Firefox Support Blog

Attendees: djst, cilias, zzxc, cww, nkoth, lucy

Sumo

• Last meeting summary (for djst!)
• Weekly metrics
  • chofmann/djst working on start page improvements. We have some specific things we’d like to test, like the placement of the “Browse the Knowledge Base” link. Should have a better update next week.
• Last week’s weekly support issues
  • 3.0.4 new issues?
    • more crashes (may be related to memory usage, or that could be a red herring?)
      • OSX: bug 459531
      • Windows: crash on 0×00 may be AVG8 bug 446224, Backdoor.Ulrbot.C rose a lot of places in the topcrashes list after 3.0.4 came out bug 434403.
    • Firewall blocks connectivity (Norton mostly)
    • Gmail loads in basic mode: large forum thread
    • Firefox 3.0.4 uses 100% of the CPU while idle bug 464864
    • Unsolved memory leak in windows: bug 457234?
• QA team collaboration
  • Sent info about how to log in to Live Chat without Spark, meaning QA team members can help troubleshooting users’ problems when it makes sense (when it’s a top issue and/or when the QA team needs more info for important crashers
  • Waiting for a list of QA team members that can sign up for this collaboration
• SFD status
  • Mitchell to join us for the last Americas session (djst)
  • Waiting for talking points to introduce the sessions for the Asian and European shifts
  • Getting everyone set up with needed software etc
  • Preparing and hosting sessions — all sessions assigned!
  • Getting traffic from the SFD page into #sumo, sorry about the spam.
• djst joined the l10n-drivers meeting last week and we all agreed on the following:
  • SUMO needs clear l10n priorities to make it easy for localizers to see what work is most important
  • Currently, localizers find SUMO an overwhelming task — we need to ensure that there is a simple way to get started, with a straightforward list of initial things, e.g. the start pages and the UI. We can’t expect people to localize the whole Knowledge Base, so we need to focus on what is most important (again, clear priorities).
  • A dashboard for localizers showing the overall status of SUMO l10n is wanted for 2009.
  • We need to better communicate the importance of having localized support.

Roundtable

• Since Thursday’s update, there have been no screenshots in the KB. This was not intentional. It is a critical bug, that was fixed this morning. bug 464913

Attendees: cilias, zzxc, cww, nkoth

Sumo

• David is in MV for a Marketing Work Week
• Weekly metrics
• Last week’s weekly support issues
  • Bookmarks issue (places.sqlite) is way up. Still investigating cause.
• 0.7.2 to be pushed on Thursday bug list
• Logo Candidates. Post your feedback on Tara’s blog post.
  • No clear favorite.
  • Need to clear up with David, whether or not Firefox logo can be incorporated in to Support logo.
• SFD planning
  • cilias to go through content to cover in his presentation.
  • Cww to talk with locale drivers to coordinate workload.

Knowledge Base

• Bugzilla: 1 new article request bug 463477, 0 article bugs verified fixed
  • That new article request is for an article on Private browsing (i.e. 3.1 documentation major feature)
• Upgrading Firefox article is going to be renamed to Updating Firefox
• Top 15 articles are now translated in German
• Still want feedback on article editor mockups
• In-product help discussion status:
  • It’s too late in Firefox 3.1 development to consider adding help-topic links.
  • Localization issue is still up in the air, but now have some metrics. (Interesting stat: 65% of all support.mozilla.com traffic is in-product help start pages)

Support Forum

• foxkehbot is now reporting forum threads that need answering in #sumo.
• Users coming from Live Chat can also insert the handle of the a person that helped them, and foxkehbot will ping that person.
• Will have stats next week to see whether or not foxkehbot is improving things.

Live Chat

• Metrics update:
  • Traffic down again, percentage answered is high
  • 4 new accounts, 2 account approvals (ezadkiel, moon)
• Number of broken bookmarks cases without Norton 360 (contributors forum thread) were up last week, around 4 cases per day.
• Full stats for all issues will be on Live Chat issue guide later today
• Feedback wanted on new Live Chat troubleshooting guide

Roundtable

• What is the best method/channel of communication between support communities with regards to weekly issues?
  • Currently assumed that the best method is to post in their forums, but something more efficient is desired.
  • Have some solutions to discuss on Support Firefox Day.

Over the past two months we have been gathering feedback and ideas on how to improve the article editing experience in the Support Knowledge Base, to make Knowledge Base features more understandable and easier to use.

As part of the ongoing work for design a new editor for knowledge base articles, I’ve taken the feedback we have received and created two XHTML mockups (without images).

