Re: Useful Manuals

On Apr 20, 7:51 pm, "Excalibur" <excalibu...@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
I would appreciate comments from developers , analysts et al on the best
method of setting up manuals.

The first issue when setting up any form of documentation is to
understand the audience and work back from that perspective. Then
again, with your background I'm sure you already know this.

What is needed is a "How do I Fix This" section that would be best served by
being added to by the operator fixing the issue. One simply cannot dream up
all the ways that a person will dream up to pull the gearstick out by the
roots. I am considering many ways ,PDF could be possible with amendments
from Word but this requires knowledge that operators do not necessarily
possess. I thought of blogs, perhaps Tony or Dawn have knowledge of easy
and cheap packages to do this. I would want to lock our bit and allow
additions at will.

We just installed a web forum called the Simple Machines Forum for
this very purpose. We've wanted to provide support for a variety of
different vendor packages, but have regularly run aground with vendors
who are more concerned about the potential for competition rather than
providing real support and answers for their customers. So we're
setting up our own support forum to see if we can help folks that way
without the politics and threats from vendors.

My hope is that we'll get lots of feedback from these customers and
will start to recognize trends that we can use to streamline our
support so that everyone gets what they need quickly, efficiently, and
affordably. Please take a look at http://www.PrecisOnline.com/forum
to see what we have so far.

(And the best part, SMF and every component needed to run it is free.)

.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: IBM obsoleting mainframe hardware
    ... less money with IBM and their other vendors than those who are current. ... the effort in supporting back-level customers. ... Many ISV product developers have a difficult time convincing management to drop support for those older environments even though they drastically hinder current development. ...
    (bit.listserv.ibm-main)
  • Re: B-Tree Index Usage
    ... Your support provider must apply pressure. ... in a public forum thanking you for your report. ... that many people don't use many of the "newer" features in D3 ... cared about "features" and pro-active vendors have moved on to vendors ...
    (comp.databases.pick)
  • Re: HELP!!!!
    ... With ref to Microsoft, they have support, faq etc. ... > deferent rules for different manufacturers and vendors?.. ... > each company wants to give its customers.. ...
    (microsoft.public.windowsxp.general)
  • Re: IBM obsoleting mainframe hardware
    ... The vendor still collects his yearly maintenance fee. ... If they said to customers, we won't support you any more because you aren't current, software vendors would lose a lot of business. ... I'm not a software developer but couldn't the developers include in their contracts that if a client is running an unsupported level of the operating system the yearly support charge is higher than if they ran a supported level. ...
    (bit.listserv.ibm-main)
  • Re: Useful Manuals
    ... We just installed a web forum called the Simple Machines Forum for ... providing real support and answers for their customers. ... without the politics and threats from vendors. ...
    (comp.databases.pick)