RE: Web Tech Support -- MIDRANGE-L

Title: RE: Web Tech Support

Dave,

Thanks for the reply. And good to hear from you again. I remember speaking to you about a couple of stories I worked on a couple of years back.

Sounds like the bugs aren't quite worked out of IBM Electronic Services yet. Are you looking forward to what it has to offer, once they get you on? Anything about it you think will be especially useful? I've heard you access it through a second ECS line. Is that true?

I've gotten a few private replies to my post too, and those folks have all complained about usability. It's highly relative I guess, affected by the vendor's design as well as the user's experience and comfort level navigating this type of service.

Pam

-----Original Message-----
From:   Shaw, David [SMTP:dshaw@spartan.com]
Sent:   Monday, April 17, 2000 8:30 AM
To:     'MIDRANGE-L@midrange.com'
Subject:        RE: Web Tech Support

Pam,

When I was at GNC I had occasion to use the MAPICS online support quite a
bit. It was quite helpful - the search engine for previously-reported
problems was reasonably good, access to fixes was decent, and updated source
code was available (! MAPICS ECS support only provided executables and
cover letters listing the changes to the source - we had to manually
maintain our copies between releases before the online support became
available - yuck!). I've also used online support for Microsoft stuff with
some success, as well as PC video cards (Diamond, S3, Hercules), sound cards
(Creative Labs), printers (HP, Canon), and tape drives (Colorado). Some of
these are very good, others are weaker - MAPICS compares fairly well to
these. I've started trying to use IBM's Electronic Services, but there's
still an administrative issue with that - I had to be added to "the contact
list" in order to ask questions, but even now that I have been they still
haven't updated my profile to let me do it (sigh). For checking out
previously-reported APARs and finding PTF's, the AS/400 Service site works
pretty well most of the time - I don't remember that needing any
registration, but I may just have forgotten.

Dave Shaw
Spartan International, Inc.
Spartanburg, SC

-----Original Message-----
From: Pam Jones [mailto:pjones@as400network.com]

Anybody had experience with online tech support for apps? Looks like what's
out there is mostly email problem submission, FAQs, how to contact phone
support, white papers and such. A few companies offer downloadable updates
or let you search the same knowledgebase their phone support people use.
Looks like IBM has the most sophisticated offering with Electronic Services
for AS/400 (new last October, see http://www.as.ibm.com/asus/mus49r1.html)
but it's only for people with maintenance or support line contracts.
Just curious whether anyone's tried using online support of any kind,
especially this new one from IBM, and what it was like.
Pam Jones
Industry Editor
NEWS/400
615-391-5415
pjones@as400network.com
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