Oracle Support Site Created by Retarded Monkeys?

Anyone else having problems creating a service request on that abomination that the world's most complete, open, and integrated business software and hardware systems company calls a support website?

I think many of us still call it the "Knowledge Gungle", based on the old language where JDE called it the Knowledge Garden...

Any time you have to look at it, or ask it for help ~ grab your Pith Helmet and Machete!

(db)

I find the new site a wonderful exercise in futility. One of my newest hobbies is frustrating the living hell out of myself. My new muse is opening SRs with JDE support at Oracle.

Don't worry, I'm seeking counseling.

Max

Site created by "Retarded Monkeys"? LOL - to quote Dave Berry - sounds like a good name for a band....

5 stars....best post on JDEList in a long while. Bravo.

Its really strange. I was reading your posts in communities.oracle.com and your point level went from 3,200 to -8000 and your status changed to p0wned.

"All Your bAzes bElonG tO uS" - bOrgacle

LOL. I have often been close to starting one of these threads but always make myself wait a day before pushing the "post" button.

I can never find anything in the knowledge base and I don't think Google's spiders are able to index stuff that requires a login. I do have a guy here at work that's a genius at finding stuff on Oracle's KB (formerly weed garden). I am thinking of building an Web site that is an Oracle search engine with him as the "engine". $1 per search...

We support several customers and I have created different profiles for each and the process is a lot simpler for doing so. The only "issue" I have with creating an SR is having to repeat the issue on the page where they ask you to what has changed recently. So raising an SR takes about 5 minutes (with adding attachments) so not sure what the gripe is with creating SR's.
As for the knowledge side - the latest change took a couple of minutes to work out but I would say that the content and actually finding issues that affect my customers has never been so easy. I am finding the solutions a lot faster and easier than ever before - which means that I do not need to raise SR's to get an answer to a problem that is already published.
They also have some great FAQ documents which have several very useful links to other documents that have helped me to stop issues before they would have happened.
So if this in my humble opinion as some of you are fond of saying is the work of retarded monkeys then long may the safari continue. So on the knowledge side could it be garbage in garbage out......

First of all, I would not want to take away from any creative, helpful powers that retarded monkeys may be capable of. Represent!

Having said that.. I find the new support site a heck of a lot better than the knowledge garden/ Jungle. That was misery. Here at least we can search somewhat intelligently at least in terms of the app support side.

There are many sketchy things about dealing with Borgacle, but for me at least the support site isn't one of them.

Canadian $.02
Malcolm

[ QUOTE ]
I find the new support site a heck of a lot better than the knowledge garden/ Jungle.

[/ QUOTE ]

I do get frustrated sometimes and its fun to joke, but in all honesty its not that bad and it is getting better. It does seem like others are able to find stuff in the KB better than me, but that probably just means I don't know what I am doing. I use Google to find stuff in the MS KB also since their search engine never finds what I am looking for. Google's mind reading ability has just made me a bad searcher I guess.

I get frustrated sometimes when opening a SR because it does often feel like I am repeating information multiple times and trying to figure out exactly which drop down in the list of 10,000 options to select in the different categories can lead to undue anxiety. Once the SR is open though I think the UI and the features to work the SR and manage SRs are very good.

Yes, creating SR's in the KG is ... a wasteland.

Oracle, if you are listening: You already know our licensed configurations ~ why do we have to repopulate the form, every time we open an SR? It would be REALLY NICE, you you would just provide drop-downs for the indenties we are actually licensed for. If I'm on an iSeries ~ only give me that option.

It is not rocket-science to provide ONLY the options a location is licensed to....

Your Support Staff would not have to complain that 'the customer' keeps screwing up the SR Setup ~ if you took much of the inaccuracies away from us.

(db)

[ QUOTE ]
in all honesty its not that bad and it is getting better

[/ QUOTE ]

No, its not getting better. It appears to me that Oracle, in the interest of being more mammoth and save money, created the mother of all support sites. You can filter out the products you are interested in to just JDE and you still get this monolithic portal framework and information for products completely unrelated to E1. IMHO, there is an inverse relationship between the speed at which I can resolve my system issues and the amount and variety of content offered by support.oracle.com. While I definitely agree that it is faster and more reliable than the KG, it is not more comprehensive or more cohesive.

What helped me as a bp was access to the KG calls db, which is no longer the case. You get some of that from communities.oracle.com. However jdelist is the ultimate source for that kind of thing. Thank goodness jdelist is still independent.

[ QUOTE ]
We support several customers and I have created different profiles for each and the process is a lot simpler for doing so. The only "issue" I have with creating an SR is having to repeat the issue on the page where they ask you to what has changed recently. So raising an SR takes about 5 minutes (with adding attachments) so not sure what the gripe is with creating SR's.
As for the knowledge side - the latest change took a couple of minutes to work out but I would say that the content and actually finding issues that affect my customers has never been so easy. I am finding the solutions a lot faster and easier than ever before - which means that I do not need to raise SR's to get an answer to a problem that is already published.
They also have some great FAQ documents which have several very useful links to other documents that have helped me to stop issues before they would have happened.
So if this in my humble opinion as some of you are fond of saying is the work of retarded monkeys then long may the safari continue. So on the knowledge side could it be garbage in garbage out......

[/ QUOTE ]

Most of the time I am pretty patient with the support site as some of the issues are definitely self-inflicted. However, when one cannot get a SR to submit, that's a problem. I tried it in multiple browsers under multiple clients. I submitted a request for help with the website and have never heard from them. That is pathetic. The other stuff is borderline, Comcast-level crappy but that is bad.

I expect more.

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
We support several customers and I have created different profiles for each and the process is a lot simpler for doing so. The only "issue" I have with creating an SR is having to repeat the issue on the page where they ask you to what has changed recently. So raising an SR takes about 5 minutes (with adding attachments) so not sure what the gripe is with creating SR's.
As for the knowledge side - the latest change took a couple of minutes to work out but I would say that the content and actually finding issues that affect my customers has never been so easy. I am finding the solutions a lot faster and easier than ever before - which means that I do not need to raise SR's to get an answer to a problem that is already published.
They also have some great FAQ documents which have several very useful links to other documents that have helped me to stop issues before they would have happened.
So if this in my humble opinion as some of you are fond of saying is the work of retarded monkeys then long may the safari continue. So on the knowledge side could it be garbage in garbage out......

[/ QUOTE ]

Most of the time I am pretty patient with the support site as some of the issues are definitely self-inflicted. However, when one cannot get a SR to submit, that's a problem. I tried it in multiple browsers under multiple clients. I submitted a request for help with the website and have never heard from them. That is pathetic. The other stuff is borderline, Comcast-level crappy but that is bad.

I expect more.

[/ QUOTE ]


And finally, a full five days after telling them I couldn't create a Service Request, I get...instructions on how to create an SR.

Seriously?

And Oracle is starting to push people toward their own "Communities", which basically means that we now not only are going to ask customers and consultants to test our released software, we are going to try to have the customers provide support for the software as well.

Microsoft long ago allowed (encouraged?) peer helping communities. In doing so they relinquished a certain amount of control over that process and had to accept allowing a large amount of their intellectual property to be freely accessible. Oracle wants to keep all that content behind a wall (that people pay to view) but wants to have peer support.

Ummmm, doesn't work that way.