• Editing a staging copy
• Creating a new article

Some information not in the mockups:

The “Insert Image” toolbar button will pop up a prompt for:

• Image uploader (mandatory)
• Image height
• Image width
• Alignment

The “SHOWFOR” button will trigger a drop-down, that includes

• Windows
• Mac
• Linux
• Windows and Mac
• Windows and Linux
• Mac and Linux
• –separator–
• Firefox 3.1
• Firefox 3.0
• Firefox 3.0 and 3.1
• Firefox 2

(when Fx2 support ceases, we should remove the last two)

The “Dynamic content” button will trigger a dropdown that includes all content labels for the language assigned to the article.

These mockups should illustrate how the new article editor would eliminate the need to know tikiwiki syntax, make all features available in one toolbar, and provide more in-depth explanations for each option and how it should be used.

If you have any questions or feedback, you can post in the Contributors forum thread. Thanks!

Attendees: djst, cilias, zzxc, cww, nkoth

Sumo

• Weekly metrics
• Last week’s weekly support issues
• SFD planning
  • Blogged about it
  • Talked to Axel + Seth about getting the word out
  • Needs leads for Asian session
  • cilias to host his own session for European and American shifts
• MozCamp 2008

Knowledge Base

• Bugzilla: 1 article request [1], 1 article bug verified fixed [2]
• Text mockups for new article editor are posted in Contributors forum thread (will blog about it soon)
• Crashes article is now split up into separate articles. If you see any bad links update them.
• 253 articles without a language (Down from 278), but still a lot. If you haven’t gone through them, please do.
  • Broken anchors spotted by Simone Lando, cilias to file bug
• Discussion about re-evaluating in-product help for Firefox 3.1
  • How big should it be?
  • Can we better organize the content in product help?
  • What content should be covered in in-product help?
    • Are there any other good places for help-topic links?
  • Discussion in mozilla.support.planning

Support Forum

• Traffic dropping steadily. Not sure why but that’s a good thing. Potential reasons:
  • No direct link to Firefox Support from mozilla.com top nav
  • Less people upgrade to Firefox 3 now than some weeks before — many problems are occurring when upgrading
  • Better content in the Knowledge Base — better knowledge of which issues are the most common

Live Chat

• Metrics update
  • Traffic slightly up, around 75% of chats answered
  • 14 new accounts last week
  • Number of helpers taking at least one chat: 9
• cww to modify foxkehbox to track time
• Manually send out email to new accounts with initial info on how to get started?
  • zzxc to write a template and send that out manually to new accounts for now
• Live chat issues, ranked in order of frequency. Full data and chat logs are available on the Live Chat issue guide.
  1. Lost bookmarks, bookmarks not saved, and bookmarks not working
  2. Crashes (on start, due to Flash, on downloading, on loading a PDF (bug 444930), “randomly”)
  3. Firefox will not start
  4. Blocked connections due to firewall
  5. Flash will not install
  6. Yahoo login issues
  7. Tech evangelism issues (Top TE issue: Back button on ebay results not working)
• Working on splitting the Live Chat issue guide into two pages, “Live Chat issue guide” and “Troubleshooting guide”.
  • Outline of “Troubleshooting guide” on pastebin. Feedback?
• Feedback on the live chat documentation is wanted

Support Firefox day is an event that the contributors with the Firefox Support project (support.mozilla.com or SUMO) hold to introduce new people to working with Support, help people with any questions they may have and have a little fun.
The next Support Firefox Day will focus on localization of the Support project. Primarily, in this case, localization is translation of support articles into a number of languages for our users worldwide. Firefox is available in over 30 languages and with so many users, support documentation is also needed in all these languages. We are also leading a discussion with the SUMO community about Mozilla’s goals for 2010 as Mitchell  has been blogging about recently.  Even though the discussion is about Mozilla as a whole, it’s important that everyone who’s helped with SUMO or looks to start helping with SUMO participates — you’re all members of the greater Mozilla community.  Whether you work with the knowledge base, help on the forums or are active on Live Chat, we’d like you to join in and offer your input during this roundtable discussion.
While the final schedule is still being worked out, we’re hoping to work the following into each three hour slot:

• Presentations on how to localize SUMO articles, finding articles that need to be translated and how to keep up to date with changes and get changes approved by others in your locale.
• A roundtable on Mozilla goals for 2010 and how user support and our contributors ties in with those goals.
• An open meet-and-greet. This will give you all a chance to find other people interested in Firefox Support in your language and coordinate your efforts. This includes getting translation questions answered by a locale leader.  Some of our most active contributors will also be available to answer questions about SUMO in general.

