Help Us Improve B&R Documentation - We Want Your Honest Feedback! 📚

[SyntaxError (Michael Schroeder)]

Hi everyone!

We’re on a mission to make B&R documentation work better for YOU, and we need your help.

Whether you’re navigating our online or offline Automation Help system, flipping through user’s manuals, or tracking down hardware specs and other accompanying documents in the Downloads section of our website, your experience matters to us. We know that finding the right information quickly can make the difference between solving a problem in minutes versus hours.

We’d love to hear about your real-world experience:

Which documentation resources do you use most often? (Automation Help, user’s manuals, Downloads section, etc.)

How easy (or difficult) is it to find what you need?

How would you rate the usability of our Downloads section?

Any features or improvements you’d love to see?

What works really well that we should definitely keep doing?

Bonus question: If you could wave a magic wand and change ONE thing about our documentation, what would it be?

All feedback is welcome – whether you’re an external customer working with B&R systems daily or an internal user. Positive experiences, constructive criticism, quick one-liners, detailed stories – it all helps us improve!

Your feedback will directly influence our documentation roadmap and priorities. At the end, we will provide a summary of our findings, highlighting the most common themes, suggestions, and feedback shared by our users. This summary will help us identify areas for improvement and recognize what is working well in our documentation resources.

Thanks in advance for sharing your thoughts!

[kovarj (Jaroslav Kovar)]

Which documentation resources do you use most often? (Automation Help, user’s manuals, Downloads section, etc.)?

In fact, all of them that you listed. In the last few weeks, I have also started to use different AI assistants, which are not official documentation for sure but are providing very good results for some types of questions.

How easy (or difficult) is it to find what you need?

If you know where to search, it is not difficult. Everything is about the search engine, and e.g., the engine on the B&R webpage could be better. The future, from my perspective, is the B&R AI assistant that would connect, index, and search all possible resources.

How would you rate the usability of our Downloads section?

3/5

Any features or improvements you’d love to see?

Online documentation, easy to access, easy to search with possibility to store my local copy based on my search for offline use (if I’m somewhere where is not internet connection)

What works really well that we should definitely keep doing?

From an official documentation point of view, a huge step forward was moving AS Help from offline to the online version. A small step with a huge effect. Moving documentation to the 21st century

Bonus question: If you could wave a magic wand and change ONE thing about our documentation, what would it be?

As mentioned many times: an AI assistant I ask my question to, and it provides me with a valid answer with a link to resources, no matter where it is stored. We can learn from IT world, there are great trends we can follow.

[valerio.manenti]

Hi @SyntaxError ,
thanks so much for the post!

Which documentation resources do you use most often? (Automation Help, user’s manuals, Downloads section, etc.)?
google AI, from that I see if the information I need is inside Automation Studio Help or in the B&R Community. From B&R Community I see if I need to download training manual/user’s manual/github prj/watch webinar to get more data.

How easy (or difficult) is it to find what you need?
a) motion control: In Automation Studio you can control one axis at least in 6 different way with: 1) nc action (ACP10) 2) PLC Open (ACP10) 3) mapp Legacy (ACP10) 4) mapp 5.x 6.x (ACP10) 5) mapp 5.x 6.X (mapp Motion) 6) PLC Open (mapp Motion) …for new customer that doesn’t know all history of our system that is too much and regarding the Help there is no pages that give you an overview of them.
Example:

Autotune Acopos 1320 on induction motor

Hello, I want to do the function autotune on my Acopos 1320 with asynchrone motor (induction). I see on the blog i need tu use MC_BR_AutoTuneInductMotor_AcpAx Can you explen me step by step how to insert this FB into my program on AS4 (motion ACP10) ? Thank you Yoann

b) We need more context, background on the libraries: it seems the help is designed for B&R developers and not for normal user. I see in the help provided from our competitors general information about the topic before they explain the function or function blocks. Quite often we search the documentation for the same function/function block from our competitors to have a better understanding how they work.

