Firefox Support Blog

The weekend hasn’t started yet! Don’t miss the two remaining chat sessions on Support Firefox Day:

• 4:00 - 4:30 PM PDT: Chat with John Lilly, CEO of Mozilla Corporation. John will be available to answer your questions about Mozilla, including how it was started, where it’s going, and any other things you can think of.
• 4:30 - 5:00: Chat with Asa Dotzler, Spokesmodel and Storyteller. Asa has been a part of Mozilla since the very early days and is the perfect person to ask your questions — any questions — about… anything!

Head over to the Support Firefox Day Events page and follow the instructions there for how to ask questions to John and Asa.

The SUMO start page and the Firefox 3 product help start page are both ready to be localized. The pages contain very little text, and we estimate this will take less than five minutes to localize.

We’ve written instructions on how to do it in the SUMO Contributor Forum. Please let us know if you have any questions, by commenting here or in the forum thread. Thanks!

…or “Share what you know, learn what you don’t.”

Tomorrow will be a special day for Mozilla as we’ll be hosting the very first Support Firefox Day. You’ll get a chance to learn more about Mozilla, Firefox 3, and Firefox Support (SUMO) — and have your voice heard. We promise you you’ll learn something new! We also hope you’ll be able to share that with others.

When?

• Friday May 23, starting 8 AM PDT

Where?

• Support Firefox Day start page

Here is the action-packed schedule:

• 8:00 AM PDT - 10:00: Support session #1
• 10:00 – 10:45: Workshop: Supporting Firefox 3 users with Live Chat. In this workshop, you’ll learn all you need to know about the cool user-to-user support solution on SUMO to start helping others. Host: Lucy Connor
• 11:00 - 11:30: Chat with Mike Connor, Developer Lead of Firefox 3. Mike will be taking your questions about the upcoming release of Firefox 3 and all its new features, including the all-new product help (yes, SUMO!)
• 11:30 - 12:30: Support Session #2
• 12:30 - 1:15: Workshop: Learn all about the new bookmark system in Firefox 3 (tags, smart location bar, keywords) to better help others. Host: Dietrich Ayala
• 1:30 – 2:00: Chat with Mike Beltzner, Phenomenologist & Usability Design Expert. This is your chance to get your questions about the Mozilla way of designing software answered straight from the source. You’ll learn, among other things, how user feedback and support continuously loops back into product.
• 2:00 - 3:00: Support Session #3
• 3:00 - 3:45: Workshop: Learn how to troubleshoot Firefox 3 like a pro. You’ll find out more about how Firefox works, and at the same time you’ll become an expert of user-to-user troubleshooting. Host: Matthew Middleton
• 4:00 - 4:30: Chat with John Lilly, CEO of Mozilla Corporation. John will be available to answer your questions about Mozilla, including how it was started, where it’s going, and any other things you can think of.
• 4:30 - 5:00: Chat with Asa Dotzler, Spokesmodel and Storyteller. Asa has been a part of Mozilla since the very early days and is the perfect person to ask your questions — any questions — about… anything!

The big highlight of the day will be the best new Firefox 3 feature of all: Firefox’s new user-based support system. All throughout the day, we’ll be showcasing the various aspects to the support system: from the collaboratively written knowledge base to the forums and chat-based support, and we’re inviting you to take part. We’ll be around all day in #sumo to answer questions and help you get started helping your fellow users and Firefox enthusiasts.

Please let us know if you’re coming so we can better plan the events. See you tomorrow!

With SUMO, we make it a practice to regularly reevaluate what we’re doing well, and what we still need to improve on.  We’ve made some changes to the Live Chat software in the last little while, like playing with the max number of chats a helper can take, and changing how long a user can wait in the queue. We think these changes have helped things along, but it’s time to dig in and see what else we can do to make Live Chat a smoother experience for our users, but especially for our invaluable volunteers.

Have you been helping out with Live Chat on Firefox Support (SUMO) lately? If so, we’d love to hear your thoughts on what obstacles we should look at tackling next in making Live Chat easier to use. Was there anything in the process you found hard to grasp, or were there things you simply found annoying? Is our hands on training approach enough, or should we have more documents about how to help with Live Chat? Are there particular improvements to the software we should focus on?

We’d love to hear your thoughts on this suggestion - do you know of great software that would be perfect for us, or are there any other needs for coordinating hours that I’ve over looked? - or any other suggestions for what you think we should work on next.

And as always thanks for your help and hope to see you on Live Chat!

A couple of weeks ago, Chris sent out a personal invitation to all SUMO knowledge base contributors to take a survey about their experiences with the website. It is our hope that we’ll get a better understanding of how our current Knowledge Base contributors use our system, and where we need better documentation.

The survey is still open, so if you’ve received an e-mail but haven’t yet taken the survey, please take it! If you haven’t received an e-mail but feel you should, please comment here.

Get ready to participate in the Firefox Screencasts contest! This is your chance to use your talents and passion for Firefox to create screencast support videos for the Firefox Support (SUMO) knowledge base.

