Unidata Support

Tom Yoksas
March 30, 2006

As has been reported previously, the UPC has been investigating ways to streamline its User Support process. The overall object of our investigation is to transition to a new system that:

• simplifies and speeds the support process for all UPC staff
• provides facilities where end-users can more easily help themselves
• provides a set of functions through which support performance can be monitored
• can be extended to provide additional functionality deemed important by UPC personnel
• integrates with the Unidata web site
• provides a seamless transition in the support process for end-users

Our approach was to identify existing support systems that, at a minimum, offer features contained in our existing inquiry tracking system and provide key features or facilities to implement features that were deemed mandatory in a new system including the ability for the end user to open, modify and close their own inquiry, and comment on support that they have received.

After reviewing eight helpdesk packages for features, extensibility, and cost effectiveness, two were brought in-house for testing:

Request Tracker
eSupport/SupportSuite

eSupport v2 was chosen for detailed investigation since it appeared to offer virtually all of the features that we consider mandatory in a support system while providing features that we may want to take advantage of in the future.

The UPC has been monitoring the rapid development of SupportSuite (eSupport v3 with the addition of Live Support capability), during its rapid development since initial release in September, 2005. With the release of the "Gold" release (a non-beta version declared to be stable by Kayako developers) in December, 2005, we felt confident enough to test transitioning our end-user support process to use of SupportSuite. An important part of our transition was the maintaining of a "backoff strategy" that would allow us to easily revert to our traditional support methods in the event of serious system (SupportSuite or web server) failure or uncovering of SupportSuite security issues. In early-mid December select UPC staff began using the new system in a test mode. After the successful initial testing, the decision was made to begin transitioning to the use of SupportSuite on a topic-by-topic basis. Since January 26, over 670 community member "transactions" (new inquiries and follow-ups) have been sent processed through SupportSuite.

Comments by Unidata staff indicate that transitioning to use of the new system has occurred without difficulty. It typically takes only a small number of interactions with the system before it feels natural to the UPC staff providing end-user support.

The UCP's transition to the use of a new inquiry tracking system was announced to the community in Unidata Transitions to a New Inquiry Tracking System. We are interpreting the fact that we have received no end-user comments about the new system to mean that the transition has been smooth, error free, and painless for the community. This was one of our original goals.

The next phase in our transition will be the integration of web-based access to the new system by end-users. This effort will require integration with our single sign on management system (CAMS) and conversion of the user interface to the look-and-feel of our website. We expect to unveil the web-based access by the time of the Users Workshop in July.

Unidata Support Metrics

Above are histograms that portray the number of Unidata email responses for categories of support for a one year period ending March 30, 2006. The histograms are arranged by yearly activity averages with the highest on the left and lowest on the right. Each quarter year within the period is depicted from oldest to newest from left to right. The number of responses has been normalized to weekly averages so that the support load over the various periods can be easily compared.

Total support averaged 151 responses/week over the entire year; 149 for the first quarter; 159 for the second quarter; 137 for the third quarter; and 158 for the current quarter.

Individual support activities included in the categories depicted above are listed in the following table.

Category	Packages, Groups, and Lists
data	casestudies, casestudies-list, conduit, c2-linda, craft, level2-linda, craft-nws, craft-ty, datastream, difax, level2, level2-ty, noaaport, noaaport-ty
dods	dods, dods-core, dods-list, dods-tech
gempak	gempak, gembud-list
ldm	ldm, ldm-users-list
lead	lead
idd	idd, idd-antarctic, idd-brazil, idd-caribe, idd-inject, idd-status, scoop, suominet, tigge, venezuela
idv	idv, idvlist, idvsteering, metapps, visad-list
mcidas	mcdevelop, mcidas, mcidas-list
miscellaneous	misc, license, network, notrack, platforms, wxp, wxp-list
netcdf	data-models, netcdf, netcdf-miss, netcdfgroup-list, netcdf-hdf-list, netcdf-java, netcdf-perl
nws-changes	nws-changes
outreach	agu-linda, agu-ty, ams-linda, announce, barbados-ty, cbmet-ty, chile-ty, egrants, egu-linda, external, iai-ty, meteoforum-ty, noaa-linda, nws-linda, unidata, workshop
thredds	java-dev, thredds
utilities	decoders, ldm-mcidas, udunits

Comments

• The LEAD numbers are an underestimate of its activity since very few LEAD email transactions go through User Support. This is being changed with the adoption of our new Inquiry Tracking System.
• Support numbers for individual packages, groups, and lists can be seen in full support statistics.

Some tentative conclusions

• The total support provided by the UPC remains high. Overall support activities are for the most part seasonally invariant. The numbers presented are virtually identical to those reported in the Fall 2005 Support status report.
• Support required for the legacy visualization packages GEMPAK and McIDAS continues to be substantial with GEMPAK leading the way as the most widely distributed analysis application. The IDV support load continues to grow as more users adopt the package.
• Support required for LDM, IDD, and data continues at a high level and shows some variability throughout the year.
• Support for netCDF remains substantial, but is considered modest given the number of users of the package worldwide.
• The overall higher numbers for outreach reflect inclusion of more categories of support/outreach provided by Linda and the high level of activity in organizing a special session for the Spring 2006 AGU Joint Assembly that will be held in Baltimore, MD on 23-26 May.
• Taken as a whole, the support required for visualization packages (GEMPAK, IDV, and McIDAS) is comparable to the support related to data reception (LDM, IDD, noaaport).
• Support for any package increases after a new version of the package is made available.

NOTE

These numbers and conclusions should not be taken too literally, for several reasons:

• For some packages, multiple responses in the same thread may be bundled into a single archived email. Other packages have each response in a thread counted separately.
• After a new release of software, there may be a flurry of the same or similar questions, which can be answered in separate emails or in a single mailing list posting.
• The graph primarily represents support of end users and site administrators, not developers. Support for non-Unidata developers in projects such as OPeNDAP/DODS, THREDDS, IDV, GEMPAK, and McIDAS requires significant resources, but is difficult to assess.
• Not all support records were indexable for this report. Given this, the above numbers are an underestimate of the actual support being provided by the UPC.

by Tom Yoksas