What do you wish Support had?

[misskat]

Following on the heels of my previous entry: what tools/resources do you constantly look for? These can be things we don't have at all, or things that don't work the way you think they ought to.

I am happy with any feedback, but the most useful comments will be protospecs: what the tool should do, and how.

Comments

[ninetydegrees]

A lot of things, it turns out.

-- Support homepage

should the list of common issues be so big? Having to scroll down to get to the bottom box doesn't makes things as easy as they could be (yes I use this page and these links as a volunteer). Current issues seem a bit outdated?

-- Board

sortable status header; show 'only still needs help' in drop-down

view requests closed in the last day, two days,... maybe up to five days; sometimes I know I saw something similar very recently and I can't view the request because it's already off the board. This is super frustrating.

put link to notification at the top of the board

-- Notifications

All/none general button; distinction between answers and ICs (I don't need to get emails for the 'approved' or changed cat ICs); tickies instead of drop-downs?

-- Cats

Account Payments => Payments vs Peterstein => Staff (which I wish was used for questions to D); Site Interface is very, very obscure (I think documentation and site text deserves its own cat). Maybe site skin could go into general.

-- Requests

grouping account data and diagnostics; obvious link to support history (bonus points if we get results of support history on the same page via ajax magic); name of public layers instead of the simple 'public';

dedicated field to add link to bug in Zilla

dedicated field to add link to related requests

bonus points if it can reconstruct these if you only enter the bug/request number, as on Zilla

"There's no HTML allowed, so don't worry about about escaping < and > URLs are automatically link-ified, so just reference those." This is very, very confusing. HTML *is* allowed but won't be outputted as HTML. The current text makes it seem that you shouldn't type any HTML, which is the opposite of what we want people to do.

mention next to answer if volunteer can read ICs

add FAQ search; bonus points if search results can be gotten on the same page via AJAX magic and FAQ can be added as ref from the list of results

easier system to select a FAQ because the menu is endless. Maybe two drop-downs (one for cat, one for list of FAQs) and the ability to search a FAQ by keyword in subject title and not just ID.

mention in notes box that greetings are required

ability to preview answer

-- Search feature

add ability to search old and new requests by keyword, cat, date closed, date open, people who answered, status, etc.

add excerpts from FAQ search results for context (like in site search)

-- Cat change

brief reminder of what the cat you selected in the menu is for

-- Answer approval

button under each answer instead of drop down to prevent mistakes

-- Privs

separate approve own answers and approve others'

-- Knowledge base on special cases

for edge cases, undocummented stuff, isolated requests about an incident so we get some sort of history and reference if this happens again

-- Wiki/dw_support_training

sample of real requests and approved answers showing what's expected so newbies/experienced people who've never done support on DW can easily get what a good answer is/looks like

-- Clearer contact chain

for requests which require input from staff or devs what are we supposed to do? Send them a PM, mention it somewhere? Wait for a senior support person to ge to it? There's no clear process. Maybe a way to put an alert/flag a request would be useful.

-- More updates/info/directives

I've loved hearing from you in support comms and would like to see this happen more often

mention from devs/senior staff in dw_support when a fix has gone live; I often have to test things myself to see if that's the case

[zarhooie]

For approving answers, there should now be a little link that says "approve answer" or something next to the header of the answer, if you've got approval privs in that cat. I can send you a screenshot if you can't figure out what I'm talking about. Fu added that for us a few months back.

To be completely honest, IRC is always the easiest way to get in touch with me, followed by text, then PM on site. If you need feedback from me, do one of those things. If you need feedback from someone else, leave an IC on the req with the info you need, and someone will get to it. If you need the feedback faster, then let me know.

[ninetydegrees]

Unfortunately I find having this above the answer counterintuitive and I still wish we had a nice big button under it.

ICs it will be then.

[misskat]

I can see the value in a button underneath. Let me think it over and talk to Fu.

If it is actually urgent, and is a thing D would know about, you can kick it to accounts with a question in IC.

[ninetydegrees]

Feed and Beta Features cat.

[zarhooie]

I wish there was a search FAQs magic button on the Support answer area. It'd be a little search box (perhaps expandable, collapsed by default?), and I could search FAQs, and the top 10 FAQs would show up, with a link for me to view the whole list in a new page.

[anaraine]

A feed category!

An easier way to get to get to FAQs from a Support Req. (I LOVE that when you select something from the drop down, you can then open up that FAQ in a new tab, but it'd be nice to have a quicker way to actually search for a specific FAQ.)

