Seamless and friendly customer support instructions

Hey, I’ve been checking out Endless OS because of Bringing OSTree to real-world desktops as I’m looking for something stable that I can install for non-technical friends. Also noticed that @ptomato is doing a lot of great work to bring JavaScript updates to Linux (https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gjs/tree/master).

Pulling my comment over at https://community.endlessos.com/t/vlc-doesnt-work-how-can-i-fix-it/5941/5?u=jcrben into a thread:

When I came into the forum, I noticed this boilerplate message https://community.endlessos.com/t/uninstall-endless-i-want-to-change-it-to-windows-10-pro/1907/16

People often don’t seem to understand the message in bold, and that’s probably in part because it’s ambiguous and doesn’t explain at all how to send the file.

Also, why should they have to send the file? Why can’t the tool ask if they want to upload the file and ask them to type their forum username, or paste in a link to the thread?

I’ve noticed a few times that users don’t understand, and they post the path to the file. The response is sometimes to repeat the bolded instructions (e.g., https://community.endlessos.com/t/uninstall-endless-i-want-to-change-it-to-windows-10-pro/1907/20), but it would be more helpful to point out with screenshots how they can upload files (or include an email address, or whatever).

Thanks for all the work!

2 Likes

Thanks for your feedback!

We recently changed the eos-diagnostics command to be more clear on that point; now it does this:

$ eos-diagnostics 
Endless OS Diagnostics file saved as:
/sysroot/home/philip/eos-diagnostic-180312_112148_UTC-0700.txt
Please send that file (not this message!) to the Endless Community or Support.

And opens a file browser window with the file highlighted.

I agree, it could be made easier to upload the file to the forum, although the forum is not the only place that the file might go; we also ask people to attach them to customer support tickets.

2 Likes

That does seem like a pretty clear message. But does that explain how to send the file? Admittedly I haven’t used it - I donated the old laptop that I was going to install this on after installing Mint instead.

What I was seeing in the forum is not that people are confused about what file they need to send, but the actual mechanics of uploading the file. I’ve seen a couple times that people will post the path to the file (e.g., see my original link).

I was pointed to How do I make a debug log of Endless OS? | Support & Training | Endless OS Foundation - perhaps that could be updated to point to various ways on how to upload a file? At the end it says this:

  1. Send gnome-software-verbose.txt to us

Or is there another article on that? Perhaps a discourse support article on how to upload files?