KB Notifications

[dgschaefer]

This may be in the wrong place, but I couldn't find a community for topics related to the tech support site.  If it is, Toby Metcalf‌, please move it.

I get email notifications about new or updated KB articles relevent to topics I've chosen.  It seems that frequently these notifications link to articles that were published prematurely.  There is a title, and nothing more.  The title and description match completely but don't adequately describe what the article is about.  Sometimes it even refers to an SPR, but there is no link to the SPR.  It's as if the article was created as a place holder, but there wasn't enough information to complete it yet.

Is it possible that these kind of preliminary articles can be made hidden until there's some real information to share?  It's frustrating to click a link to learn more and find that there is no more to learn.

[TomU]

The support group is here: PTC eSupport Help

By the way, I totally agree.  I hate clicking on some of these support links in the email and getting the message, "not allowed to view this content" (or something like that).

[Tmetcalf]

Hi Doug,

Tom Uminn‌ is correct and I will move this discussion over.

Best,

Toby

[PeterCase]

Your post is in the right place now. Thank you @Toby Metcalf and @Tom Uminn.

Doug, thank you for sharing this concern.

We had a look through the articles you viewed this month and did not find any with missing data in their Resolution fields.

We also send weekly Article Health Check reports to engineers to catch any articles which have been shared prematurely. The report highlights any non-work-in-progress articles with an empty Description or Resolution.

With this said, we had another report recently about incorrect visibility of what we call "data-specific" SPR articles, and I'm wondering if this is another occurence.

Although the data itself would never be visible / accessible, these are articles about the way a particular customer's dataset works with our software, and not of general interest to the wider customer base. To avoid creating unnecessary "noise" in the Knowledge Base, we only make these visible to the customer who reported the issue.

I'll make contact offline if you have a few minutes today to check one or two links, which will help us address this, and will update this thread again once we get to the bottom of the issue.

[TomU]

The problem I mentioned only occurs occasionally.  It's like creation of the document triggered adding it to the notification emails, but the permissions weren't yet set to "public".  The behavior is exactly the same as when an SPR is filed but the tech hasn't specifically allowed you access to that SPR yet.  Make sense?

[Marco_Tosin]

I noticed the same behavior as Tom wrote.

I receive TS mail daily and take a look to see if there are some articles that could be interesting.

Very rarely one of those article isn't accessible.

[TomU]

Maybe anytime we notice something weird we should just post a screenshot here. 

[dgschaefer]

I'm not seeing inaccessible documents as much as incomplete.  Take a look at this one as an example:

https://support.ptc.com/appserver/cs/view/solution.jsp?n=CS241946

The title & description are identical, no detail on what the problem is and an SPR is referred to but not linked.  There's really nothing to be gained from clicking the link in the KB alert email since all the info is in the title.  This seems to happen a lot.  I'd rather these pop up in the alerts when there's more complete info.

[PeterCase]

Doug,

Thank you for sharing this, and more detailed information offline.

- I can confirm that one of the articles in your list (CS_241817) was data-specific should not be visible. I've asked our Operations team to prioritise this issue.

- The article you mention above (CS_241946) is now fixed, and you should be able to see the SPR data. Please let me know if not.

The other articles which contain minimal information (identical title / description, SPR reference only in the resolution) do not have visibility issues, but I will spend time to go through and check if our teams missed an update.

One guiding principal for knowledge sharing is that we disseminate quickly what we know to be true at the time and continue to evolve the content as we find out more. In most cases this is preferable to waiting and not sharing. For some (although not many) defects, all we have to communicate initially is a short description and SPR number.

Cause may be unknown, there may be no known workaround. The SPR information at the bottom of the article is then updated automatically as our R&D teams work on the fix.

I'll let you know the outcome of my checks of these remaining articles in the next day or so.

[TomU]

I just worked through my update email for today.  56 articles were listed.

• 49 - No related documents found
• 4 - One related article listed
• 1 - One related reference document listed
• 1 - Two related articles listed
• 1 - Seven related articles and 2 related discussions listed (CS110511) 

I did notice two sets of articles that seem like they should reference each other but don't.

• CS241152 with CS236840
• CS21489 with CS21251

I only saw one article like the one Doug mentioned above (very little info) - CS242328.  The SPR does work.

[TomU]

From today's update:

CS240806 - Broken Images

[PeterCase]

Our Knowledge Manager spotted your post and opened an article feedback with the author to address this soonest.

For issues on specific articles, please use the widget on the article itself and add a quick comment, for example "images broken". This gets the feedback straight to the right addressee, and should help speed things up.

Thanks for your help in ensuring ongoing vitality of our articles.

[TomU]

Do you mean this?

How do I comment on the article without saying whether it was helpful or not?

[iburdea]

After choosing "No" or after choosing "Yes" you have the possibility to add comments into the following window:

[Tmetcalf]

Good day Ioana,

Would it also be helpful if the pop up offered a link to PTC Community to discuss or ask your question?

Tom Uminn‌ Doug Schaefer‌ Marco Tosin‌ - your thoughts?

Best,

Toby

[dgschaefer]

I like that idea.  Ideally it would automatically include a link to the document in the post, but I can imagine that might be difficult.

[Marco_Tosin]

YES!

[TomU]

Frankly, I don't think that's the right place.  If a link was provided to the community in some way, it really should go here:

[dgschaefer]

Why not both?  I, frankly, fail to see those RH side links often.  I simply look past them.

I'm betting that most of the folks who lick on the response box are frustrated and not getting the info they need. Fewer click there to say this article was perfect. Providing a link to the community right there might get them to a solution faster.

[TomU]

Thanks Ioana Burdea‌.  I was hoping to be able to comment without making a judgment on the article.  Looks like that's not possible.

[dgschaefer]

I marked this as "Assumed Answered" since I got the info that I needed, I believe, but no one post is really "the answer".  I probably shouldn't have marked it as a question in the first place.