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Slack support group szymanski21071  2021-04-23 12:06
 

Hi all,
We are now during the Skyline Workshop and I had an idea, that was much appraised by others, that we could have a Slack channel for Skyline support. There are many experienced users, that could share their expertise with other people who have problems or questions. So my question is, if you have anything against, that I create a Slack Channel for this purpose?

All the best
Witold Szymanski

 
 
Brendan MacLean responded:  2021-04-23 17:35

Hi Witold,
We appreciate your enthusiasm!

I would like to point out that anyone can subscribe to the Skyline support board either to get an email on every post or a daily digest. This may not be well enough understood. In the upper-right corner of the box titled "Requests" there is an arrowhead pointing downward. If you click that, and then click "Email Preferences", you will be taken to a page where you can choose from options like this (my own settings below):

Send email notifications for these requests
( ) None - Don't send me any email for this message board
( ) Mine - Send me email for posts to my requests (I've posted to the request)
(o) All - Send me email for all posts

Notification type
(o) Individual - send a separate email after each post
( ) Daily Digest - send one email each day that summarizes all posts

Also, anytime you get a notification email from the support board, at the bottom of the message there is a link to this page on the text "change your email preferences". Though you are directed there "If you no longer wish to receive these notifications," we could just as easily say, "If you wish to receive more of these notifications."

Skyline team members are expected to monitor email for all posts, and we consider it our responsibility to ensure they all receive a timely response. Sometimes we seek outside help from the larger MacCoss lab, course instructors, collaborators, and our instrument vendor contacts.

We generally get very high marks for our support here. It is a lot of work, though. We'd love to see more community members chiming in, and we usually feel pretty excited when people just volunteer their expertise on the support board where we see it immediately.

To us also monitoring a Slack channel seems like more work, and giving it the level of attention and commitment we give this support board feels like too much. We would prefer to see interactions happening more here. However, if you want to create something like an "Unofficial Skyline User Community" Slack channel, I am sure we would watch it and see how that works out and whether if successful the kinds of questions people ask on Slack differ from what they post to this support board, or how the two end up functioning.

I would hope that anyone avid enough to join a Slack channel would also want to receive email about all posts to the support board, either immediately or in a daily digest.

Give it a try, and post back to this thread with what you think. Thanks for being an avid member of the Skyline community.

--Brendan

 
szymanski21071 responded:  2021-04-24 22:20

Hi Brendan!

Your support is great, and it is awesome, that you guys respond so fast to the comments here. I didn't think about Slack replacing the support board. The main difference that I see, is that Slack is a bit more interactive. One can easily paste screenshots and have a bit less formal conversation. Maybe people will be encouraged to ask more "stupid" and beginner's questions. Moreover, I assume that more experienced users, will be willing to answer these questions there.

Let's do it this way: let's try it out. If it works and is active and people like it, great for all of us as more Skyline problems will be solved. If there will be no one active on Slack, and it will be dormant, well then that's it.

Greets to you all!
Have a nice Sunday.

Witek

 
szymanski21071 responded:  2021-04-26 01:24

So, if anyone wants to try it out, please join:
Unofficial Skyline Slack Support Group (USSSG?)
https://join.slack.com/t/skylineunofficial/shared_invite/zt-pc0pb5jb-L~coq5xUta8y7HACxgaINQ