SUMO Blog

Today we are officially opening our Live Chat support to users of Firefox. Users who can’t find their answer in the knowledge base or the forum can now get real time help troubleshooting their issues with more skilled Firefox users.

When a helper is logged in and ready to help Firefox users, the Live Chat page will show the following, friendly Foxkeh:

If no one is available to help users out, this image will be shown instead:

Opening hours

We’ve set 3 hours a day, Monday through Friday, when our current volunteers can commit to being online to take questions.  As more people can commit to being around at other times, we’ll expand our hours.  This is when we encourage new volunteers to help, but you may find someone available to help at other times — we just can’t promise it yet.

You can be one of those Firefox experts!

In order to provide 24/7 coverage so our users never have to see the “We’re Closed” Foxkeh, we need more Firefox helpers.  You don’t need to be an advanced user, or have experience giving support to help out.  Most of our helpers (and many of Mozilla’s community of developers) started out as Firefox users who had a question themselves.  Many questions asked will already be covered in the knowledge base or the forum, and they either couldn’t find them or just need help going through the steps.  Our software lets you talk to other helpers, and even invite someone else to help you give support if you get stumped.  A good attitude and some patience is really all you need, and soon you’ll be an expert. Who knows, maybe you will end up being a Mozilla developer as well?

A big thank you goes out to Lucy, the SUMO team, Nelson, morgamic of WebDev, and oremj, aravind & mrz of IT for making this happen! Thanks also to all the people who helped us test the software before the launch. Last but not least, to the community of helpers out there already available to help users of Firefox: without you guys, this effort would have been completely fruitless. You rock!

Thanks to David Baucum, Bo Bayles, and Kev Needham for keeping up the article writing progress — and another thanks to Ehsan Akhgari for currently working on a second article! It’s great to see people from the community helping us making progress with the content.

That said, there are about 26 articles left to be written. Do you know anything about how to upgrade from Firefox 1.5 to 2.0 (just select “Help > Check for Updates…” in the menu)? Yes, we need people to write articles for simple stuff like that, and that particular article might take five minutes to write! It really is that easy to give something back to the Mozilla community and make your work benefit to millions of Firefox users!

• 399520 – Internet Explorer terminology – Done
  
• 401769 – Chrome registration failed – Done
• 404887 – Troubleshooting extensions – Done
• 398633 – Windows error opening Internet shortcut or local HTML file
• 398635 – How to change the “latest headlines” feed – Done
• 398639 – Search suggestions
• 398641 – Exporting data to Internet Explorer – Done
• 398642 – Exporting data to Safari
• 398643 – Exporting data to Opera
• 398644 – Exporting data to Netscape
• 398645 – Exporting data to SeaMonkey
• 398646 – Exporting data to Mozilla Suite
• 398650 – DOM Inspector
• 398678 – Auto form fill – Done
  
• 399392 – Firefox.exe always open
• 399506 – Transferring data to a new profile
• 399508 – Clipboard not working
• 399509 – Autoconnect – Taken by Ehsan Akhgari
• 399510 – Granting JavaScript access to the clipboard
• 399513 – Configuring keyboard shortcuts
• 399626 – How Do I disable 3rd Party Cookies?
• 400052 – Add troubleshooting links to help articles
• 400913 – Error writing to xpcom_core.dll
• 400916 – Refreshing live bookmarks
• 401261 – Unresponsive script warning
• 401264 – Firefox has detected that the server is redirecting the request for this address in a way that will never complete
• 401265 – Firefox only prints the first page
• 401267 – Firefox makes unrequested connections
• 401336 – Upgrading from Firefox 1
• 404931 – Links do not open in Firefox
• 404933 – Firefox always starts in Safe Mode
• 405950 – Document custom install options
• 406096 – Moving from Windows to Mac

Just click on the number link and either assign the bug to you or post a comment in the bug that you plan to write it. If you don’t have a Bugzilla account, just post a comment here and I’ll do the work for you. Then, create an account on SUMO, log in, and click Create an article. Don’t worry if you’re not familiar with the Wiki formatting used — the important thing is that we get the documentation. We can always fix the formatting afterwards.

