed or in progress. 
• The Reports page shows completed reports and their pass/fail status.
• The Documents page can attach version controlled documents to machines. They can be set to require sign-offs with reminder e-mails sent out.

Machine Log

Machine Log allows tracking of machine incidents, alerting of vendors, and management of machine downtime. To get started using machine logs requires some initial setup. Before using machine logs ensure the following:

• The primary machine in the room is created. All of the individual pieces of machine log room equipment will be based off of the primary machine for the room.
• If not previously created, create users who will need to be connected to the room and its primary machine. In particular, service engineers may need to be added as users and associated with a specific machine room.
• Create machine log vendors for each vendor.
• Create each piece of room equipment that will populate each room.

Use the Manage Users and the Create and Manage Vendors and Room Equipment sections of this knowledge base for help to set up machine logs. Use the Create and Manage Incidents section of this knowledge base for help to create, list, view, and update individual machine logs. To see machine log incident trends, navigate to Schedules, hover over the desired schedule, and click the "Trends" button or by clicking any value in an individual report that would provide longitudinal data.