How do you get help and support?
- Create a topic here on the ACCESS-Hive Forum
- Tag it with help.
Private help option (NEW!!)
Prefer not to post your question publicly? Write a private help request! This opens a new private message with the ACCESS-NRI Support team only. Other ACCESS-NRI staff will be added only if the Support team thinks they can help address your request.
What happens after you create a help request?
1. ACCESS-NRI help and community help (NEW TAGS!!)
For funding/reporting purposes, ACCESS-NRI distinguishes between requests that directly relate to ACCESS-NRI-supported tools/models/activities and those that do not. We use one of the following two tags to indicate this difference:
-
access-nri-help - indicates that it’s ACCESS-NRI’s job to address your request (we may not always answer it, but we will at least communicate why we can’t!). This is a protected tag - only ACCESS-NRI staff can add it. (Formerly inscope)
-
community-help - indicates that it’s a question for the broader ACCESS community. This is a public tag - you can add this to your own post or you can let ACCESS-NRI Support make the call as to which of these two tags makes the most sense for your request. (Formerly outofscope)
Both types of requests are very welcome here on the Hive Forum!
Note that private help requests cannot be tagged. If your private request is deemed outside of ACCESS-NRI’s direct support and staff are unable to help you, this will be communicated to you and they will suggest a few options for moving forward.
2. A helper is assigned to your request
If the access-nri-help tag is added to your post, then ACCESS-NRI Support will find a staff member to help you and assign them to your request. The assigned helper will follow through with your question until it is solved (if a solution is possible to put in place). The assigned helper might hand over your question to another helper if required to ensure a quick resolution. The assigned helper might edit your original post (title, tags and text) to ensure the post is well-formed and informative so that users with similar issues can learn from it as well.
If the community-help tag is added, then hopefully someone in the broader community will answer your request. If ACCESS-NRI staff are able to, they will point you to any known resources or community members who might be able to help.
If it is a private help request and is deemed within ACCESS-NRI’s support (or can be answered by ACCESS-NRI staff), a helper will be added to the private message. Helpers will only be added if the Support team thinks they can help address your request.
Then what?
Hopefully, your request will be answered and you can mark the Topic as “
Resolved”. Before you get to the point of resolving it, there may be some discussion and you may be requested to provide more information or to try some suggested fixes. Once a resolution is found, the topic will be closed. Any follow-up questions must be asked as separate topics as these questions are often separate issues. ACCESS-NRI staff might merge these follow-up questions with the original question as required.
Long-term queries might be moved to a GitHub or SVN issue. In this case, a link to the issue will be left on the Hive Forum topic and the topic will be closed. All updates on the issue will be then communicated via GitHub or SVN. For SVN repositories only, the topic on the forum can be kept open if the requestor can not access that repository.
If your request is tagged access-nri-help and ACCESS-NRI is unable to resolve the request (this may happen for a number of reasons, such as the request is for a new model feature that is not currently planned by ACCESS-NRI or it becomes obsolete by the release of a new tool), they will tag with #unresolved and close the Topic, with an explanation as to why they did this.
Why do we use a public forum for help requests?
We at ACCESS-NRI encourage you to create help requests publicly via a Topic on the ACCESS-Hive Forum. There are a number of reasons for this:
- Your support request is visible to ACCESS-NRI and a wider audience of community experts. It allows others in the community with the skills and experience to assist whether or not your request is deemed inscope or outofscope. This may result in a faster answer for you.
- Questions and answers will become an invaluable store of knowledge for everyone in the community.
- It also allows the community to grow without being limited by the number of support staff, as new users benefit from the accumulated knowledge and wisdom discoverable on the forum.
Tip If you are not comfortable having your name associated with your request on a public forum, you can still post publicly but anonymously!! Remember that admins on the forum can find out who is behind an anonymous account, so please follow the code of conduct and terms of service in all cases.
How ACCESS-NRI Supports Users
You can get support for
- ACCESS-NRI developed and released products, such as models and model configurations, model evaluation tools and data products.
- Software that is co-developed by ACCESS-NRI, or third-party software that is made available to the community by ACCESS-NRI will be supported, but the nature and scope of that support will vary and is defined in the documentation of each package.
- Bureau of Meteorology software infrastructure that is used by the ACCESS Community.
- CSIRO developed software infrastructure that is used by the ACCESS Community.
These are tagged access-nri-help for support from the ACCESS-NRI team. Queries that are not in-scope for ACCESS-NRI will be tagged community-help.
Resources
Here are some resources on how to use the ACCESS-Hive Forum