Due to the global nature of localization, rather than having one large event that spans a full day as we have had in the past, we’ll be having a few smaller events (about 3 hours long) with a slot for our Asian contributors, one for our European contributors and one for those in the Americas. Primarily, the event will take place on Friday, November 21st, 2008 in your local time zone. (Of course, while the slots were designed with certain locales in mind, they’re open to everyone; discussion will be in English.)
Our three sessions are at the following times:

• Friday Nov 21st, 5:00 AM GMT (2 PM Tokyo time, 6 AM Central European time, Thursday 9 PM PST)
• Friday Nov 21st, Noon GMT (9 PM Tokyo time, 1 PM Central European time, Friday 4 AM PST)
• Friday Nov 21st, 7 PM GMT (Saturday 4 AM Tokyo time, 8 PM Central European time, 11 AM PST)

We’ll be hosting the event, as we always do from our Support Firefox Day page where all the information will be posted as it comes out.  We’re asking you to start spreading the word in your various communities and among your friends and get the word out.  We’re also looking for help putting the event together and for some volunteers to lead sessions (especially in Asia).  If you’re interested in user support or would like to help us, please respond in this forum thread.

Thanks and I hope to see you on the 21st!

Attendees: djst, cilias, zzxc, cww, nkoth

Sumo

• Weekly metrics
• Last week’s weekly support issues
  • Corrupt places.sqlite issue - cww to file bug and write KB article on how to replace the file
  • zzxc says some people experience the prefs not saving issue with Norton 360. Disabling 360 solves the problem. Need to talk to Norton about that.
• Top understandable articles generally have only “Yes” votes on the other question “Did this article solve a problem you had with Firefox?”
• CSAT data for KB — cww will look into it this week to give us an average

Knowledge Base

• KB metrics (Cww)
• Bugzilla: no activity
• 270+ articles with no language set [1]: If you can help assign languages, that would be appreciated.
  • nkoth to look into it this week. djst to to test with non-admin acount
• We’re going to use SHOWFOR for Firefox 3.1 content. [2]
• Looking for ways to determine who to promote to reviewer (if other people are reviewing edits, how do we become aware of who should be promoted?)
  • It feels like a potential reviewer should want to become one — that should be the first step (request to become one), at which point we could review that person’s past edits (djst)
  • Have other reviewers nominate good article editors (cww)
  • Generally, we should promote the idea of having people reviewing other people’s edits. It should be the norm for new articles or significant edits.

Support Forum’

• Traffic down. Related to forum being slow and inaccessible.
• New off topic forum — yay!
• Contributor forum is now open to the public. Anonymous people can respond to existing threads, but not create new threads.
• Getting individual feedback from forum contributors about their experiences.

Live Chat

• 7 new accounts, 0 approvals
• Traffic about the same, up to 75% of questions answered
• Top issues
  • Bookmarks not saved (4 cases)
  • Preferences not saved (3 cases)
  • Crashes (18 total)
  • Confusion with “Warn me when closing multiple tabs” options (3 cases)
  • Turner Media Plugin videos not playing properly (3 cases)
• Other issues
  • Generic “0″ error when installing Firefox on Windows (2 cases). Error in NSIS or in our NSIS installer script?
  • Two people confirmed that they were unable to connect to any sites after installing Symantec Antivirus, uninstalling Norton 360, and upgrading Firefox.
• Improving Live Chat documentation to help users troubleshoot common issues. In staging area right now.

SFD

• Main topic of SFD: Localizing SUMO
• Secondary topic: Mozilla 2010 Goals

We’re planning to have a 3-hour event in 3 different timeslots: one for Asia, one for Europe and one for the Americas.

• Friday Nov 21st, 5 AM GMT (2 PM Tokyo time, 6 AM Central European time, Thursday 9 PM PST)
• Friday Nov 21st, Noon GMT (9 PM Tokyo time, 1 PM Central European time, Friday 4 AM PST)
• Friday Nov 21st, 7 PM GMT (Saturday 4 AM Tokyo time, 8 PM Central European time, 11 AM PST)

Each session will hopefully have the following “events”:

• Presentations: These will be mostly short and pre-recorded with someone present to do followup and answer questions and perhaps do live demos as they see fit. The reason we need prerecorded is because of the three separate timeslots.
  • Localizing SUMO: Getting started and translating your first article. (Cww)
  • Keeping your translations and locale up to date: finding out when things change and working with your locale to complete translation. E-mail notifications, SHOWFOR. (cilias)
• Longer term goals for 2010. djst (+Mitchell Baker?) leading into… a roundtable/open discussion on 2010 goals for Mozilla. (More details will be ironed out this week)
• An open meet-and-greet. This will give everyone a chance to find other people interested in Firefox Support in their language and coordinate efforts.
• Cww to coordinate and make sure all presenters are informed about technical details and have properly setup environments (mic, screen sharing software, etc)

On October 1st, I announced the top 15 Knowledge Base articles for localizers to translate. One week later, all 15 articles were translated into Japanese! Big thanks to Masahiko Imanaka for looking after those article translations. We really appreciate the hard work.

