expanding support options/needs as the fx user base grows

[BenoitRen]

But... to make it helpful BOTH WAYS, give newbies a place to feedback if such registration is set up ok / not ok.

They already have such a forum, you're posting in it.

[ChrisI]

FWIW, the Firefox and Thunderbird support index pages were updated to prominently display a kb search, last month.

[ChrisI]

And for those interested, I've opened a bug about creating an "about" page, that will list info useful for support/troubleshooting. It's bug 367596.

[VanillaMozilla]

I think that's a first-rate idea. On a similar note, I notice that the Help documents from the Help menu do not mention troubleshooting. That is bug 362984, which for some reason has gotten no notice.

[JM_Runs]

There needs to be more than one SUPPORT category. Support would be much simpler to navigate if it were not all lumped into one. I would suggest three:

SUPPORT FOR PROFILE RECOVERY
SUPPORT FOR FOLDER OR MESSAGE RECOVERY
SUPPORT FOR ALL OTHER ISSUES

Support requests would be much reduced if Thunderbird supported easy profile and folder recovery. TB supports direct import from the native files of other mail products, but not its own native files. This seems like a silly and stupid over site to me. Profile recovery would be a lot simpler if all you had to do was create a new one and from the Tools menu access a tool that could import directly from other TB profiles.

Thunderbird needs a built in option from the tools menu that allows you to copy or recover data from another profile. It should come up with a box for you to select the profile you wish to import from or select the path to the profile. Than it should scan the profile and offer a list of things you may wish to import based what is in the source profile. I.E. Inbox, sent, rules etc.

This would save heaps of time and frustration, and significantly cut down on request for support.

[old np]

There needs to be more than one SUPPORT category. Support would be much simpler to navigate if it were not all lumped into one. I would suggest three:

SUPPORT FOR PROFILE RECOVERY
SUPPORT FOR FOLDER OR MESSAGE RECOVERY
SUPPORT FOR ALL OTHER ISSUES

The problem with categorizing support issues in this way is that users don't know the causes or their problems, just the symptoms. So "Folder or message recovery" would work because it's easily linked to the symptom "My folders and messages are gone", but "Profile recovery" is not.

[Guest]

We do love you, and I definitely want to go thought all the suggestions here, figure out what is possible, and organize into a plan that we can start to act on. There is a lot to do so I'm hoping that folks can be patient.

Thanks for all the great thinking and responses that have come on this thread over the last several weeks.

A few of us at Mozilla have final carved out some time to dedicate to this important issue. In the next couple of weeks we will be settting up conference call for interested participants to dial in and get some live discussions going on building out a task list of action items, setting some priorities on the list, and getting some dedicated resources engaged in working on the list of improvements. We also will be setting up a newsgroup with e-mail and google group access where all the folks interested in participating and following along with the the progress of improvements can get engaged.

Watch for those announcements in the next few days.

I've also put together a recap of all the great observations and ideas that have been posted in the last weeks and months to start off this next round of discussion and action... If you see any addtions or improvements to this recap please feel free to pitch in.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Support problem summary from the Mozillazine Forum

---


-MediaWiki - KB (content shared across all mozilla software confuses firefox-only users)
--article can be overwhelming for this and many more reasons... articles not target at novice end users
--improvments needed in the way disputes are handled. http://kb.mozillazine.org/Knowledge_Base_changes
--mozillazine can't handling UA sniffing as a strategy for helping to direct users at relevant content

-phpBB forum(s) mozillazine -- main and back channels
--Volume/Scalabilty problems
--- forum posting now roll-off the main page before questions can be answered. its not scaling well
--site goes down/becomes slow at peak download times when new users are in most need of info
--no good way of duping or leading users to info on their topic (better search?)
--lack of strategy and sticky issues around handling "guest posts" and user registration

-IRC channel #firefox, others...
--(no web-based chat solution incurs download cost., communication cross talk problems

-newsgroups

-end user documentation

-end user help

-I'm sure I'm missing others...

-lack of cross over and communication between volunteers acting in each area
--no regular meetings to roll up and discuss common issues and develop strategies for key problems
-No *Mozilla* hosted central support repository, contributed to by all the different branches of user support, as well as bugzilla triagers

-All these problem mutliply across all 40+ locales where firefox is shipping.. each locale is left to deal with support and support infrastructure on their own.

Missing pieces to the support equation and support feedback mechanism..

-no continuing data analysis to prioritize navigation most visable problems
--need data on frequency of problems and links quick survey to findout about the usefulness of solutions. (was this page useful?)
-need to figure out other possible metrics

1. What fraction of problems on forums/irc/newsgroups are successfully resolved?
2. Are some kinds of problems resolved more/less frequently?
3. Do some resources provide solutions more/less often?
4. Do successful solutions depend on other factors? Completeness/accuracy of initial problem descriptions (if so, we could provide a form)? Native language (or are we only concerned with English here)? Time of day (if so, we could adjust resources or inform the user)? A combination of factors (e.g., maybe IRC is a better place to go with networking issues)? Something else?

