how to activate email facility from the very basic.
Read the Guides.
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Sometimes, I feel that the responses to people’s questions are really harsh. Everyone who is new to something needs some guidance to build there confidence in using a product. Not everyone has the ability to jump in and understand everything. Perhaps this could be given some thought, rather than abrupt unhelpful comments which will just make people go elsewhere and lose out on a good application
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With respect, the guides are well laid out and provide enough information for most users to be able to setup and use the product successfully.
The language used is clear and simple so that even users whose first language is not English will have a good chance of understanding what is been shown
While I don’t mind replying to new users questions, I find it a bit irritating when a question is asked which seems to show that the user has not even opened the relevant guide. Sometimes this irritation comes through but remember, we are all users and not paid for devoting our time to replying to questions.
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There has been a huge change in the tone of support on this forum since our first use in early 2015. However back then the guides were not as mature as they are now. It makes sense to check the guides first. However in the early years the participants would provide a link to the guide articles giving new members a kick start as to where to start. Some still do this … it is a simple thing and it is really helpful for the newbie.
Yes the rules do prompt people to look there first but newbies can get overwhelmed and forget.
I know that sometimes I respond promptly using a mobile device and without easy access to the website - this makes it more complicated to include a link to the relevant guide. I reckon that having a quick response is better than waiting a few hours to get a response with a link
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Give a man a fish - feed him for a day
Teach a man to fish - feed him forever
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@bartona and @compuit: This user was already pointed to a guide by @Joe91 in his/her previous question but it seems s/he simply refuses to search and read the guides or search the forum, which means a waste of time for regular members reading the question.
Sorry but I don’t think your comment is useful to the OP. Why didn’t you go to the guides’ page, search the corresponding guide and post its link in your comment? @compuit states:
@Tut is the most active moderator with an enormous amount of patience and always tries to help everyone, but I understand that sometimes enough is enough.
Obviously, @bartona, your comment was directed toward me—or at least prompted by my post—since no one else had yet responded. My situation was exactly as @Joe91 described in post #6. @gananath joined the forum only 11 days before posting the opening question and may not even have been aware of the existence of the Guides. I generally try to follow your advice, providing links when appropriate. But I don’t always have time. Do you think it would be better to let a question go completely unanswered?
@compuit, you paint a pleasant picture of the past, but your recollection of timing is off and lacks context. The first Guide in the present format was not written until September 2016, when there were just a few hundred Manager users, many of whom did not belong to the forum. Two more Guides followed in 2017. Creation of others really picked up in 2018, and the Guides Index has since been updated 244 times as more Guides were added. Now, there are almost 12,500 active, registered forum members. (There is no way to tell how many people follow the forum or use the Guides without registering.) This month alone, 129 new forum members signed up. But for all that growth, the rate of new questions has actually gone down. The reason, I think, is availability of the Guides and the Search capability that goes with them. So it is really essential that new forum members understand the Guides exist and make use of them rather than asking easily found questions of the handful of most active forum members.
My personal opinion matches @Joe91’s: encouraging new users to work just a little bit to find and use the Guides helps them more in the long run than spoon-feeding answers.
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Maybe pin the FAQ’s and Guides’ URL so it’ll be the first post everyone sees when visiting the forum, and make it mandatory to read the FAQ as part of the registration process as a new forum member?
@tut Thank you for your response. I think that perhaps you may have misunderstood the purpose of my reply and that is to encourage new users. It can be very daunting to try something new. Manager is very complex and I am still failing to understand some of the concepts of it - I make use of the sections that are appropriate to my needs. I will reiterate my underlying point and that is not to drive people away from a very good application purely because someone new doesn’t grasp how the support works for it first time round. Also, English is not perhaps some people’s first language and may fail to understand a response that is brief.
Probably better under another topic, however the guides used to be available in Manager by default. See Turn Help Off Manager
I am not sure if this is still the case in the Desktop / Server / Cloud. In our environment the Support / Help has been turned off. But if it is still intact maybe the link to help in the Manager application needs to be more obvious to those who have it enabled? This could effectively take Newbies directly to the guides reducing forum activity - Maybe?
Removal of automatic display of links to Guides was a response to widespread demands for white labeling by professional accountants and bookkeepers who are reselling use of Manager to their clients, while presenting the application as their own. That was a business decision by the developer. I don’t believe you should expect any change to the policy.
While I agree with your recall of history I still disagree with the desirability of the change.
At the moment the free version comes with instructions, but all the paid versions have no instructions.
A better solution would be for those who want to remove the program’s instructions manual to remove the file from the program directory when updating their server and replace it with what ever other system they have developed.
If the majority of the cloud subscriptions are via white label resellers, then the option to hide the manual could be added to Manager Cloud Which could move the guides file to a “Guides hide” sub directory.
Shipping a program with no instructions is just plain bad design.
So do I!