Yesterday, we had our first test day for the upcoming Live Chat component of Firefox Support.  It was a wonderful success. Having so many people come out and stick around for the amount of time they did really let us get a handle on all the features and how things will work when we go live.  While we found that most things work as expected, we did end up finding a good number of small things that we’d missed in our previous testing. In the lead up to going live we’ll be taking the list of issues we found, fixing some of them on our end, improving our documents, and filing bugs upstream with the software provider.

We want to say a HUGE thank you to all the people who turned up today.  We couldn’t have done it without your help.  Everyone that turned up — no matter for how long — really helped, and we appreciate it very much.  We hope we’ll see you all back as we get closer to going live.  If you missed the test day, but still want to check it out, feel free to stop by #sumo on Mozilla’s IRC network and we’ll get you set up.

Today, December 21st, from 1 PM – 6 PM PST, we’d like as many people as possible to test both the software that helpers will use to interact with users, as well as the web interface that users will use to reach help. We need your help to make sure we’ve fixed, or are at least aware of, any kinks.

What we need to test

We’ll be testing both sides if the Live Chat experience:

• the software for Firefox helpers, and
• the web solution for people needing help.

Preferably, people will test both the Spark software as a helper and the web client as an end-user at the same time, so they can see if their actions caused the desired results.  You are more than welcome, though, to only pose as a user, or only test out the Spark client!

See our testing page for more info on what to test and how to report your findings.

What you need to get started

If you’d like to help test the Spark client as a helper, you need to download and configure the client. Once you create an account you’ll be able to use the Spark client right away to chat with other helpers. See this page for instructions on using Spark.

If you’d like to test the web client for users, all you have to do is go to our start page and click on the Foxkeh to launch the chat window, fill in the required fields, and submit the question. See our Live Chat user start page.

Getting help and giving feedback

There are several places you can ask for help, more information, or give feedback about Live Chat.

• For real-time help come see us in #sumo on Mozilla’s IRC network.
• If you’re logged in to the server with the Spark client, you can use it to chat with other people who are logged in as well. On the test day check for a “conference room.”
• To leave feedback, or for less pressing questions, feel free to use the newsgroup or leave a comment comment on this blog post.

Thanks for your help!

We’re getting close to opening the Live Chat portion of support.mozilla.com, and we’re very excited about that.  We’ve chosen a complete software solution that allows users to access one-on-one support through a web applet, but provides helpers with a full featured client that allows them to choose which questions they think they can answer, and call in more helpers for questions they can’t.

Very soon, we’ll be having a test day and we’d like to invite all of you to help us out.  You can test the helper client and see what it’ll be like to answer users’ questions.  You can test the web app to make sure it’s easy for people to use in all browsers. We’d love for people to test both at the same time, then you can really see how each action works for the helper and the user.

If you’re interested, look back here for more details, or come see us in #sumo on irc.mozilla.org for more information on how and when.

I’m pleased to announce the opening of the official Firefox support forum! The forum is a result of a few months of work, and I’d like to thank all those that provided input into its design, those that coded it, and those that tested it. Now the real work begins!

These forums are meant for Firefox support only. Discussion of other Mozilla applications and general, non-technical-support Firefox discussion should continue where it happens currently, like mozillaZine. Because the forum is Firefox support only, we were able to build it so suit that purpose. Here are a few examples of the benefits the support.mozilla.com forums have over a generic forum.

The forums and the Knowledge Base being integrated in the same piece of software makes things easier for forum helpers. The syntax for forum posts is the same as for Knowledge Base articles, so linking to Knowledge Base articles is simple. Instead of remembering a URL, you just have to remember the article’s name – ((Safe Mode)) automatically becomes a link to the Safe Mode article.

Users sometimes don’t know what information is important to post for others to be able to help them. The forum automatically determines the user’s version of Firefox, operating system, and plugins, and includes this information when the user asks a question. Users are prompted to give the steps to reproduce their problem, any error text they receive, and a URL if it’s a problem with a particular website.

Forum discussions can get into the dozens of pages and it can become very hard to help any one person. This is compounded by there not being any way to tell anonymous users apart. To prevent this, the forum encourages users to start their own threads rather than continuing someone else’s thread. It will also let anonymous users enter a display name, which is then remembered in subsequent posts.

Perhaps the most useful aspect of the forum isn’t even in the forum itself. Rather than having users asking questions as their first support option, support.mozilla.com directs them to search the Knowledge Base. This will help prevent contributors from answering the same questions over and over.