How would you rate the usability of our Downloads section?
I should rate 3/5 but after we removed the links to download old Automation Studio versions the updated rate is 2/5. With new idea we are auto generating additional work, we see more help requests from customers.

Any features or improvements you’d love to see?
After years of youtube/facebook/meta/tik tok our brain is different than 20 years ago, unfortunately we watch more and more videos and we read less: I’m sure small videos integrated in the help will help a lot.

What works really well that we should definitely keep doing?
Totally agreed with Jarolav, online version helps a lot! I can read them on my cell phone too, hard to imagine that in the past.

Bonus question: If you could wave a magic wand and change ONE thing about our documentation, what would it be?
For sure more examples in the Help.

Just few points, in the reality my list is longer.
Thanks
Ciao
Valerio

[michael_w]

@valerio.manenti

Any features or improvements you’d love to see?
After years of youtube/facebook/meta/tik tok our brain is different than 20 years ago, unfortunately we watch more and more videos and we read less: I’m sure small videos integrated in the help will help a lot.

Please No! The trend to have information in stupid (and more stupid if “AI voice” is used) videos rather than in 5 comprehensive sentences is not something we should follow.

@SyntaxError

How easy (or difficult) is it to find what you need?

On the online help sometimes harder than on the offline help, especially given that the content on the online help takes so much space and scrolling is therefore needed much more
Also, the most relevant results are often further down than expected…

@SyntaxError

Any features or improvements you’d love to see?

Less pages that are only “The following topics are covered in this section:” - I expect to get to information and get a list of pages. Maybe just open the tree instead

Generally speaking I disagree with the /more AI/ sentiment here. The solution to better documentation is, if it’s hard to understand or to follow, to restructure or rephrase it, not throw more AI slop at it

Disclaimer: All of that is my personal opinion

[marcusbnr (Marcus Mangel)]

Which documentation resources do you use most often? (Automation Help, user’s manuals, Downloads section, etc.)

All of the above! My go-to is the AS Help. However, if I know which module or hardware family I’m researching, I will often go to the manual if I can’t find what I need in the Help. The information available is often the same between the two, but sometimes being able to “Ctrl+F” a word or phrase within the entire manual makes it easier to find the information I need.

I find the website most helpful when I need information on a specific model or serial number. The exception to this is configuration part numbers (e.g., with PCs). These are not searchable and it takes a lot of clicks to find what’s included in a particular configuration.

How easy (or difficult) is it to find what you need?

To echo others, if I know what I’m looking for then it is easy. My muscle memory within the AS Help is pretty good. But I do wish the search was more context-based as opposed to keyword-based. I see the value in an AI powered search, but I personally would just like to see a more helpful search box. For example, if I search “digital input module”, I would expect to be guided to information about I/O modules. Instead, I get this:

The first results are not really relevant, and every page that may be relevant has the exact same title. If I wasn’t familiar with how the Help system worked, I would be very confused here.

How would you rate the usability of our Downloads section?

It usually has everything I need. I really like the category selection at the top. However, I do think they could be organized a bit better. Each section is just an alphabetical list of every available file. This means that older upgrades with lower letters/numbers are listed first. There is also no grouping by version or hardware type. For example, if I want to look at Automation Runtime versions, I get a list that looks like this:

If I know exactly what I’m looking for, the text search box on the left is helpful. If not, I have to keep expanding the list until I see what I need.

Bonus question: If you could wave a magic wand and change ONE thing about our documentation, what would it be?

I would love to see more documentation in one place. I know this is not easy and maybe impossible, but I don’t care about that if I have a magic wand. For example, it would be amazing if I could go to one page and see

• Basic information about a piece of hardware
• The instructions to install and maintain the hardware
• Which Automation Studio versions the hardware supports
• Additional hardware/software pre-requisites (e.g., base modules, AS version)
• All relevant downloads (updated in real time)
• Relevant Community topics (this is a bit of a stretch even with magic, but it would be cool)

[SyntaxError (Michael Schroeder)]

Wow, thanks to everyone so far for sharing their experiences! There is already a lot of good material here to digest.