I find that I am liking a ton of what 90d suggests, though I probably wouldn't have come up with them on my own.

[highlander_ii]

right off - I wish the 'Closed Requests' were viewable a bit longer than they are... sometimes I see a request that I might not know the exact answer to and I don't have the time to dash off a response w/ what I *do* know, but I'd like to know if I was right or way off, or, sometimes, just what the answer is to a thing. And since the requests seem to disappear pretty quick once they're closed, that reference point is gone.

I may have more later.

[highlander_ii]

It's been mentioned - but I want it to be 1000000000x's easier to pick which FAQ I need from the long-ass list. Can I haz ajax-y text box plz? b/c usually I just need to type in part of what I'm looking for - like the top-level name of the FAQ b/c I never freakin' remember which category anything is in b/c half of them make no logical sense to my brain. :(

[misskat]

If they make no sense to you, chances are someone else is confused also! Do you have any suggestions for how to better categorize, or are there specific faqs that are misfiled?

[highlander_ii]

er? re-categorizing? not really - usually what happens is there are 2 places I think something could be and it's always *always* in the other one.

Here's how I usually do it, b/c scrolling through that list makes me wanna punch things:

* click on FAQ link to open up the search page
* search for the word that I know is in the FAQ
* find the FAQ I need - read it to make sure it says what I think it says
* check the category at the bottom of the FAQ so I can find it in the huge-ass list
* back to the list to scrolly-wheel until I find the right category - which are not in any logical order at all as far as I can tell, making it like way harder to find the one you want (there may be a logic, just not one my brain has sussed out yet)
* find the FAQ and select, then finished typing answer

that's like waaaaaaaaaay too many steps

b/c usually I know what a keyword of the FAQ is, but *never* remember which category it belongs to, so if there was a way to type the keyword into a box and have it bring up ALL the FAQs with that keyword in the title, boom! way easier/faster and done w/ answer

[misskat]

Next to the FAQ drop down, there's a little text entry box. You can put the FAQ # in there, and it will automatically select the correct FAQ from the drop down. I know it's not the same as a FAQ search, but will that make dealing with the drop down less frustrating?

[highlander_ii]

It might if I had any freaking clue what the FAQ #'s were.

They're not listed on the page that gives the actual FAQ - they're in the address bar, but I never think to look there [ as in, not until just right NOW did I realize they were there =( ] and it still requires going to the actual page of the FAQ unless you memorize all the #'s.

So - if I remember that the FAQ #'s are in the address bar? Maybe.

Speaking of - why are they not next to the FAQ title? They are (or were) on LJ and if I hadn't been so freakin' frustrated by their ridonk support processes, I figure the #'s would be all sorts of useful and I was surprised to realize they weren't next to the FAQ titles on DW and was all *sadface* at having to find a different way to look up the FAQs in the list. (again, b/c I didn't realize the #'s were in the address bar.)

[misskat]

That's actually a pretty easy change to make, to add the FAQ # to the title of the FAQ. Let me run that one by denise and see what she thinks,

Beta cat?

[ninetydegrees]

Just thought of it. I think it could help devs track relevant issues. Maybe.

[ninetydegrees]

Unrelated: I've just noticed the board count --[ 28 Unanswered, 22 Still need help, 210 Answered awaiting close, 260 Total open ]-- includes requests from private cats or at least that's what I guessed since it doesn't match what I can see. It would be nice if it could adapt to the viewer's privs so as not seem inaccurate.

[ninetydegrees]

Sorry I keep adding these.

I don't know how to put this or what form it should take but I think a regular who's who in support and who does what and who's active could be useful. Sometimes I see posts or messages from people and I don't know who they are or even have never really heard of them before and it can be a bit disconcerting.

[misskat]

That is a Support stats thing! I have the spec on my iPad, and when I can type more, I will be opening a bug for it.

[ninetydegrees]

Yay! Awesome! *mwah*

[ninetydegrees]

On http://www.dreamwidth.org/support/submit

I think 'Don't use HTML in your submission. ' is misleading. We don't want people to use any sort of text formatting in their request but we do want them to paste code they have an issue with for example. I think we should say this exactly as well as provide better guidelines such as: if you have trouble with a particular journal, entry, comment, userpic,... please provide a link to it so we can troubleshoot better. You can also paste the content of an entry or a comment as-is as well as provide links to screenshots. It wouldn't save us all the initial back-and-forth every time a request is vague but I think it would save us some.

[ninetydegrees]

I've just noticed LJ has added other info to requests such as 'is JavaScript enabled?'. I think it could be very useful to have this too.