Knowledge Base still down

The patch page (now gone) is a HUGE step backwards!!! The 'IBM Websphere Portal' title is very humorous. And it seems to me at least, that the documentation that you find when trying to open a CASE, is not generally available to the normal KB users. I've found several documents when trying to open a CASE that I looked for previously, and was not able to find!

Wake up, Lawson!!

I wonder how many complaints they get on their KB webinar today? It is clearly trying to address the issues they are hearing around the KB not working for people anymore.

I have been experiencing a loop on the Support Site recently and cant seem to even get to the kB articles. Sure is interesting reading all of these posts because it sounds like the Support Site has been a dificult "change" for Lawson.

The Knowledge base is not that difficult once you spend some time in it. I was used to searching in legacy knowledge base that it took some getting used to the new application because it is different than how I used to search. The Knowledge base Hot Topic helped and explained the differences in searching and why some vocabulary changed. Watch that if you haven't yet because it helps explain things. I search the internet often and find that the new knowledge base is similar to most search engines out there. All search engines are a little different but if you spend some time in it will find it isn't as bad as people claim it is. I like that I can save a search and have set some up for corrections knowing I will want to refer to the same list again.

There may be a learning curve, but the "new" search engine is just not effective. I used to be able to enter a search for an error message and generally it would return as the first article in the list. It was useful 100% of the time. Now, it can be extremely difficult to find anything. As an example I enter something as simple as "human resources user guide". The following results are listed first, with the HR guide listed fifth! I don't think I could be any more clear in my search parameters.

Teacher Contract Administration User Guide
General Ledger User Guide
Grant Management User Guide
Inventory Control User Guide

Then try to enter Payroll User Guide and it's #5 behind a couple of versions of HR user guide.

Here are my issues that I have articulated to Lawson multiple times (and have tech support often agree as they use it as a tool also)

Search functionality not working correctly (or effectively)
While actively working in the site, it times out "due to inactivity" and receive multiple iterations of the login to get back in
Response time a major issue. Often wait a couple of minutes to get through logging a simple ticket.

Has anyone heard of an initiative to fix the issues? Nobody at Lawson seems to know.

I have contacted Lawson about the indexing on the KB. It doesn't always produce the right results. Changing the order of the filters produces different results....and they concede it doesn't work too

Here is my question to them..

[quote]Hi

I get different results on the NEW Knowledge Base search depending on the order of items I use to refine the search.

For example:

In the NEW Knowledge Base use the filters:

Category: Correction
Lawson Product Line: S3
Product Name: Portal
Platform: Unix
Platform OS: AIX

This gives a list of fixes, but the Refine Your Results goes up to Release 9.0.1.7 only

Now remove the Platform OS filter

Add the filters
Release: 9.x
Platform OS: AIX

The Refine Your Results will now have the More option which will show releases up to 9.0.1.9

I expect the filters to accurately reflect the data which can be filtered. If there is no option to filter Release 9.0.1.9 (but there is the option for other Releases) then I don't expect the returned data to contain 9.0.1.9 information. It is very misleading and I lose faith in being able to get all the information I need when using the search facility. Is there an optimal way of using the filters? [/quote]

and their response:

[quote]Hi Richard,

Thank you so much for your message, that is an error that we had not seen before.

We have right now some issues with indexing, and that is maybe the reason why the latest release 9.0.1.9.0 does not appear in the dimensions.

We will investigate further.

Thank you again for bringing that to our intention.

Frederique Nielsen[/quote]

That was April 16th this year...it's still not fixed this morning and haven't heard of any progress - so do I trust the indexes to find me the right patches? No! I just keep my fingers crossed and hope...:whistling:

Richard

Has anyone seen what the Infor Xtreme Support Portal looks like? The target date for the KnowledgeBase and CASE system to be migrated is the 15th Oct - a clean cut migration so the KB and CASE won't be on mylawson.com after that...

It'd be nice to know just what the new system will look like before it arrives, maybe even a little play on a prototype....nothing worse than trying to find information quickly only to find that the Information System has been changed. Especially worrying is the claim that it will be intuitive :cry:

I stand corrected! There is some education on the mylawson.com site.

Under Get Support / CASE/KB Migration
there are a couple of overviews under the Helpful Information/Training Materials box. I won't say they are great but they do provide the Overview which they claim.

I will reserve judgement on whether the new system will work as well as the old.

Richard