There are more features coming in the future. One of them will let users mark their question as being answered, which lets helpers easily find people still looking for help. Another will let users register and ask a question in one step, which will make it easier for them to find their posts in the future. Of course, we’re open to your suggestions as well.

So go ahead and dive in! If you have a question about Firefox, ask it! If you’re fairly knowledegable about Firefox, answer some questions! If you have any feedback, it’s very much appreciated as a comment in this blog, on mozilla.support.planning, and on the new contributor’s subforum.

This week, we will be launching the Firefox support forum on support.mozilla.com. In this forum, Firefox users will be able to ask support questions not yet covered in the knowledge base, and hopefully have them answered quickly by other fellow Firefox users. The idea is that we will then use the questions we see in the forum to determine what information we’re lacking in the knowledge base. By continuously improving the knowledge base, we will be able to keep the forum traffic relatively low.

I’m really excited about this, as it will also be a great channel to send people who are currently frustrated with the lack of “official” Firefox support. Today, many people send e-mails to random @mozilla.com addresses, and a share of those end up in my inbox (and up until now, I’ve taken the time to answer them all). Add to that the number of support e-mails I receive from my gmail address listed on the old support pages, despite the pretty obvious disclaimer on the contact page.

Finally, the forums will be an interesting way to build a larger community around SUMO. Even though we haven’t linked to the forum yet, people already seem to ask questions and at least one of the questions is already answered. That’s a good sign of things to come!

Need help? Stay tuned for the Firefox Support Forums… 

Thanks to Ehsan Akhgari, the first of the 33 remaining articles has been added to the Knowledge Base. Thanks, Ehsan!

There are still 32 articles to be written. This is your chance to give something back to the Mozilla community! Do you have 15-30 minutes to spare? Even just writing an article stub really helps and will ensure you are credited in the article. Some articles require very little effort to write and the associated Bugzilla link often includes reference articles that can be used as inspiration.

• 399520 – Internet Explorer terminology – Done
  
• 401769 – Chrome registration failed
• 404887 – Troubleshooting extensions
• 398633 – Windows error opening Internet shortcut or local HTML file
• 398635 – How to change the “latest headlines” feed
• 398639 – Search suggestions
• 398641 – Exporting data to Internet Explorer
• 398642 – Exporting data to Safari
• 398643 – Exporting data to Opera
• 398644 – Exporting data to Netscape
• 398645 – Exporting data to SeaMonkey
• 398646 – Exporting data to Mozilla Suite
• 398650 – DOM Inspector
• 398678 – Auto form fill
• 399392 – Firefox.exe always open
• 399506 – Transferring data to a new profile
• 399508 – Clipboard not working
• 399509 – Autoconnect
• 399510 – Granting JavaScript access to the clipboard
• 399513 – Configuring keyboard shortcuts
• 399626 – How Do I disable 3rd Party Cookies?
• 400052 – Add troubleshooting links to help articles
• 400913 – Error writing to xpcom_core.dll
• 400916 – Refreshing live bookmarks
• 401261 – Unresponsive script warning
• 401264 – Firefox has detected that the server is redirecting the request for this address in a way that will never complete
• 401265 – Firefox only prints the first page
• 401267 – Firefox makes unrequested connections
• 401336 – Upgrading from Firefox 1
• 404931 – Links do not open in Firefox
• 404933 – Firefox always starts in Safe Mode
• 405950 – Document custom install options
• 406096 – Moving from Windows to Mac

If you have a Bugzilla account, just click on the number link and either assign the bug to you or post a comment in the bug that you plan to write it. If you don’t use Bugzilla, just post a comment here and I’ll do the work for you.

Then, create an account on SUMO (http://support.mozilla.com/), log in, and click Create an article. Don’t worry if you’re not familiar with the Wiki formatting used — the important thing is that we get the documentation. We can always fix the formatting afterwards. When you’re done writing the article, it will be scheduled for review by a SUMO reviewer. Once reviewed, it will go live on the site and you can feel very good about yourself — and perhaps write another article?