We have prepared a list of the top 100 most popular support articles from the SUMO knowledge base and ask YOU to create screencasts for one, two, three, or all of them!  You can enter as many screencasts as you like.  With 100 different articles, anyone can choose whatever article for which they would like to create a screencast.

Mozilla will not be hosting the videos during this contest, so please use a third-party application like Jing to record your screencast and send us the link so we can view it. Ever used Jing?  Here’s a great online demo.  Click “Video Tour” on the front page to see how to use it…it couldn’t be easier!  Just download and begin recording!

All entries will be judged by a team who will look at the submissions and pick the best one for each of the 100 articles. That’s 100 winners!!

What are you waiting for? Go to the Firefox Screencasts contest and start sharing your knowledge!

A huge thanks goes out to Seth, Tara, and Alix for all their help in the preparations of this contest. Also thanks to the awesome SUMO team for the initial planning sessions in Toronto. Last but certainly not least, to everyone in the community who helped writing the top 100 support articles: THANK YOU!! This would not have been possible without your amazing contributions.

On Friday May 23 we’ll be hosting a Support Firefox Day. Frequent readers or SUMO contributors might remember the SUMO Day we hosted in April. Well, this time it’s SUMO Day with a twist and you really don’t want to miss it!

You’ll get a chance to learn more about the Mozilla Corporation and Firefox 3 and have your voice heard. We’ve got lots of things planned! In particular, we’ve lined up a prestigious group of Mozilla celebrities who will be taking YOUR questions and feedback about a variety of subjects. We’ll also have workshops where we’ll be focusing on all the new features of Firefox 3.

Take a look at this preliminary schedule:

• 8:00 AM PDT - 10:00: Support session #1
• 10:00 – 10:45: Workshop: Supporting Firefox 3 users with Live Chat. In this workshop, you’ll learn all you need to know about the cool user-to-user support solution on SUMO to start helping others. Host: Lucy Connor
• 11:00 - 11:30: Chat with Mike Connor, Developer Lead of Firefox 3. Mike will be taking your questions about the upcoming release of Firefox 3 and all its new features, including the all-new product help (yes, SUMO!)
• 11:30 - 12:30: Support Session #2
• 12:30 - 1:15: Workshop: Learn all about the new bookmark system in Firefox 3 (tags, smart location bar, keywords) to better help others. Host: Dietrich Ayala
• 1:30 – 2:00: Chat with Mike Beltzner, Phenomenologist & Usability Design Expert. This is your chance to get your questions about the Mozilla way of designing software answered straight from the source. You’ll learn, among other things, how user feedback and support continuously loops back into product.
• 2:00 - 3:00: Support Session #3
• 3:00 - 3:45: Workshop: Learn how to troubleshoot Firefox 3 like a pro. You’ll find out more about how Firefox works, and at the same time you’ll become an expert of user-to-user troubleshooting. Host: Matthew Middleton
• 4:00 - 4:30: Chat with John Lilly, CEO of Mozilla Corporation. John will be available to answer your questions about Mozilla, including how it was started, the difference between the Corporation and the Foundation, and any other things you can think of.
• 4:30 - 5:00: Chat with Asa Dotzler, Spokesmodel and Storyteller. Asa has been a part of Mozilla since the very early days and is the perfect person to ask your questions — any questions — about the Mozilla project.

Got enough reasons to skip work on Friday yet?

Of course, the big highlight of the day will be the best new Firefox 3 feature of all: Firefox’s new user-based support system. All throughout the day, we’ll be showcasing the various aspects to the support system: from the collaboratively written knowledge base to the forums and chat-based support and inviting you to take part. In addition to support-related contests with some pretty sweet Mozilla gear for prizes, we’ll be around all day to answer questions and help you get started helping your fellow users and Firefox enthusiasts.

Stay tuned for more info throughout the week!

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

Sumo

• Weekly metrics [1]
  • Do the top/bottom 5 lists seem consistent?
    • Seems to rotate between the same set of articles, so yes.
  • Some articles shouldn’t have a poll, such as the Community Support article. We need the ability to determine this on an article-by-article basis.
• Last week, a newsgroup thread about whether or not to include an about:config pref reference turned into a more general discussion about the scope of the SUMO knowledge base.
  • Our focus should be on solving common problems users are facing, and instructing people how to use Firefox. This includes troubleshooting articles as well as tutorials, how-to:s, references, and useful tips and tricks.
  • Our focus should not be on advanced, sometimes even unsupported tips & tricks targeted towards power users; for example how to move the Sidebar to the right side using userChrome.css.
  • We should keep our proactive approach for troubleshooting articles and make sure we cover the problems people are experiencing, but we don’t want the KB to turn into an advanced tips & tricks database with all sorts of hacks and unsupported tweaks.
  • chofmann summarized it as the Monkey Test: Does the article help fix a problem? Or does it just help someone “monkey around” with their browser?
  • The next step is to do an inventory of the articles to determine where to draw the line. Some articles not targeting our intended audience or not aligning to our focus will likely have to go away.
• Firefox Support Day
  • Need to settle on a schedule asap; djst to update the schedule on the wiki based on the discussions in this meeting.
  • Need to assign hosts for the workshops. zzxc can take one of them. Live or prerecorded video would be nice.
• Based on input from many people, cilias has been working on a Contributor Home Page redesign Draft (bug)
  • More targeted towards existing contributors; dynamic content showing things like the most recent SUMO blog posts, most recent KB activities, etc.
  • djst: The biggest problem with the old contributor page was that it wasn’t really targeting our contributors at all; it was more of an advertisement for how to get involved. For that, we have How to contribute now. That said, the redesigned contributor home page should target both new and existing contributors — it should be obvious to new contributors what the page elements are for.
  • The new contributor home page should be the page you land on after logging in (as a contributor). [2]
• Performance update from Laura: main bug to flip the switch back to using SUMO for Firefox 3 product help (429355) has two blockers. ETA: Wednesday, May 21

