The Future of Helpdesk

Hello, Folks,

I am sure that most of you are aware that the Trainz team was recently required to scale down as a result of the closure of Auran Developements.

Whilst we certainly intend to continue developing this great product, our budget can only extend to production staff and sadly we can no longer provide the luxury of paid community aids.

As much as we appreciated the excellent work of Alan Yeomans in responding to helpdesk enquiries, we will now be required to take care of these questions ourselves. We are currently attending to the backlog of helpdesk messages; your patience is much appreciated whilst we get the system back on track.

Considering the sheer number of daily enquiries we receive; and given that we must also accomplish our daily developement goals, we will no longer be able to provide telephone support. Technical support will now be limited to TRS2006 and later versions of Trainz only.

Where questions relate to earlier versions of Trainz, customers will generally be directed to use the Trainz Forum for answers.

We hope you'll understand that it's necessary for us to make these changes, and thank you for your patience and co-operation.

See you around!

~R~

Sad news indeed, but we in the community will try to help out with issues if we can.

Thanks for the update about the state of the Help desk. It's really not too surprising to me, and frankly, it may well be that the users still using older versions of TRS may well know more about the version they are using than the people at Auran, who have, after all, been since working on other versions of the software. But maybe it might be useful if users could be involved in producing updated lists of common questions that could be distilled into one place to start. I know the forums have a search facility, but unfortunately, search facilities don't always do much good, especially in a multi-national community.

And perhaps this might be a good time for a round-table discussion between the community and the development team to explore ways that we users can help enhance the product for our own personal enjoyment, and for the good of the wider TRS community in general. For example, while reflecting on a recent thread (maybe on one of the outside boards, though, rather than in these forums) that lamented the appearance of junctions / switches especially when compared with the appearance of a competing trainsimulator product, it occurred to me that an answer here was to create a family of junctions / turnouts with improved graphics which could be inserted into a route when it was nearly completed. Properly designed, and applied, these would improve the appearance of the route, and can could be done by users with minimal involvement of Auran staff. We'll all benefit.


just my .00002 worth.

ns

Most will fully understand the position-this needs to be a "Sticky" or in the Auran announcements!

Rob said:

Hello, Folks,


As much as we appreciated the excellent work of Alan Yeomans in responding to helpdesk enquiries, we will now be required to take care of these questions ourselves. We are currently attending to the backlog of helpdesk messages; your patience is much appreciated whilst we get the system back on track.

Click to expand...

That's a wise move. A forum based help center would be more efficient than an Email or support ticket system. Also, you could expand the support to IRC. As it is now, there is very little activity in the Auran IRC rooms. Special rooms created for Trainz help could greatly accelerate customer support as well as create 'jobs' for Auran customers acting as Operators and Moderators.

Thanks Rob, good to hear from you.
I have discovered, in life, sometimes everything needs to be pared down to the bone so that advances can take place. Let's hope this is one of those times....
Ed