Over the next few days, I’ll be sending out invitations to Firefox Support knowledge base localizers to take a survey. If you receive an invite, do not mistake it for spam. There are multiple goals in the survey, which should help us find out what barriers are preventing people from translating articles, and find out how to eliminate those barriers.

If you’re a translator on support.mozilla.com but not a support.mozilla.com locale leader, contact us by sending an email to djst at mozilla dot com, providing your username so we can send you the survey. Thanks for helping us make the knowledge base better!

Over the past month and a half, we’ve started an effort to gather data from users who come to support or provide input to other places in the Mozilla community to identify issues with Firefox that are new or frequently mentioned by our everyday users. This information is conceivably useful to a number of people from support contributors to QA team members to developers and marketing. This post will discuss the progress we’ve made so far and what people across the Mozilla community can do to help out and get involved.

Each week, we are going through a sizable sampling of forum posts, Live Chat conversations and posts to Hendrix to figure out the common issues. The focus here is on specific issues. Rather than noting that dozens of people have crashes, we’re flagging an issue if dozens of people have crashes when downloading specific files or visiting a specific site.

The central page for all this information is the Weekly Common Issues page. That page has a table of the issues we’re currently tracking. Each issue gets its own thread where more details will be provided as well as links to the source reports. Importantly, each thread will also list the information that we’re seeking from users who are experiencing a given issue to give support volunteers some questions to ask of users. The threads are open so that users can also post any answers they have directly in the thread or attach relevant files without registering.

This is where the community comes in (that means you!). Members of the community can volunteer to lead the followup for each issue. Followup can be very simple (write the relevant KB article if the cause is known) or be more involved (working closely with users and QA to identify the source of problem and coming up with an acceptable solution or workaround). Whether or not you choose to lead the investigation of issues, there is a lot you can do to help out. Since we can’t read everything that everyone writes about Firefox, we would appreciate if you see additional reports of a given issue to note it in the relevant thread. You can also help by testing or suggesting workarounds and suggesting questions that we should be asking to troubleshoot. A lot more information and a FAQ is in this discussion thread.

The other half of the metrics project which is also on the weekly issues page is measuring way users use our knowledge base. The current ranking is based off a score that incorporates the number of users that reach an article via search results, the number who reach via links on the front page and the number of votes that a page has (yes and no votes) in response to the question: “Did this article solve a problem you had with Firefox?” For a really long discussion of how we’re calculating this and some of the reasoning behind it, see this post.

Since these rankings are based on support articles that users find themselves, it can be hard to tell which single issue users may be experiencing in each case. However, a few generalized conculsions can be drawn. For example: Four of the top five articles this week are related to clearing the location bar, search bar (which is likely users confusing search bar with location bar) or clearing private data in general. This suggests that having “private” results show up when using the new Awesomebar is still one of our users’ top concerns. Essentially, these rankings are a good indication of what kind of help users are looking for when they come to support.mozilla.com. As we refine the articles, split up overarching articles and provide more specific titles, we hope that these metrics will get better and better at pinpointing exactly what concerns and issues our users are facing most often.

By tracking users’ specific issues in threads and collecting generalized metrics through the knowledge base, we can better address the concerns quicker and improve our support process. Most importantly, however, this is an effort that we would really like your help with and input on. Whether you’re just linking to reports of the tracked issues, helping test or leading the followup, it’ll all help make our user experience that much better.

A few weeks ago, creative extraordinaire Tara and I took on the fun task to create a logo to visually represent the SUMO community support project. In order to get a logo that truly captures the core values of SUMO, Tara initiated the process of collecting feedback from the community, asking for inspirational words, ideas, and even design concepts that could be incorporated into the final logo. I did the same in the mozilla.support.planning newsgroup and in the contributor forum, and together we collected a massive amount of thoughts and ideas that really helped us write the creative brief that will be used by the design firm responsible for creating our logo (the same awesome people that created the logo for QMO).

Some examples of words that describe SUMO: community, global, teamwork, problem-solving, communication, open, information exchange, open-source, collaboration, help, personal, quality, support.

To those who provided feedback and thoughts about SUMO and the words that describe the community project: thank you! Stay tuned for some design concepts for the logo soon…