Knowledge Base

• Bugzilla: 2 new article requests [3][4], 1 article bug fixed [5]
• Knowledge base contributor survey was sent.
  • 55 people have done the survey / 351 invites sent
  • Latest response was yesterday, so the survey is still open.
  • Report on data so far.
  • Would be good to send out a reminder to our contributors. cilias to look into how the system works and whether or not it automatically does this.

Forums

• Thread count down again, probably just following the site-wide numbers
• np’s laptop is back in business, yay!
• Any further thoughts on using contributor forum for more kinds of discussion?
  • djst started a thread about it last week in the newsgroup, but obviously only got responses from people using the newsgroup. :) suggests that we blog about it to better probe the community. np to write the post.

Live Chat

• Working with a few new contributors
• Researching ways to make coordinating easier, i.e. making sure shifts are covered and letting people plan ahead to open outside hours. Lucy proposes a scheduling/booking solution that will allow helpers to commit to time slots so others can see when someone will definitely be on.
  • zzxc is concerned that signing up will make the volunteer effort feel more like a job. People may not want to commit for a volunteer thing like live chat; what about scenarios when they may have to leave, and need someone to back up?
  • djst suggests getting the community involved in this discussion as much as possible. Lucy to post in newsgroup and/or contributor forum about this asap to get the discussion started.

Attendees: djst, cilias, Cww, zzxc

Sumo

• Weekly metrics [1]
  • GMail suddenly in the top ten. Related to this? Will continue discussion in the contributor forum since np couldn’t make it to the meeting.
  • During last meeting nkoth suggested we do Action Log queries on support-stage.mozilla.org, but they time out. cilias to file a bug.
• Support Firefox Day #2 planning [2]
  • Q/A/F (Questions/Answers/Feedback) sessions will definitely happen. John Lilly, Mike Connor, and Mike Beltzner have already committed to host a session each, yay!
  • Workshop as an idea (from Cww) is cool, but we should target it more towards the people we want to have on SUMO. Therefore, we will change the overall theme around the workshops to be about “learning about the new features of Firefox 3 to better helping others.” The aim should be to educate current and potential new contributors about the new features, which will lead to a higher quality forum and live chat support, as well as potentially improved support articles about these topics.
  • We want people to help out with Live Chat because that’s the component of SUMO with the least active contributors today. Should get people to sign up and practice before the event, so we’re better prepared on the actual support day.
  • Should post an initial announcement on the SUMO blog tomorrow.

Knowledge Base

• cilias has been working on a contributor survey (not to be confused with the Community Survey Program by the fearless Seth & Staś) which will be deployed this week. The purpose of the survey is to get a better understanding on how our current Knowledge Base contributors use our system, and where we need better documentation. We’ll be sending this out individually to contributors to avoid spam and/or non-contributors submitting it.
• Bugzilla: 4 article requests [3], 2 new articles [4][5].
• Default diff view decided: Everyone asked agrees that the side-by-side diff view on SUMO is the most useful one, so we’ll make sure it’s the default too.
• Bug opened on removing the Sandbox category [6]. It’s confusing for localizers (at least four have asked djst about it, which is enough to make its existence questioned).
• Reminder: When creating content for Firefox 3, don’t add screenshots yet. We need to wait for the first release candidate, at least.
• Crediting MozillaZine rewording settled [7]. We’ll use “Based on information from (foo bar)”. Updating the wording shouldn’t take too long, but any help appreciated!

Forums

• Number of threads down, but matches a dip on number of sessions site-wide
• New linking from np stats are up [8]

Live Chat

• Five approved helpers entering last week, but mostly Cww and zzxc in Live Chat
• Two trainees ready for approval. Currently Lucy is the only one who can approve trainees. Will file bug to get it sorted out asap.
• Cww wants to look at the Spark source code but haven’t had time yet
• We will need much more helpers for the Firefox 3 release. One idea that could help is to get Firefox developers to help out during launch day. djst to further explore that idea.

Over the next few days, I’ll be sending out invitations to Firefox Support knowledge base contributors 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 improve the entire contributor experience.

If you’re registered as a contributor on support.mozilla.com, and don’t receive an invite within a week, contact us and provide your username.