Kristin Bailey

Thanks for tagging me in, @line-weight. I'm still doing some "re-entry" (AKA digging through piles of messages and prioritizing what's next) after some time off, but have also seen this issue discussed in-house. I'll add this to our to do list for help, and see what we can learn and clarify.

FYI, everyone, the web team jumped on the issue, and the feedback form is back and working again. It still doesn't auto-populate, which we're told is a different technical challenge on the to do list, but we're back in business!

Hi, @line-weight, we hear your concerns and filed an internal request with the customer portal folks last year, hoping to improve the feedback form experience. I just added a comment to the request, hoping to bump it back up the list. Those folks have been handling some huge changes the last couple of years, and I'm sure their to do list is long. @Tom W. as much as I would love to take credit for identifying the bug and having it fixed so quickly (really, I would feel quite brilliant if I had pulled that off!), I'm just passing on the information from engineering, who had already fixed the bug before I ever asked about it. The credit belongs to them. But for now, we're on the cusp of wrapping up the help for Update 4. It's a big one, and we've been working hard to document the new features well for you all. Have a good weekend! Kristin

I have a quick update for the site model issue @rDesign mentioned. That's an example of something that we wouldn't have changed in help when we got the feedback, because it was a bug; we obviously don't document bugs. The best news: the engineer tells me it has been fixed for update 4, releasing next month. It should no longer matter which view is used when creating a site model. Hurray! I'm glad I have a colleague who kindly sent me a link to this thread. We in Technical Publications are a small but mighty team, but the "small" part means we don't have the staff to keep as close an eye on the forum as we'd like, and unfortunately things can slip past us. We always appreciate when things are pointed out, on the feedback forms (once they're back in action), here on the forum, and when other Vectorworks employees spot something and call our attention to it. Happy Friday, everyone! Kristin

Thank you for pointing this out! We in Technical Publications had no idea this link was redirecting away from the feedback form page; we're told it probably went wrong when some web maintenance was done in December or January. We've filed a bug with the customer portal team to try to have this fixed, so you can access the correct page and complete the form. When you can access the page with the form, every comment submitted is read and forwarded as appropriate. When feedback reaches our department, we make a practice of replying. Sometimes, it's simply to thank the user for the information, but we often have follow-up questions to clarify what change needed. We attempt to research and determine what improvements we can make. (For example, I have just asked the lead engineer for site modeling to confirm @rDesign's information about the Site Model from Source Data command, before we can update the help.) Sometimes we determine it's better not to make a change for any number of reasons, but we often adjust help in response to feedback. I'm sorry the form is currently not working, and hope that will be resolved soon, but I assure you that when we do receive feedback, we take it seriously. Kristin Bailey Technical Publications Manager

Hi, Peter, I know only just enough about this to be dangerous, but it's possible that having it saved on your local drive is causing the problem. If you look at "Save on" in the parameter table on the following page of help, you'll see some information about that. This may have nothing to do with it, but it could be step one of an investigation. Kristin http://app-help.vectorworks.net/2020/eng/index.htm#t=VW2020_Guide%2FExport%2FExporting_web_views.htm&rhsearch=web view&rhhlterm=web view&rhsyns=

The entire contents of the user manual/pdf (comprising almost 3,000 pages of text, if it were printed in paper form) is available in the online help system. It has a table of contents, if you like to look at it in book order, and a search function, if you just want to type in keywords to find the section you're looking for. At the beginning of the help system is a listing of all new features in the annual release, with links to the relevant sections of the help. We also link to many of the customer success team's videos from the relevant help sections. The help system includes a pdf list of all the tools and commands in the software, their location, and which products they are available in. The help system is designed to be viewed on any device, from a large desktop monitor to a smartphone. help.vectorworks.net You can scroll to the bottom of the table of contents on the right and click on Help and Additional Resources to learn about the various help system features, including searching and browsing, and ways to access context-sensitive help directly from the software.