A public forum

[ssteiner]

Prior to getting a Quadro, I didn't even know there was a discussion forum (and it's quite a helpful one at that) - is there a particular reason access is limited to registered owners of a PBX?

Likewise for the documentation.. reading the documentation gave me a considerably better idea about the capabilities of the system, and was a not unimportant factor in making a buying purchase. It allowed me to be a lot more specific in asking the local distributor presales questions. Is there a particular reason this information is only available after making a purchase?

[AramK]

Currently we are thinking about making the forum public.


On our website we have basic information about each of our product and I think that is enough to have some general idea. Also we provide presales information by phone, the numbers you can find in website again. That information can be obtainedfrom our distributors/resellers network as well. Any distributor hasits own way to promote the product.Can you suggest any other channel for giving out the documentation, that can help to attract more customers ? Note, that the manuals are very specific andcontains a lot of sceenshots of products' GUI, that sometime can't be understandable without having a real Quadro. Your feedback is highly appreciated.

[davrays]

I am completely agree with Stephan on this point. I am pushing to make this forum public for a long time, and now it seems we are very close to that. We are going to change the forum engine, and also to open the forum to public. Though I cannot tell the exact dates; maybe Warren could tell more exaclty.


Concerning opening the docimentation, here I agree too, but this is more up to marketing strategy, and as far as I know we are not going tp publish them in the near future. Anyway I'll ask Warren to comment here, as it is very interesting question to me too.Edited by: davrays

[ssteiner]

Also we provide presales information by phone, the numbers you can find in website again.

I did get in touch with the European sales contact, who refered me to the local distributor for technical questions - that worked out quite well, but it was also time consuming for all parties. And I guess it's a matter of preference whether you'd basically like to quiz somebody on the phone, or read a manual, and then write down questions. I prefer email over phone so I always go the latter route.

Note, that the manuals are very specific andcontains a lot of
sceenshots of products' GUI, that sometime can't be understandable
without having a real Quadro.

Since I did have the admin guides prior to making a purchase decision - I didn't find the guide too hard to understand.. and I enabled me to ask the right questions - I'm not sure I could've figured out that much information about the device without having access to the documentation (a data sheet is nice, but that's a marketing document meant for the suit and tie department, not for the people that need configure the device). And every now and then I happen to give people advice purely on documentation (because I have no device to try it out myself) - and it generally checks out. Of course there are good and bad manuals.. and the Epygi ones are good - I got the box up and running (inbound and outbound calls with trunk seizure prefixes, one not supported phone successfully registered, and voicemail set up) in about two hours the day before my training (and that setup also gave me a bunch of questions to ask at the training that I'd probably not have come up with until later).

I guess it always depends on the person reading those documents. I figure somebody with a technical background and experience with a PBX would find admin documentation more useful, than somebody who might be able to make the purchase decision, but is not responsable for keeping the device up and running. Though even for the finance guy - knowing that there is such documentation and that is it useful (the techie can tell that to the finance guy), effectively means that if a question arises, the admin might be able to help himself by consulting the documentation - if there is no documentation, it's much more likely that you need to get paid support. From my own experience at work, there are all kinds of customers.. those that have people in house that prefer to do things themselves and only call us for help for complex issues, and there are those that rather not have a box at their location and certainly don't want to touch the box.

And even for those potential customers that have no use for an admin guide - does offering one for download hurt in any way?

[warren]

I was asked to comment on this topic and I am glad it was brought to my attention. Epygi greatly appreciates this kind of feedback and open discussion. David as hinted towards the forum becoming public and that is the plan. Once I have the forum tool updated, we will move it to a public location.

I am also pleased to hear that your found the documentation useful and effective. There is really only one drawback to publishing this type information. Competition is fierce in this industry and we like to keep a few cards close to our chest. I will however bring this topic up for further discussion internally.

Another approach we are taking is to enhance our free training classes. Today you have to schedule time with one of our trainers, and once we have a large enough group we set a date. We plan to take it a step further and offer on-line training modules to registered users. This will self-paced training and will allow people to quickly learn more about a specific area of our products.

Again, we appreciate the feedback and we will discuss the documentation further.