-no systematic trainning for helpers (Quick, easy, basic training in troubleshooting and problem diagnosis.)
-no "escalation" or support tiering system where problem can be rolled up to draw in more experience where needed.
-no good custom search set up for people to find resources for more obscure problems
-Too many lost souls showing up at webmaster, security and other aliases
-No low cost real-time channel offering
-No phone support via mozilla.com
-no central repository of diagnositc tool to help evaluate problems.
--lack of tools is also a problem
---http://groups.google.com/group/mozilla.dev.apps.firefox/browse_thread/thread/4706f1b67b218829/bbb5fc9c52579102?lnk=gst&rnum=1

In general we need to step back, and then figure out systems, processes, and community building that can help with fragementation problems:
-Fragmentation of content and number support channels and
-Fragmentation of contributors and contributions
-The goal of work in this area would be to simplfy the process and navigation path for users trying to get help, but also to better support the community of people that want to help other firefox users.

-There is a lot of evaluation, prototyping, and engagement with the Mozilla support communities that needs to happen before we do any major overall to the wide variety of support systems that are in place, but we should also open the door to improving our systems, rather than smaller refinements to existing systems.
--Something like http://qunu.com/search/firefox or packages from http://www.jivesoftware.com/ could offer improvements and interesting solutions to some of our problems. These packages offer things like real-time chat with zero download and should be pretty easy to deliver conversational kinds of help to novice users. Solutions like this might also offer possible better integration across all the forms of support that we need to offer, and hold the promise of providing better data and feedback mechisms for continual improvments.

--Its understood that one of the big challenges to bringing in new systems like qunu, jivesoftware or others is going to be figuring out how to build/migrate support community participants that will adopt to new kinds of systems.
--If anyone knows of support packages or tools that we should look at to help attack problems that everyone has worked together to outline now is a good time to make suggestions.

-chofmann

[VanillaMozilla]

You forgot software support for repairs. Examples: Trolly's tools and the Firefox Repair Tool.

[old LoudNoise]

-no "escalation" or support tiering system where problem can be rolled up to draw in more experience where needed.

This could be implemented informally on the discussion site now. A sticky here, with a suitably unexciting title so it did not look like a place get support, could be used by the regulars when they have hit a wall when trying to help someone out. For example, if I an unable to help a user after a few posts, I could post the link and a brief rehash of the problem. One of the other regulars would see the post and come by to help.

[VanillaMozilla]

There is something that has barely been mentioned. Users give notoriously vague descriptions of problems. It's often virtually impossible to figure out the problem. And who has time to try anyway?

As much as you probably hate to hear this, I can't tell you how many times a new profile fixes problems. Safe mode has some options for resetting the configuration, but it requires a lot of choices to use, and it doesn't really reset everything anyway. So safe mode just works because it resets almost everything.

Some of the problems are user-inflicted or extension-inflicted problems, but some are not. So where's the utility to capture profiles and figure out what's corrupted? We need one, so the profile could be submitted for analysis -- not by me, mind you, but by someone who's paid to figure out what's going wrong and submit bug reports.

[Samuel Sidler]

I just posted a <a href="http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?t=545425">new topic</a> on this and some meetings that will be taking place soon.

[Frank Lion]

We do love you, and I definitely want to go thought all the suggestions here, figure out what is possible, and organize into a plan that we can start to act on. There is a lot to do so I'm hoping that folks can be patient.

Thanks for all the great thinking and responses that have come on this thread over the last several weeks.

A few of us at Mozilla have final carved out some time to dedicate to this important issue. In the next couple of weeks we will be settting up conference call for interested participants to dial in and get some live discussions going on building out a task list of action items, setting some priorities on the list, and getting some dedicated resources engaged in working on the list of improvements. We also will be setting up a newsgroup with e-mail and google group access where all the folks interested in participating and following along with the the progress of improvements can get engaged.


-chofmann

Thanks for keeping us updated.

However, as was pointed out to us, a number of weeks ago -

Frank - while Mozillazine is certain a large and important support venue, it isn't an official Mozilla site.

Not only does that make the status, or lack of it, of MozillaZine clear, but I am also given to understand that Lucy, who is from Mozilla, is not very impressed by how things are done here. I also understand that the same views are held by a number of other 'key' players at Mozilla.

When I thought about this afterwards, I have to say that there is something in this. Mozilla is no longer the geeky fledgling organisation that it once was, it has grown and now has support from other friends apart from MozillaZine, such as Google, etc. Perhaps then, the time has come for Mozilla to directly take a much larger responsibility for providing Support of Mozilla products and rely much less of the MozillaZine forums to provide this service for them.

Certainly, apart from anything, this should reduce the criticism of MozillaZine by Mozilla people as the Support services would then be run directly by Mozilla.

So, I propose that Mozilla should set up an official Mozilla site for this purpose with immediate effect and we can then direct Mozilla product users directly to it.

[VanillaMozilla]

This would also have the benefit that the Mozilla folks would learn more about what it takes to fix a user's computer, and possibly make them more aware of the information and directions that they give to users. Some things could be a bit smoother and more consistent, but we have no power to change anything at Mozilla.

Sometimes they come here and ask what the top support issues are, and maybe that helps, because some of those problems do get fixed. But sometimes they seem extremely resistant to suggestions, and I have a feeling that they don't quite get it. Maybe they need to get closer to users.

[VanillaMozilla]

People who help in IRC and here both know where to look for the official word on things and then propagate it to their users.

No, that's the problem. We don't know where to look. It's scattered everywhere -- and nowhere.

[smsmith]

http://weblogs.mozillazine.org/asa/arch ... er_su.html