What is the proper way to get help from mikroe?

[VCC]

Hi,
as many of my recent posts, this one is also addressed to mikroe team.
I've been thinking for some time to write this, so here it is. For the past months, I can see only two mikroe support members being active on forum, so I can't ask for more or have any expectations, since I'm aware that the support team is more than overwhelmed. I already have a few unanswared/unsolved forum posts, although I believe I didn't ask for too much.

One may be asking on forum for help from mikroe support and if some other forum member answers first, then mikroe support kind of stays away (like the thread is being handled by somebody else). Well, it's not always about hijacking a post or something similar. And maybe the post is not handled, or it may ask for help from mikroe. Many of my posts are directly addressed to mikroe support team, because mikroe team is not only the most knowledgeable about the topic, but has access to content that other users do not have, to properly respond. See viewtopic.php?f=12&t=78192
See also a post, which looks like a "rhetorical" post: viewtopic.php?f=202&t=78091 . It is addressed to mikroe, although I don't directly expect an answer, I expect a documentation improvement of the mentioned product.
I prefer asking on forum instead of privately asking on help desk, so that everybody benefits the information. I also believe the same support team is split between forum and helpdesk, so the support resources are the same.
Although not explicitly asked from mikroe, I think some of my forum posts should have minimal projects to reproduce an issue, but that should not be a reason for support team not to ask for it if really needed. On the other hand, if I don't provide such a minimal project, it is because I don't have one, or it is too difficult to reduce a big project to "minimal" and still reproduce the issue. And yes, I can't send the "big" project to mikroe "because of reasons". See viewtopic.php?f=106&t=77840
Unfortunately, the compilers still have quirks, which prevent reproducing a problem with a minimal project. Yes, some bugs require big and complicated projects, to be reproduced. And yes, I don't expect the support team to debug big projects, neither for free nor otherwise. I still believe this particular project, can be reduced and the problems still be reproducible, if I know how to to reduce the project. I think if my questions would be answered, I would know how to move forward about it, and maybe I would be able to provide a minimal project.
I (and many others) would also like to have more "official support" or documentation for trap debugging (e.g dsPIC/PIC32), with or without mikroProg, so we can properly debug, instead of asking mikroe support team for help, and doing little to solve the problem on our side.

Looking at the post title, should I ask for help from mikroe, directly on help desk, instead of forum? Is this the proper way?

I would also like to say a few words about closed source libraries, which were not fixed in many years, but I really don't know what say. I am grateful, that we have those, even as they are, but they may not be usable if they don't properly work, they are only partially implemented or not supported on newer devices (see USB or Ethernet). It's interesting that at some point, there were resources to write such libraries, but there is none to support them. On the other hand, I would like to have the skills and knowledge to write such complex libraries, but it seems nothing improved in this direction over the years. Not to mention that Ethernet in particular would require constant support because of new features and discovered vulnerabilities.

An idea or possible solution to reducing support overhead on forum:
Although I would like to help on this one, I have no experience on it, but maybe mikroe or somebody else knows more about forumbots/chatbots to answer posts, to release some of the burden of support team. For years, a significant percent of forum posts is about simple stuff, like LED blinking, writing to a port, setting oscillators or config bits. Answering the same stuff over and over again, takes its toll on support, so some automatic means of responding, would definitely make a difference. On the long run, its effects would really be visible. The reason users ask the same questions over and over again, may sometimes be because of being hasty or lazy, but really finding solutions on forum, to common problems, is most of the time a bit difficult. The forum's search engine is pretty rigid and limited, and turning to Google, although may be better, is still not enough. So this idea comes from the fact that mikroe support may focus on responding to questions that an automated bot would not be able to do, instead of having to give the same answers to LED blinking questions.
Another idea for reducing asked questions about various compiler errors, is to list all these errors in compiler's help and one or more causes for each. Pressing F1 in the IDE compiler log, should open such a topic in the compiler help. Of course, there should also be recommended solutions or tips to each of the error message.

In the hope that mikroe replies to this post, please everybody else, do not reply to this before mikroe does it, to make sure they see this as unanswered/unsolved.
Thank you

[filip]

Hi,

Thank you for the constructive criticism and suggestions.

Reading your topics targeted at Click Analyzer, I was under the impression that you got sorted this out before we had a chance to investigate this.
If you have still any issues or question I would gladly answer them, we can continue on the appropriate threads.

Both HelpDesk and Forum share same resources, most of the time there are duplicate posts here and there, so we tend to continue to the thread that was initiated firstly.
Minimal examples are highly needed, sometimes we may be missing an important information that was not mentioned in the post and we are unable to reproduce this issue.
We are aware that sharing projects like this is often not possible due to the sensitivity of the content and security reasons, therefore we can always sign an NDA in order to overcome this or we can propose another solution.

As for the compiler and libraries - yes, like any software there are quirks that are sometimes easy or hard to solve (particularly Ethernet) and the open source libraries will surely save time and speed up the process, so we are thinking about this too.

Thank you for the tips on reducing the support overhead, I will propose this to our management team.

If you have any other suggestion I would be more than happy to hear you!

Regards,
Filip.

[VCC]

Hi,
thank you for the quick answer.

Reading your topics targeted at Click Analyzer, I was under the impression that you got sorted this out before we had a chance to investigate this.
If you have still any issues or question I would gladly answer them, we can continue on the appropriate threads.

Yes, please. There are many questions on the Click Analyzer thread.
Also, the thread about how the dsPIC compiler calculates available memory, contains some questions and "miscalculations". Please have a look at that, too.
Thank you