• Sumo
  • Weekly metrics [1]
    • We can now collect number of new/modified KB articles, number of forum posts, and number of active KB/forum users [2]
    • Depend on [3] to get Participation stats
    • To file separate bug for Performance stats
  • Community Survey [4] focusing on user-to-user support
    • Purpose is to get a better understanding of how Mozilla is doing with community support in the different languages and what we can do to improve the situation
    • Survey to be translated to around 10 languages this week
    • Survey should be launched later this week and will run for a couple of weeks
• Knowledge Base
  • In-product help plan
    • Proposing to link directly to SUMO in a standard Firefox tab or new window.
      • Saves us from having to deal with a separately cached, static version of the site on a separate server
      • No problem with search (we use what we have today)
      • Less work for the Firefox development team (can just strip out the help viewer and change some links
      • Obviously depends on webdev to fix memcache and other performance issues
      • Waiting for comments from the development team (mconnor + beltzner)
• Forums
  • 0.3 status [5]
  • Forum launch activities
    • On track
    • Resync staging -> live today or tomorrow
    • Add links to the forums and announce it on Wednesday
      • Plan is to link to the mZ forums and the SUMO forums simultaneously first, and see how we handle the load
• Live Chat
  • Get the server up and running (today?)
    • Lucy and Nelson to work on getting a separate template ready so we can put the script for Live Chat on it
  • Test day for “some” users (Wednesday?)
    • Lucy to write announcement and make sure we have what we need to test the product during a few hours of that day
  • Add links to Live Chat on the side bar, making the launch official (Friday?)
    • Assuming we’re not running into any serious problems with the test day, this should be the target
    • Can work more on polish and release next week too, as long as we do it within Q4

The Knowledge Base of Firefox Support is shaping up nicely. With over hundred articles written so far, many of the most common tutorials, how-to’s, and troubleshooting articles are readily available. That said, there are a number of articles yet to be written, and we need your help to make the knowledge base more complete!

Are you using Firefox? Do you have a few minutes to spare? Are you interested in sharing your knowledge with the rest of the world in the same spirit as Mozilla is sharing Firefox? Do you want your work to be visible to millions of other Firefox users? Then claim one of the 33 unwritten Firefox support articles below! Many of them cover simple, straightforward topics that shouldn’t take more than 15-30 minutes to write, and you will be credited in the article and on this blog. Here’s the list of articles that are not yet assigned to anyone (articles in bold text have a higher priority):

• 399520 – Internet Explorer terminology
• 401769 – Chrome registration failed
• 404887 – Troubleshooting extensions
• 398633 – Windows error opening Internet shortcut or local HTML file
• 398635 – How to change the “latest headlines” feed
• 398639 – Search suggestions
• 398641 – Exporting data to Internet Explorer
• 398642 – Exporting data to Safari
• 398643 – Exporting data to Opera
• 398644 – Exporting data to Netscape
• 398645 – Exporting data to SeaMonkey
• 398646 – Exporting data to Mozilla Suite
• 398650 – DOM Inspector
• 398678 – Auto form fill
• 399392 – Firefox.exe always open
• 399506 – Transferring data to a new profile
• 399508 – Clipboard not working
• 399509 – Autoconnect
• 399510 – Granting JavaScript access to the clipboard
• 399513 – Configuring keyboard shortcuts
• 399626 – How Do I disable 3rd Party Cookies?
• 400052 – Add troubleshooting links to help articles
• 400913 – Error writing to xpcom_core.dll
• 400916 – Refreshing live bookmarks
• 401261 – Unresponsive script warning
• 401264 – Firefox has detected that the server is redirecting the request for this address in a way that will never complete
• 401265 – Firefox only prints the first page
• 401267 – Firefox makes unrequested connections
• 401336 – Upgrading from Firefox 1
• 404931 – Links do not open in Firefox
• 404933 – Firefox always starts in Safe Mode
• 405950 – Document custom install options
• 406096 – Moving from Windows to Mac

If you have a Bugzilla account, just click on the number link and either assign the bug to you or post a comment in the bug that you plan to write it. If you don’t use Bugzilla, just post a comment here and I’ll do the work for you.

Then, create an account on SUMO (http://support.mozilla.com/), log in, and click Create an article. Don’t worry if you’re not familiar with the Wiki formatting used — the important thing is that we get the documentation. We can always fix the formatting afterwards. When you’re done writing the article, it will be scheduled for review by a SUMO reviewer. Once reviewed, it will go live on the site and you can feel very good about yourself — and perhaps write another article?