How do you get help and support?
Create a topic on the ACCESS-Hive Forum and tag it with help.
Who can get help and support on the Hive Forum?
Anyone with a question or problem that would like assistance from the ACCESS Community and/or ACCESS-NRI.
Where should I put my question? Which category?
The best category to put your question is the one where it is most relevant. That way those in the community with related knowledge will be more likely to see it and respond with useful information. More tips here: In what category should I put my topic?
How long will I have to wait for help?
You should receive an initial response for your help request within one working day. Be mindful there may be a holiday in the ACT but not in your area. If you don’t receive a timely response do follow up with a reply to your own question to get attention.
Who will help me?
Any community member is welcome to answer your question at any time, just like with other topics on the forum. However, using the help tag ensures the ACCESS-NRI staff will start a triage process as explained below.
Initial contact will be from the ACCESS-NRI Support team who is triaging help requests. They may ask for more information or clarification of what information is provided. The triager will also let you know if your request is directly related to ACCESS-NRI models/tools/activities (will be tagged with access-nri-help) or not (will be tagged with community-help).
For requests with the access-nri-help tag, a helper will assign themselves to your request and ensure there is a resolution.
For requests with the community-help tag the triager will assist with suggestions for resources or approaches you can use to solve your problem. Community members are encouraged to help if they have the time and expertise.
This process is described in more detail here: ACCESS Help and Support
Will my problem always be solved?
No, your problem will not always be solved.
There is time limit of one month for a query to be resolved. The intention is not to burden helpers with very long running queries.
For ACCESS-NRI supported queries the helper will try their best to find a solution within a month. If there is no solution by that point the topic will be closed. Where applicable the problem will be transferred to an issue on a relevant GitHub repository.
In cases where a solution is not available because of circumstances outside the control of ACCESS-NRI you may be asked to resubmit the query at a later date when outside circumstances change.
For queries tagged with community-help, you are relying on help from the community, and there are no guarantees.
Do I always need to use the #help tag?
You don’t have to use the help tag, but it is strongly encouraged if you would like a speedy response. The ACCESS-NRI Support team will triage requests with the help tag, so adding this tag will ensure that your question is seen by ACCESS-NRI and by others in the community, and will make it clear that you are looking for assistance.
If you don’t use the help tag ACCESS-NRI will not triage your request which means you will not be assigned a helper even if your request would fall under ACCESS-NRI direct support.
How can I ask for assistance in a way that makes it easier to get help?
Follow the guidelines in this knowledge-base article
What support can I expect?
For requests tagged with access-nri-help, you can expect an ACCESS-NRI staff member or an in-kind collaborator to be assigned to your question. This means they 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.
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.
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.
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.
What role does ACCESS-NRI play?
There is an ACCESS-NRI Support team that triages help requests. Some ACCESS-NRI staff are also helpers, as are some Bureau of Meteorology and CSIRO staff.
Why use the forum for support?
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 in-scope. 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.
Note that there is also a Private Help Request option - more details here: ACCESS Help and Support
If you have a question about the support model (not a specific question requiring support) and it is not answered above, feel free to reply below and ask.