VW Help File ‘Was This Page Helpful?’ Link is Not Very Helpful

[rDesign]

At the bottom of every page in the Vw 2024 Help file (and all earlier editions) is a link which says ‘Was this page helpful?’
 

When you click on that link, you are taken to the general VW Customer Support Page on the user portal, leaving you without a clue about where you are to let someone know if the help page was helpful or not.
 

For example, after reading a thread on the user forum I wanted to see if the Help File page on Creating Site Models from Source Data said that you should always be in Top / Plan view when you run this command — because if you are in a 3D view your Site Model will be created way off center. The help page says nothing about this, so I wanted to let someone at Vw know that this page was ‘not helpful’.
 

REQUEST: The expected behavior for wanting to provide feedback on a specific page in the help file would be: after clicking that ‘Was this page helpful?’ link to be provided with a form that has the page URL and page title already filled out so you can easily provide feedback on that specific page.
 

The way it is right now is anything but helpful.

Edited February 22 by rDesign

[Jeff Prince]

yes, it’s frustrating when we try to help improve the product and the feedback just disappears into the ether.  @rDesign ‘s example should be simple to report for the user, otherwise nobody will waste their time trying to help.

 

 It’s almost like we need a user based Wikipedia type experience where edits could be made by anyone, but approved to go live.

 

Imagine the possibilities, especially in other cultures and languages where editors could translate examples and instructions into something more easily understood.

 

 

[line-weight]

See this thread

 

 

[Kristin Bailey]

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

[E|FA]

7 hours ago, Kristin Bailey said:

When feedback reaches our department, we make a practice of replying.

Thank you for doing this and for responding on this forum.  It should be common practice for all VW departments.  See this thread for a discussion of other VW black boxes:

https://forum.vectorworks.net/index.php?/topic/93660-service-select-support-add-a-ticketing-system/

[Kristin Bailey]

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

[line-weight]

@Kristin Bailey thank you for replying on this thread.

 

I've submitted feedback via the "was this page helpful" link a couple of times.

 

On one occasion I got a reply which was great - on the other, I heard nothing back. I don't know if that suggests things don't always get delivered to your team (this was at least a year ago I think).

 

Also, in the thread I linked to above, I made some comments about how the process of leaving feedback about help pages could be made a lot easier - here's a link to the specific post:

 

https://forum.vectorworks.net/index.php?/topic/104945-please-stop-telling-us-to-re-report-problems-via-black-hole-webforms/&do=findComment&comment=458101

 

I do quite often come across things that I think are missing from, or could be improved, in the help pages but I have to say that much of the time I just don't have the energy to provide the feedback because of:

1) the tedium & time needed to go through that feedback form

2) a lack of confidence that my message will actually get read or acted upon, due to my previous experience of only sometimes getting a response.

 

I'm sure you don't want to encourage so much feedback that you get swamped with it ... but addressing those two factors, I think, would make it more likely that people with constructive comments pass them on to you.

 

As @E|FA 's linked thread above suggests - a proper ticketing system would make a big difference. Just getting a confirmation that something's been submitted, and a way of tracking it, helps give confidence that something is happening even if there's not an immediate reply.

 

 

 

[Tom W.]

@Kristin Bailey I'm just happy you identified the can't-create-a-site model-in-3D-view thing as a bug + have organised a fix so quickly! No one else has ever even acknowledged that it happens let alone said it was a bug + thought to stop it happening! Good on you!

[Kristin Bailey]

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

[Tom W.]

2 hours ago, Kristin Bailey said:

@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.

 

Ha ha ok! Nevertheless, if you hadn't posted about it here there's a chance I wouldn't have noticed it had been corrected in Update 4 + would have carried on creating DTMs in Top/Plan indefinitely, the same way I've been doing it for the past 3 years thinking that was the 'right' way to do it...!

[mjm]

As I follow this topic I note that is an excellent feeling to receive VWX employee feedback and information in this space. Feeling heard is a good thing.

[Kristin Bailey]

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!