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.