Screenshots vs text...
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Kirk 10389821 wrote:
(Yes, you should feel stupid, but that's okay. Have a great day).
I try to avoid making users feel stupid. Even when they do something that's clearly wrong, I always respond in such a way that I give them the benefit of doubt and steer them towards an alternate path. Support is far from my primary job focus and I only do it to help out, say, when coworkers are on vacation, and I perhaps haven't done it long enough to give users what others might consider to be terse answers. I'm already a cynic, g0d help me if I start making it obvious to customers.
Kirk 10389821 wrote:
- Realize that they may be using another computer, and can't get copy text off of it?
If you can't get text, then when are the odds you can get a screenshot off of that same machine? Of course I'm ruling out (as others have suggested) taking a picture with a phone - but that hasn't happened yet. So they do directly interact with those systems, typically by remoting. Admittedly, there are cases where, with enough remoting layers (A remoting into B remoting into C), you might lose access to the clipboard, but those are few and far in-between.
Kirk 10389821 wrote:
- Start emailing them back the instructions, spelled out, and wait for a proper response
It's not so much of a pain that I'll refuse to work with what they send us. I try to be as accommodating as possible. I only started this thread to point out that people sometimes make things more complicated for themselves than they need to be.
Kirk 10389821 wrote:
- Invest/Write a quick and dirty OCR program that works on the screenshots.
My personal experience with OCR tells me that it works best in the context of paragraphs of text, where ending up with a few bad characters is absolutely fine, but in cases where every single character can be anything, we'll have to double-check every single character anyway. Not much of a time-saver.
- There are quite a few solutions that allow me to see someones screen, and NOT give me clipboard access... Meaning, they could could be hitting a limited help desk feature. Or they could have disable the clipboard sharing for security reasons. That was the implication. How are you going to find out if you don't ask? And we never really said "Yes you should feel stupid", we said things like "Everyone Does it, that's why we walk you through it, have a great day!".. But that is what we were thinking!!! OCR was pretty good 19 years ago. With todays quality screen shots. I would not be surprised if you couldn't get a HEXADECIMAL (assuming) response with pretty HIGH Accuracy. I would certainly try it. Also, screen resolutions these days are wonderful vs. the old scanning DPIs that created the problems! Finally, in your response, after entering it. You should send the reminder instructions, and ASK if these did not work for you, please contact us so we can make our software better...
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These days at the office I'm in charge of emailing license activation keys to customers who request them if, say, their machines can't access the internet to do automatic activation after a new install. We have a dialog box that shows users their license key, a unique machine code, and a text field in which they're expected to paste the activation key we generate for them. There's clear instructions on that dialog box that they need to email us their license key and machine code, and there's a button to copy those values to the clipboard. Every once in a while someone will send us a screenshot of the dialog box showing the key/machine code. Which means we have to type in those values. Neither are exactly short strings, so there's always a risk of us mistyping something - this is why there's a "copy to clipboard" button, so we can copy them from a plain text source. When interacting to customers, I always go out of my way to be a nice guy, but sometimes I'm very tempted to respond in kind, by taking a screenshot of our licensing software showing the activation key they have to paste, with the note, "now you know why that Copy button is there".
Well it could be that the machine in question is being accessed through some sort of screen sharing app that doesn't support a shared clipboard. I know when I have to get involved in a support call, I often will be using TeamViewer on my workstation to view an RDP session on the support technicians Workstation connected to a VM in the cloud connected through a VPN to an RDP session on a workstation in the customer's environment that is in turn connected to the VMWare hosted server. In those cases copy and paste between my workstation and the customer's server often involves many many steps involving 3 different people at 3 different locations, whereas obtaining a screen grab is quick and dirty. On the other hand, I still can't fathom why I'm getting screen shots of a terminal window from my QA people showing a one line error message when they could more easily copy and paste the text.
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Well it could be that the machine in question is being accessed through some sort of screen sharing app that doesn't support a shared clipboard. I know when I have to get involved in a support call, I often will be using TeamViewer on my workstation to view an RDP session on the support technicians Workstation connected to a VM in the cloud connected through a VPN to an RDP session on a workstation in the customer's environment that is in turn connected to the VMWare hosted server. In those cases copy and paste between my workstation and the customer's server often involves many many steps involving 3 different people at 3 different locations, whereas obtaining a screen grab is quick and dirty. On the other hand, I still can't fathom why I'm getting screen shots of a terminal window from my QA people showing a one line error message when they could more easily copy and paste the text.
As I've said elsewhere, I always give users the benefit of doubt. That said, I know for a fact (based on actual logs generated from the machine running our software) that in a lot of cases, the machine is being accessed directly and there's no remoting involved at all. All I was saying is that despite this, some people still won't use the button.
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Member 10652083 wrote:
If you don't specifically tell them not to send a screenshot then it's reasonable for them to take a picture, so that they don't have to write down the numbers to type into to the other machine
That's why we give them a button to copy that text to the clipboard. If you've remoted into the machine that's not connected to the internet, it's even easier to paste it back (Ctrl-V) from the clipboard, than launching some tool to take a screenshot.
A machine not connected to the Internet is not likely to allow remoting in the first place.
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I hang around in IT troubleshooting forums every now and then and indeed, the new habit of posting screenshots as much as possible instead of text is extremely annoying. In the meantime, I go as far as to tell people to post the error message (or whatever message they get) in text.
Most Microsoft error messages cannot be copied and pasted. I've been waiting many years for that.
