Supporting OpenExchange Applications

Hi all,

I was discussing how we support OpenExchange Applications with Daniel and Ian today and we thought it might be a good idea to create a seperate forum for any user who is using an OpenExchange to post a question, rather than email the developers directly.  This would provide the opportunity for developers to share the help (if they want to) and for users to support themselves as the knowledge retained in the forum starts to build up.

I'd be interested to know if you all think this is a good idea because clearly it needs your support to work ;-)  But it might be beneficial for you and keep your inbox mail free as the OpenExchange grows and the use of the applications becomes more widespread.  It also gives us the ability to point all users to a central location for their support which should be good for the users.

So, please let me know what you think and we can get this set up accordingly.

Regards

Paul

Paul Filkin | RWS Group

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  • let me be the first to say that this is a fantastic idea; thank you for this; it will most certainly be beneficial for all developers.

     It will provide an way to track the issues and allow the users to check responses from other users/correspondence/solutions/work arounds etc…

    I have already received multiple support requests for issues unrelated to the tools I developed; simply having a forum to track and filter these is an excellent idea

  • Hi Paul,

    I totally agree with Patrick.  It is a great idea and it will help a lot both us and the users.

    It will limit support requests and the time needed for it and it will provide the means to communicate with the users in an orderly and constructive way.

    An idea will be to enroll users that download an application to the relevant "Application Support Page" through which they can ask for support, search for solutions, ask for enhancements, read the latest news regarding the application, talk about potential uses and workarounds, be informed about what is in the making (fixes, new features, new release dates etc.) access the latest help files and relevant document information, etc.

    Great idea.  Thank you and let us know how we can help.

    Best regards,

    Costas

  • Hi both,

    Thanks for this feedback.  I'm also thinking about how best to manage the solution.  I think a seperate forum for each tool would be best but this of course leads to potential difficulties for the users in finding the right one.  But I'm thinking that if the title of the forum matches exactlky the title of the application then users could use this feature to search for the right forum and post in there:

    This way each developer could turn off notifications for everythying apart from the forum they are interested in... of course they can also check all the posts if they want to ;-)

    What do you think?

    Paul

    Paul Filkin | RWS Group

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  • Unknown said:
     I think a seperate forum for each tool would be best but this of course leads to potential difficulties for the users in finding the right one.  

    Hi Paul,

    I think that each user should be enrolled to the specific forum of the application that he/she downloads (or at least receive mails from that only). The user has to sign in to download the application anyway so that data can be used for adding him/her to the appropriate forum(s).  Somehow it has to be linked with the downloading the application.  After that if the user does not want to receive mails he/she should have the option.

    Best regards,

    Costas

  • Hi Costas,

    The problem with this is that I believe many users don;t get the apps from the OOS.  For exampl, where we have companies with multiple licenses they will download once and share the app out to their users.  We probably also have Freelancers who work in teams and they would also share the apps between them.  This means we don't really know how many are using them, but they can all email you guys or us for assistance.

    So I'm trying to implement a solution that caters for this and makes the support task as easy as possible, the implementation and maintenance of the solution as easy as possible (this is important or we might not see this until 2014 ;-)) and the ability for users to use it as easy as possible... probably most important because we want them to use this in preference to anything else.

    Regards

    Paul

    Paul Filkin | RWS Group

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    Design your own training!

    You've done the courses and still need to go a little further, or still not clear? 
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  • Hi Paul,

    I see your point.

    We can then put a check box for enrolling in the download page, a button in the application support info page on the OX and a link in the help file of the application itself. To cover as much as possible the actual users.

    Best regards,

    Costas