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Title: How to use Janox Support Channel

Content:

- Preamble

- What Janox Support Channel is not

- What Janox Support Channel is

- Access

- Usage

- Janox Support Channel bugs reporting

- Getting involved



Preamble

In order to offer a full-functional startup to Janox project, SourceForge.net hosting is being used to provide all needed functionalities about software releasing, documenting and supporting.

Evaluated possibilities offered by SourceForge.net, we decided to use Tracker system to manage Janox Support Channel, in short jxSupport. Tracker is a standard way to manage any kind of request life cycle.


What Janox Support Channel is not

jxSupport is not an on-line development course. We can't help you get basic programming concepts and our support needs development skills to be understood.

jxSupport is not part of your team. We can't realize your applications for you. All we can do is to help you to remove any problem using Janox in all your projects. Don't ask us about solving application specific logics or language independent strategies.

jxSupport is not the right place for end users where to find help about Janox applications: please refer to your software provider for applications usage problems.

If you need Janox courses, specific unit of studies or dedicated support in realizing projects mail to info@janox.org.


What Janox Support Channel is

jxSupport is dedicated to everybody is using Janox, and not only to ones involved in Janox development. Feel free to ask about everything is not clear or not working properly.

Primary goal for this channel is to provide a consistent feedback between Janox users and developers, so to simplify and accelerate releases debugging process.

In this stage we'd like to compensate for the lack of documentation, too: this collection of questions & answers can constitute a good starting point for finding informations. Before posting new questions please browse answered questions: may be you will find the answer to your problem.

jxSupport is the only way to get support for Janox. Only requests posted by this channel will be processed. Please abstain from using any other email address or private communication channel to get support: problems solved using jxSupport system become very important for the whole community.


Access

Before posting new requests, or modifying existing ones, you have to log into SourceForge.net site. Posting to jxSupport is limited to SourceForge.net registered users. This is not intended to limit jxSupport use but to better fit quality service.

In this way every user can take trace of his own posted requests, check request status and examine request closure.


Usage

Two trackers are active for jxSupport:

- Support & Bugs -

For requesting support or notifying bugs. The two functionalities have been merged together for practical reasons: often user can't previously know if he can't get to a solution because of a system bug or because of something he ignores. A support request is closed when the user's problem is solved, regardless of how it is solved.

Anyway a flag can be set for the request (by user or by jxSupport team) using "Group" field: "Support Request" or "Bug Report". This flag value is not mandatory and it can be changed in the life cycle of the request.

- Feature Requests -

For posting suggestions about possible modifications and improvements to Janox structure. Every post will be seriously considered. Posting suggestions here is the best way to make Janox more and more similar to what you need.

Obviously no guarantee is given for suggestions realization: Janox Development Team will evaluate all ideas feasibility and will care to provide motivations for rejected suggestions.


For using tracker as a submitter (and not just for reading), first of all you need to log into SourceForge.net site. After logged in navigate to sourceforge.net/projects/janox/: under "Tracker" menu you can find active trackers list and choose the one you need.

In the tracker page you can browse existing and closed requests and make some filtering and researching. Here (top left, under project menu) you find function "Submit new", active only for logged users.

When submitting a new request take in mind a few points:

- What to write -

Indicate as many details as possible about problem context:

* runtime version

* execution/interface context (WEB/GTK+)

* operating system

* databases engine

Behavior replication is primary for bugs seeking and for right understanding of your request, so feel free to attach any kind of document or file concerning your problem (even full zipped applications).

Problem solution will be reached as faster as more informations you will provide to our team.

When posting Features Requests remember to provide examples of specific purposes for your suggested feature, in order to let us better understand your need.

ATTENTION: You can post as many requests as you like, so take care of properly splitting post into single subjects: gathering more arguments together in the same request will make very difficult to define request status.

- Category, Group, Assigned to and Priority -

Those fields are not mandatory and are intended to help you to categorize your request: feel free to leave blank when you are in doubt.

Don't use Priority: its value will be reset by jxSupport team after request analysis.

- Request status -

When posted request is "Open". Janox Support Team will lead request to closure, instructing user or patching a bug, and will turn it to "Closed".

Any other further submit on request will reset its status to "Open". Feel free to reopen closed request if you think that problem has not been adequately fixed.

If jxSupport solver needs more informations or is waiting for a needed feedback from problem submitter, he can set request status to "Pending".

- Followups -

Is possible to add to a request as many comments as you like: all posted comments history will be visible in the request details page.

Comments can be added to other users' requests, in order to provide more informations on common problems. Posting comments on closed requests is equivalent to reopen them.

- Languages -

Preferred jxSupport language is English, in order to make posted informations as more shareable as possible.

Other than English, only Italian language can be used to submit requests and comments.


Janox Support Channel bugs reporting

If you find that something is not properly working in jxSupport or if you think that our support structure can be improved or modified to better fit your needs, please mail to support@janox.org. Please don't use this address to post support request directly: only requests posted by jxSupport will be processed.


Getting involved

If you think to be skilled enough and you like to participate to jxSupport as a solver your help is welcome: mail to support@janox.org, indicating your SourceForge.net account, and we will provide to add you to Janox Support Team.

Don't mind if you don't know everything: nobody knows everything and your help may be useful for all that ones who know something less than you.


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Janox is distributed under the terms of the GNU Lesser General Public License (LGPL)