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A machine not connected to the Internet is not likely to allow remoting in the first place.
Quote:
A machine not connected to the Internet is not likely to allow remoting
Many of my file servers, etc are NEVER connected to the internet. They also don't have monitors or keyboards/mice so the only access is via remote desktop.
- I would love to change the world, but they won’t give me the source code.
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Member 10652083 wrote:
If you don't specifically tell them not to send a screenshot then it's reasonable for them to take a picture, so that they don't have to write down the numbers to type into to the other machine
That's why we give them a button to copy that text to the clipboard. If you've remoted into the machine that's not connected to the internet, it's even easier to paste it back (Ctrl-V) from the clipboard, than launching some tool to take a screenshot.
Ah, I did not consider remoting into the machine. I assumed two unconnected machines, in which case copying to the clipboard of one machine is useless in the other machine.
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A machine not connected to the Internet is not likely to allow remoting in the first place.
If that's the case, then it's even harder to get a screenshot off of that machine, unless you're taking a picture with a phone or the like. Which I've never claimed to be the case. For that remaining 1%, fine, they can't use the button. That's no reason for us to what, take it away?
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These days at the office I'm in charge of emailing license activation keys to customers who request them if, say, their machines can't access the internet to do automatic activation after a new install. We have a dialog box that shows users their license key, a unique machine code, and a text field in which they're expected to paste the activation key we generate for them. There's clear instructions on that dialog box that they need to email us their license key and machine code, and there's a button to copy those values to the clipboard. Every once in a while someone will send us a screenshot of the dialog box showing the key/machine code. Which means we have to type in those values. Neither are exactly short strings, so there's always a risk of us mistyping something - this is why there's a "copy to clipboard" button, so we can copy them from a plain text source. When interacting to customers, I always go out of my way to be a nice guy, but sometimes I'm very tempted to respond in kind, by taking a screenshot of our licensing software showing the activation key they have to paste, with the note, "now you know why that Copy button is there".
Instead of a button that copies the text to the clipboard, why not put it straight into a file (open the save as dialog if you want them to chose the file name/location) and ask them to copy that file to a computer with Internet and email it to you. In any case, if the computer does not have Internet access, it is what they have to do: create a file and copy it to another computer (USB stick?), so why not do the first part for them.
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It could be worse. I get screen 'captures' that have been taken with their phone.
Software Zen:
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These days at the office I'm in charge of emailing license activation keys to customers who request them if, say, their machines can't access the internet to do automatic activation after a new install. We have a dialog box that shows users their license key, a unique machine code, and a text field in which they're expected to paste the activation key we generate for them. There's clear instructions on that dialog box that they need to email us their license key and machine code, and there's a button to copy those values to the clipboard. Every once in a while someone will send us a screenshot of the dialog box showing the key/machine code. Which means we have to type in those values. Neither are exactly short strings, so there's always a risk of us mistyping something - this is why there's a "copy to clipboard" button, so we can copy them from a plain text source. When interacting to customers, I always go out of my way to be a nice guy, but sometimes I'm very tempted to respond in kind, by taking a screenshot of our licensing software showing the activation key they have to paste, with the note, "now you know why that Copy button is there".
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These days at the office I'm in charge of emailing license activation keys to customers who request them if, say, their machines can't access the internet to do automatic activation after a new install. We have a dialog box that shows users their license key, a unique machine code, and a text field in which they're expected to paste the activation key we generate for them. There's clear instructions on that dialog box that they need to email us their license key and machine code, and there's a button to copy those values to the clipboard. Every once in a while someone will send us a screenshot of the dialog box showing the key/machine code. Which means we have to type in those values. Neither are exactly short strings, so there's always a risk of us mistyping something - this is why there's a "copy to clipboard" button, so we can copy them from a plain text source. When interacting to customers, I always go out of my way to be a nice guy, but sometimes I'm very tempted to respond in kind, by taking a screenshot of our licensing software showing the activation key they have to paste, with the note, "now you know why that Copy button is there".
My question is: If the user doesn't have internet access, how are they going to send you an email? If no one else is going to say it, I will. This is a bad UI (User Interface) and UED (User Experience Design). Also, if the user can email you the information, they more than likely can activate their license through the internet. If they can't activate their license through the internet, and are forced to email it, then it usually means they have to find a location with internet so they can do what needs to be done. This poses another question, how will they correctly carry the license key information to a new location? Some may save it in a text file. Some may write it down. Do you see where I am going with this? However, this is just my personal opinion.
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My question is: If the user doesn't have internet access, how are they going to send you an email? If no one else is going to say it, I will. This is a bad UI (User Interface) and UED (User Experience Design). Also, if the user can email you the information, they more than likely can activate their license through the internet. If they can't activate their license through the internet, and are forced to email it, then it usually means they have to find a location with internet so they can do what needs to be done. This poses another question, how will they correctly carry the license key information to a new location? Some may save it in a text file. Some may write it down. Do you see where I am going with this? However, this is just my personal opinion.
Just because the machine they're installing our software on doesn't have access to the internet, doesn't mean *every* machine they have access is also blocked. We've been using this third-party licensing software for a decade and a half, and despite its flaws, it hasn't caused us to lose any sale. As much as we'd like not to deal with any license, period, it's a necessary evil.
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Most Microsoft error messages cannot be copied and pasted. I've been waiting many years for that.
1. I just copypasted an error message from the shell, worked just fine 2. Even if there's no copypasting, copying the text manually (as in "typing it out") isn't too much to ask from any computer user