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:
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