Marcus' Macro Scheduler Blog

We are trialling a new live chat support system. It seems to be really popular. People seem to love getting answers quickly.

Of course it keeps us busy, but I do love talking to our software users and prospective customers.

The majority of people are polite and courteous. But I am amazed at a small minority.

On one occasion someone asked us if we had software which could record a sequence of events in an application in order to generate a user manual in Word document format. Of course this isn’t really what we do so I said so. I even said “Sorry, that’s not something we do.”. No more than a second later the user logged off without even a “Thanks for your time”. Not a word. I couldn’t believe it.

On another day someone was reporting an error during installation. He didn’t give me anything to go on and was quite rude. I asked what the problem was and said I’d be happy to help get it sorted. He said “it goes error” and then said “what the f*** is that all about”. I asked him not to swear and warned him that we won’t tolerate abusive language. He responded with some even more vile comments and then signed off.

And something I’m seeing more and more of are chat requests which appear to be little more than people asking us to do their home work for them. Yesterday I was asked to describe the internal format of a Linux .exe file. I explained we don’t support Linux and that was outside of our remit anyway. “Ok” he said “Please explain the difference between a .lib file and a .dll file”. When asked, politely, what the relevance was to our products and services he said “Nothing, I only want normal difference”.

Is this the nature of the anonymous web? Would these people be the same in a bricks’n mortar store?

I’ve talked about strange support requests and ones that require us to be clairvoyant before.

Sometimes people don’t even ask for help. Alwin over at Collectorz.com is seeing cases where people post complaints on other sites instead. He asks “What happened to asking for help?“. Why are people complaining anonymously when they encounter a problem rather than actually asking for help?

Small companies like us and Collectorz take support seriously. We strive to give the best support there is. It’s one way that small companies can differentiate themselves. But I guess that quick, helpful support is so unusual in the software world that people just assume it’s not even worth asking. That’s a real shame. I also wonder if the people who shout and scream anonymously on forums realise what it feels like to be on the other end. To be a small company, working flat out to do the best they can, worrying about what other people might read.

To get help it helps to help us help you. 🙂

I’ve only recently discovered that LinkedIn lets you create company profile pages.

As if there’s not enough stuff to keep up with. Social Networking is becoming a full time job.

Anyhow, not wanting to be left out, I’ve created a company profile for MJT Net Ltd and have added Macro Scheduler as a product. It’s looking a little blank there. What it needs now are some recommendations.

MJT Net Ltd on LinkedIn

So if you’re on LinkedIn and feel like spreading a little love please give tireless little Macro Scheduler a recommendation. You can do that here.

Thank you!

I’ve posted a poll over on the Macro Scheduler Facebook page to find out what people think about the next version of Macro Scheduler being v13. It’s a bit of fun really but I’d be interested to see what people think. Maybe you think it’s unlucky, maybe it’s lucky. But even if you’re not superstitious maybe you think it’s time for a change. Go ahead and respond to the poll.

Are you on LinkedIn? If you are, please connect with me there. My profile URL is http://uk.linkedin.com/in/marcustettmar. Make sure to add a note to say you’re a Macro Scheduler user so I know it isn’t a random request, and I’ll add you. See you there. 🙂

I was helping a customer out today who is still using Macro Scheduler version 9. I hadn’t looked at version 9 for a long while and using it made me realise how much of an improvement the current version (12) is, especially in regards to the debugger.

Version 9 – released 5 years ago now – did not support multiple breakpoints or running from breakpoints which made debugging this customer’s script much less simple than it would have been in v12. There was also no protection from stray key-sends landing in the debugger itself (later versions ensure the script is read only during debug).

It was actually kind of nice to use v9 for a change as it made me appreciate all the more the improvements and progress we’ve made since. And I’m not dissing v9 – it itself was a great improvement over the previous version and I was very proud of it. But working with an old version for a change reminded me how far we’ve come.

Of course version 9 also lacked important commands that have come along since like WaitScreenText and WaitScreenImage. I say important because more and more applications these days are browser based where the containing window doesn’t change, so using good old WaitWindowOpen to ensure new “screens” are ready is not always possible. These types of applications benefit immensely from commands like WaitScreenText and WaitScreenImage which allow you to wait for text within the screens so that you can be sure you’re at the right place in the application before entering data.

If you’re also using an old version of Macro Scheduler please take some time to look at the latest release, as I think you’ll be impressed with the improvements which will make you more productive and allow you to make more robust scripts.

And don’t forget that v9 is scheduled to be “end-of-lifed” on 1st January 2012.

I rather liked this, so thought I’d share:

Quoting JRL on the forums this morning:

Just noticed the forum recently surpassed 30,000 articles. That’s a lot of shared knowledge. Good job everyone

It is indeed. What’s more is that forum posts almost always result in success for the original poster – i.e. they find out how to achieve their aims or learn something new and this means other people can learn from the posts too.

I recently had cause to look at the forums belonging to a different automation tool. Now I don’t like dissing the competition but it reminded me how fortunate our users are that we have quite possibly the most active and helpful user community and probably the largest knowledge base for our type of software. Some who consider themselves competitors don’t have forums at all. In fact there aren’t many software products – competing or otherwise – with the kind of user support we have.

Thank you!