Be assured that we will be taking all of this feedback into consideration!

Looking forward to hearing what others have to say!

[hubert.brunner]

There is a lot of documentation available, which is great.
However, when it comes to searching on the B&R website and finding what I need, the experience can be challenging.

1. Downloadable manuals and the AS Online Help sometimes contain redundant information — and I need to rely on both being available in the same version. At the same time, there are valuable documents on the B&R website, such as the EMC manual or the Redundancy manual, which are not included in the AS Help.

2. The website search and download area require prior knowledge of how the B&R product portfolio is named and structured, which makes the search less intuitive .

3. AI‑driven search using Microsoft Copilot already provides good results and removes the need to know exactly where to look (AS Help, downloads, community, etc. ).

What I would love to see is a universal B&R search that integrates all current information sources — website, community, AS Online Help, and downloads. I want to get an AI digest with a list of links for deep diving. Probably the search agent helps me to refine my results by asking me typical questions a 1^st level support would ask me.
This unified search should provide clear context about software versions and make related content easier to explore. For example, if an AS Help article is referenced in a community discussion, why not show those discussions directly on the help page or allow users to leave comments or likes?

Of course, I could expand this wish list much further, but let’s stay realistic. I am looking forward to seeing how our documentation evolves — every initiative that improves the experience is highly appreciated.

[pavel.vavra]

Q: Which documentation resources do you use most often? (Automation Help, user manuals, Downloads section, etc.)
A: AS Help on the B&R website, Community, internal knowledge bases, …

Q: How easy (or difficult) is it to find what you need?
A: I strongly believe it depends on experience. If you get used to the structure of the AS Help and spend some hours browsing it, it’s definitely easier than if you start working with B&R.

Q: How would you rate the usability of our Downloads section?
A: I have the same opinion as @marcusbnr.

@marcusbnr

However, I do think they could be organized a bit better. Each section is just an alphabetical list of every available file. This means that older upgrades with lower letters/numbers are listed first. There is also no grouping by version or hardware type.

Q: Any features or improvements you’d love to see?
A: Having one search input field that would search across all available sources (not only keyword search but also semantic search) and, if you’re logged in, even the internal ones.

Q: What works really well that we should definitely keep doing?
A: Getting Started sections in the AS Help.

Q: Bonus question: If you could wave a magic wand and change ONE thing about our documentation, what would it be?
A: As mentioned, a single search input field.

[rafael.laury]

Which documentation resources do you use most often? (Automation Help, user’s manuals, Downloads section, etc.)
AS Help 4 and 6 is my first go-to, then I usually check internal knowledge bases and B&R community. If more in-depth information is needed about a certain module, I will go to the User’s Manual (for hardware) or Revision History (for software) accessible from the Downloads section.

How easy (or difficult) is it to find what you need?
If I know what I am looking for, it is quite easy to find the needed information in AS Help, as others have mentioned (e.g. searching for “Order Data” when looking for a specific module, or entering the error code and getting the error description). However, doing a blind search in the AS or Online Help is challenging, the search function could be improved.

How would you rate the usability of our Downloads section?
In general good, the drop downs are useful. I have mixed results with the general filters. I think for customers the Downloads area has a lot going on and can be confusing. I prefer in general to search for whatever hardware I am dealing with and go to the Downloads tab of the product page as it has all (or most) of the relevant downloads needed. For AS or AR, I need to use the Downloads page, and I am usually able to find what I need. Finding exact Automation Runtime versions (e.g. X20CPx16x_F0412…) is not easy to search for, and as @marcusbnr mentioned, the grouping of ARs is cumbersome to work with.

Any features or improvements you’d love to see?
I have often found that there is information in the User Manuals that does not exist in the Automation Help. I have searched through many Help pages only to find the answer in an additional section that is only available in the manual. If all of the information in the Manual could somehow be in the Help as well, this would help with consistency.
I would also love to see Automation Runtime revision history in Automation Help, as currently every time I want to check it I have to download it from the website.

