help desk vs bug tracker

[Boudewijn Rempt]

Hi,

Right now, we're getting lots of user support questions in bugzilla, and at
the Krita sprint we were discussing whether it wouldn't be better to have a
kind of in-between system. Either something that works like a proper helpdesk,
or something like askbot, or both. But we just cannot handle the need for user
support with our existing tools anymore.

Askbot would be a replacement for user support questions in the forums,
something the forum isn't really suited for since it makes it extremely hard
find questions that were already asked. https://ask.libreoffice.org/en/
questions/ shows how that would work. Problem is, we cannot have a single ask
site for all of KDE, there would have to be specialed sites like
ask.krita.org, which might be a whole lot of work to maintain.

As for a helpdesk system vs bugzilla: we get too many user support questions
in bugzilla, like https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=399639 or https://
bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=399494.

Making bugzilla user-friendly is a laudable effort, but it still leads to
reports that are useless for developers: and answering questions on bugzilla
is a lot of effort because there's no real flow of question, asking for info,
giving an answer. There are no canned repsonses, and no "smart" system that
would suggest the canned response for frequently asked questions, or an easy
way to link people to the documentation.

We discussed mitigrating strategies for bugzilla, like including a reporting
wizard in the application itself, but the problem remains: bugzilla is not
helpdesk software, but a bug tracker. It's a developmen tool, not a user
support tool.

A good helpdesk system would have:

* no reporter login
* scriptable "wizards" to get the basic info
* canned responses
* ideally, machine learning to suggest the right canned response for faqs
* a knowledge base where reporters can search (replaces FAQ pages)
* a q/a site where users can help other uses (included or separately: askbot,
http://question2answer.org/ or stackexchange)
* easy conversion from a helpdesk ticket to a bug report
* easy conversion from a helpdesk ticket to a kb entry

We looked at vailable open source solutions:

* helpy.io
* otrs.org
* osticket.com

All of them are open-core opensource solutions :-(. I wonder whether we've
missed any options. I'm also wondering whether other KDE projects have the
seem need as we have for Krita, of separating support questions from bug
reports. If that isn't a big issue for other projects, maybe we should start
with an ask.krita.org instance and see what happens then.

[Andy Betts]

 

Post by Boudewijn Rempt
Hi,
Right now, we're getting lots of user support questions in bugzilla, and at
the Krita sprint we were discussing whether it wouldn't be better to have a
kind of in-between system. Either something that works like a proper helpdesk,
or something like askbot, or both. But we just cannot handle the need for user
support with our existing tools anymore.
Askbot would be a replacement for user support questions in the forums,
something the forum isn't really suited for since it makes it extremely hard
find questions that were already asked. https://ask.libreoffice.org/en/
questions/ shows how that would work. Problem is, we cannot have a single ask
site for all of KDE, there would have to be specialed sites like
ask.krita.org, which might be a whole lot of work to maintain.
As for a helpdesk system vs bugzilla: we get too many user support questions
in bugzilla, like https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=399639 or https://
bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=399494.
Making bugzilla user-friendly is a laudable effort, but it still leads to
reports that are useless for developers: and answering questions on bugzilla
is a lot of effort because there's no real flow of question, asking for info,
giving an answer. There are no canned repsonses, and no "smart" system that
would suggest the canned response for frequently asked questions, or an easy
way to link people to the documentation.
We discussed mitigrating strategies for bugzilla, like including a reporting
wizard in the application itself, but the problem remains: bugzilla is not
helpdesk software, but a bug tracker. It's a developmen tool, not a user
support tool.
* no reporter login
* scriptable "wizards" to get the basic info
* canned responses
* ideally, machine learning to suggest the right canned response for faqs
* a knowledge base where reporters can search (replaces FAQ pages)
* a q/a site where users can help other uses (included or separately: askbot,
http://question2answer.org/ or stackexchange)
* easy conversion from a helpdesk ticket to a bug report
* easy conversion from a helpdesk ticket to a kb entry
* helpy.io
* otrs.org
* osticket.com
All of them are open-core opensource solutions :-(. I wonder whether we've
missed any options. I'm also wondering whether other KDE projects have the
seem need as we have for Krita, of separating support questions from bug
reports. If that isn't a big issue for other projects, maybe we should start
with an ask.krita.org instance and see what happens then.
--
https://www.krita.org 

I think this is worth considering. These messages are generally support in nature and would be better suited for a ticketing system with community support instead. The fact that we get many of this kind denotes that even some of our users don’t find other alternatives and ping the entire community because there is no better alternative.

Thank you,

Andy

[Jonathan Riddell]

Post by Boudewijn Rempt
As for a helpdesk system vs bugzilla: we get too many user support questions
in bugzilla, like https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=399639 or https://
bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=399494.

For Ubuntu there is a Questions feature in Launchpad is similar to the bug tracker but for support.

https://answers.launchpad.net/ubuntu

But in over a decade doing Ubuntu stuff I never used it and I think the number of people using it it very few. Users would rather use forums like https://ubuntuforums.org/ or Stack Exchange or Discourse for asking for help. Which takes me onto a related topic I'll e-mail about next.

Jonathan

[David Edmundson]

Post by Boudewijn Rempt
I'm also wondering whether other KDE projects have the

seem need as we have for Krita,

With my Plasma hat on:

Surprisingly, we don't get too many end user questions on bugzilla. I think
it tends to get loaded onto the distros instead.

We do get quite a few where the user thinks they have a bug but it's an
issue on their end but I don't think a helpdesk would solve them.

David

[Andy Betts]

 

Post by Boudewijn Rempt

Post by Boudewijn Rempt
I'm also wondering whether other KDE projects have the

seem need as we have for Krita,
Surprisingly, we don't get too many end user questions on bugzilla. I think it tends to get loaded onto the distros instead.
We do get quite a few where the user thinks they have a bug but it's an issue on their end but I don't think a helpdesk would solve them.
David

Maybe one thing that is hard to deal with is the sheer email distribution where you can’t seem to be able to route people’s questions or requests to the right audience. We also get endless threads that you can’t seem to be able to unsubscribe from. Would some of these tools be able to do that?

Thank you,

Andy

[Boudewijn Rempt]

Post by Andy Betts
Maybe one thing that is hard to deal with is the sheer email distribution
where you can’t seem to be able to route people’s questions or requests to
the right audience. We also get endless threads that you can’t seem to be
able to unsubscribe from. Would some of these tools be able to do that?

The nice thing about askbot is that it actually combines asking and searching:
so typing your question already starts showing up possible answers. That
should go a long way to solving the repeated questions we get a lot of.

[Laszlo Papp]

Post by Boudewijn Rempt

Post by Andy Betts
Maybe one thing that is hard to deal with is the sheer email distribution
where you can’t seem to be able to route people’s questions or requests

to

Post by Andy Betts
the right audience. We also get endless threads that you can’t seem to be
able to unsubscribe from. Would some of these tools be able to do that?

so typing your question already starts showing up possible answers. That
should go a long way to solving the repeated questions we get a lot of.

Isn't google supposed to do that? You type the question and you get the
answer in a result.

I personally do not like these bot support sites for services as it makes
the interaction impersonal. I also do not trust bots not making big
mistakes, potentially misleading me.

Post by Boudewijn Rempt
--
https://www.krita.org

[Boudewijn Rempt]

Post by Laszlo Papp
Isn't google supposed to do that? You type the question and you get the
answer in a result.

No, google isn't supposed to do that, and doesn't do that -- google is no
alternative for user support.

Post by Laszlo Papp
I personally do not like these bot support sites for services as it makes
the interaction impersonal. I also do not trust bots not making big
mistakes, potentially misleading me.

I think you're overestimating the automation, askbot doesn't do scripted
question and answer (though that would be very useful as well) -- but in the
end, the problem isn't that a potential ask.krita.org might give a misleading
answer, but that the user doesn't get an answer at all because too much of the
support load falls on too few shoulders.

[Hans "totte" Tovetjärn]

Post by Laszlo Papp

Post by Andy Betts

Post by Andy Betts
Maybe one thing that is hard to deal with is the sheer email

distribution

Post by Andy Betts
where you can’t seem to be able to route people’s questions or

requests to

Post by Andy Betts
the right audience. We also get endless threads that you can’t

seem to be

Post by Andy Betts
able to unsubscribe from. Would some of these tools be able to do

that?
so typing your question already starts showing up possible answers. That
should go a long way to solving the repeated questions we get a lot of.