What works really well that we should definitely keep doing?
All of the step by step guides in the Help (as Pavel mentioned the Getting Started guides) are very useful. The Technical Data pages and hardware module descriptions are in general always good as well.

Bonus question: If you could wave a magic wand and change ONE thing about our documentation, what would it be?
Make the Search bar of AS Help / Online Help as good as Google search.

[florent.boissadier]

Which documentation resources do you use most often? (Automation Help, user’s manuals, Downloads section, etc.)

The main resource I use is AS Help. If I need more in-depth information, I use Community or my local B&R support. I also often check the Revision of Mapps components and AR in the Downloads section.

How easy (or difficult) is it to find what you need?

To be honest, AS Help is really comprehensive. I can understand that for a new user, it might be hard to find what you need at first, but once you’ve used it for a while, you can easily find what you’re looking for.
So I would say it’s pretty easy to find information by using AS Help, Community, and B&R local support!

How would you rate the usability of our Downloads section?

It’s really nice! If you don’t use the filters or the search bar, there are a lot of things to sift through, but when you search for something specific, like the RevInfo of a particular AR version, it’s pretty easy to find!

Any features or improvements you’d love to see?

A web search engine to search across all documentation resources (AS Online Help, Community, Downloads section) would be really nice!
I’d also like to see improvements in the Online Help search feature. Sometimes, it’s really hard to find what I’m looking for, but when I use the same search in AS Help, I find it directly.

What works really well that we should definitely keep doing?

The all-in-one AS Help, with its getting-started guides and examples, is really nice. When I switch to other software to develop different things, the documentation is often split across multiple apps or manuals, which means I end up with so many windows open on my PC. When that happens, I really miss AS Help, where almost all the information is in the same window!

Bonus question: If you could wave a magic wand and change ONE thing about our documentation, what would it be?

A unified search tool that instantly pulls up results from all documentation sources (AS Help, Community, Downloads) without having to switch between them!

[JulianL]

Which documentation resources do you use most often?

My go-to source is AS Help 6, as we fully transitioned from AS4 to AS6. If i’m not able to find what I’m looking for, I’ll look into module specific manuals (where applicable), ask the B&R AI assistant or resort to ChatGPT. If those all fail, I’ll look manually into the community and write an email to our local office.

How easy (or difficult) is it to find what you need?

I have to agree with many others, if you know what information you need, it’s easy to find. But as soon as you’re looking into a more general direction the provided documentaion by B&R gets chaotic and almost a pain to search through, hence the fallback to asking AI.

How would you rate the usability of our Downloads section?

Horrible. Keyword search is basically not working, current versions are hard to find, sometimes my colleague is able to find certain documents, while I follow the same path and somewhere along the way I just get stuck. Also sorting is a mess, categories are waay to cluttered and intransparent.

Any features or improvements you’d love to see?

Our sales rep gave me the advice to use google to search for specific documents, so therefore I’d like the B&R search better index by the local search engine.

Also please give us the possibility to search for modules with OUR specific oder number (eg. we have an ACOPOS P3 8EI022HWDS0.0300-1, but searching for the documentation brings no results…. you have to “cut away” symbols at the end until it gives you the generic documentation…)

Please reduce the loading time of the downloads section on the website, if selecting a category it sometimes takes up to 30s just to load.

What works really well that we should definitely keep doing?

Quality of most docs is quite good, even though sometimes hyperlinks lead to nowhere or no helpfull sites.

Bonus question: If you could wave a magic wand and change ONE thing about our documentation, what would it be?

I’d create a user section where you can find all the ordered products (with the possibility to add modules on your own) with the latest documentation attached, and the possibility to go into archives if needed.

[Jonas_Keller]

Hello

When I enter an error code from the logger, I just want the entry to this specific error.
Today I get a list with similar error codes and quite often the entered error code is missing.

For me a MUST is:

• there is an entry for every possible error code I can get on a B&R system
• the first result in the answer list is the answer to my entered error code

So a good Keyword search with exact results would be a good starting point.