Isn't google supposed to do that? You type the question and you get
the answer in a result.
I personally do not like these bot support sites for services as it
makes the interaction impersonal. I also do not trust bots not making
big mistakes, potentially misleading me.

How is it making the interaction "impersonal"? The software simply shows
potentially related questions previously asked based on the subject
lines. Q&A-oriented software also encourages asking direct questions and
getting direct answers, with a layout that makes it easier for others
with the same issue to navigate, as opposed to the sometimes
too-long-to-read paginated mess on more classical discussion boards.

[Scott Petrovic]

I think "bot" isn't really the best term to describe what a Q&A site is --
or what AskBot does. When I think of "bot", I think of some type of AI that
tries to chat with people or interacts with them as if they are a person. I
am pretty sure Askbot doesn't work like that. It is closer to something
like StackOverflow.

This issue might only pertain to Krita, but this is how it currently tries
to separate issues with artists

- bug tracker tracking bugs and wishlist items
- forum that is a generic bucket that has a lot of things (discussion
about new artwork, people wanting new features, people asking about bugs or
issues, people wanting to be involved, general discussion)
- chatroom (IRC) real-time support if the developers are at their
computer


I feel like this Q&A site's job is more focused on answering very specific
questions that might be asked frequently (and developers can look up
quickly and reference). Right now with the forum and Krita, there are quite
a few questions that are asked over and over which get a bit tiring. I
imagine some people aren't even searching because of how the forum is set
up. Searches also bring back discussions about artwork, feature requests,
or other discussions not related to the question. The forum search also
searches across all KDE products, which can be a bit confusing at times for
people that don't know that searching the forum will search across all KDE
products, not just Krita.

Scott Petrovic



On Tue, Oct 30, 2018 at 3:23 AM Hans "totte" TovetjÀrn <

Post by Hans "totte" Tovetjärn

Post by Laszlo Papp

Post by Andy Betts

Post by Andy Betts
Maybe one thing that is hard to deal with is the sheer email

distribution

Post by Andy Betts
where you can’t seem to be able to route people’s questions or

requests to

Post by Andy Betts
the right audience. We also get endless threads that you can’t

seem to be

Post by Andy Betts
able to unsubscribe from. Would some of these tools be able to do

that?
so typing your question already starts showing up possible answers. That
should go a long way to solving the repeated questions we get a lot of.

Isn't google supposed to do that? You type the question and you get
the answer in a result.
I personally do not like these bot support sites for services as it
makes the interaction impersonal. I also do not trust bots not making
big mistakes, potentially misleading me.

How is it making the interaction "impersonal"? The software simply shows
potentially related questions previously asked based on the subject
lines. Q&A-oriented software also encourages asking direct questions and
getting direct answers, with a layout that makes it easier for others
with the same issue to navigate, as opposed to the sometimes
too-long-to-read paginated mess on more classical discussion boards.
--
Best regards,
Hans "totte" TovetjÀrn
0xEB5A95EC99421F98

[Boudewijn Rempt]

Post by Boudewijn Rempt

Post by Boudewijn Rempt
I'm also wondering whether other KDE projects have the

seem need as we have for Krita,
Surprisingly, we don't get too many end user questions on bugzilla. I think
it tends to get loaded onto the distros instead.
We do get quite a few where the user thinks they have a bug but it's an
issue on their end but I don't think a helpdesk would solve them.

Yes, I was suspecting that Krita might be an outlier here.

[Martin Flöser]

Post by Boudewijn Rempt

Post by Boudewijn Rempt
I'm also wondering whether other KDE projects have the

seem need as we have for Krita,
Surprisingly, we don't get too many end user questions on bugzilla. I
think it tends to get loaded onto the distros instead.
We do get quite a few where the user thinks they have a bug but it's
an issue on their end but I don't think a helpdesk would solve them.

What I see in KWin quite often is: "foo doesn't work" or "KWin should do
bar". And then you tell them how to enable the feature or that KWin
already supports it. This is so common that I consider this as one of
the huge pain point in bugzilla. For me that falls under "user support"
and I think a helpdesk system could improve the situation (Obviously it
requires users going there and if a user knows something like "KWin"
exists and can report a bug against it it's a lost case - a user
shouldn't know KWin exists).

Cheers
Martin