Well, that exact quote cannot be found in the Sherlock Holmes novels from Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. But it is used so often that it got “common use”.
And it fits perfect related to our latest enhancement of VoiceObjects (all versions!):
WATSON
Watson is a real elementary new tool for you and your communication with Voxeo Support regarding any VoiceObjects issue.

What is it all about?

Ever stumbled on “What data to send to support”?
Then the next quote comes into account:
“It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data.” (The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (1892))
As Voxeo Support always aims in getting better, we would like to get rid of these uncertainties.
For you to get the best support in the shortest time possible.
For us to avoid theorizing on your issue and getting lost in false assumptions.

Watson will help both of us!

Watson is a tool to collect all data of interest from your VoiceObjects instance. It will gather logs, settings, database information and some other things.
All these information go into one archive which can then easily be uploaded to the Evolution portal when opening a ticket or when support is asking for more data.

What is it not?

Watson is not designed to analyze your information
It is just the collector of information.
Therefore “You see, but you do not observe.” (The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (1892)) is also true.

Analyzing your information is a task for the support team.
Additionally, we will be very happy to help you understand the file contents for your own assessment of issues!

Details?

Please see the knowledgebase article on Watson for a more detailed usage description.
The nice thing about Watson is that you can use it in older versions of VoiceObjects too – just get the setup archive from the knowledgebase article and get started!

Now some of you might think – “Hey, I have seen something similar already”. Yes, we copied ourselves. Shamelessly
Watson has been inspired by our Prophecy “Perry” tool which is located in your local Prophecy installation.
So in case of an issue while running Prophecy Pro on your premises you might be asked to run “prophecy run perry” and Watson.

Nice, isn’t it?
Many thanks to Jochen Fischer for this tool!

In October we opened our support knowledgebase for the public use.
Now I can present two new functionalities to you (one of them was already pre-announced in my last post). Both will help you – these changes enable you to provide feedback to us.
As every other company we are looking out for customer feedback to enhance our offering. So if you tell us what you think about the knowledgebase as such or about a certain article this will really help us to get better!

You have from now on two options to do so. You can add your vote to an article (“Is the article helpful or not?”) and you can add a more detailed comment.

Vote articles

Below the knowledgebase article you will see the following:

This is the place where you can tell us how you think about this article – anonymously! Just click on the thumbs-up logo if that article helped you. In case this article did not meet your requirements click on the thumbs-down (I hope you’ll never do that again, don’t you?).
Please login into your Evolution page (evolution.voxeo.com or evolution.voiceobjects.com) to vote.
You can vote multiple times on a given page, but only the most recent vote counts – in case you changed your mind.

Comment on an article

On the top of each article you will now see that the page has a second tab:

Open this second tab – and you will be able to see all comments for an article. And you will be able to add your own comment too!

To add comments to your page please choose the “add comment” link on the bottom of the comments page:

This will open a mask where you can add a comment – with a subject and your text:

Click “Save” to post your comment to the page.
Your comment will end in our support team – and from there we may add a response to the comment.
In case you think that a comment might not be appropriate – no problem, we are also standing by in case you send a mail to support@voxeo.com or open a support ticket in your Evolution account.

We will also be happy to receive a suggestion for a new article!

Some weeks ago,  I announced the availability of VoiceObjects Evolution as the new Support Portal for our customers and partners – and that developers will get support for the Developer Edition through our Voxeo Evolution Portal.

Today we are opening our treasure chest a little bit!

Now available: The VoiceObjects Support Knowledge Base

You are now able to access Voxeo’s VoiceObjects Support Knowledge Base in our Evolution Portal. Just go to Documentation -> VoiceObjects Knowledgebase.

Articles in the Knowledge Base are written by our consultants, technology specialists and our Support team. They mostly cover frequently asked questions and general challenges from support, training and customer projects. This information is likely to be very helpful for you.
We open the Knowledge Base to share some of our knowledge and to support you with new ideas on how to approach a solution. Of course we also hope to get more of your feedback!

All articles have been reviewed internally. But – as the Knowledge Base is intended to be more dynamic than Voxeo’s VoiceObjects documentation, it might sometimes be the case that not everything in the Knowledge Base is a perfect fit for your issue. So some of the articles will refer to the documentation to avoid having the same content twice.
The Knowledge Base articles are not intended to replace the documentation or to give answers to all questions. They are primarily aimed at helping users in situations that are too specific to be handled in the documentation.
Please note that from time to time we might move articles from the Knowledge Base to the documentation – and vice versa.

Also note that some articles might describe behavior that is specific to a certain version of VoiceObjects (or other software) and thus cannot be generalized.
In case you can’t find the information you are looking for, please visit the Developer Portal to review the entire VoiceObjects documentation, the release notes and our developer blog!

Our Knowledge Base is updated frequently. We add new articles or remove articles which are no longer valid.
Therefore we need your input!
Please let us know what you think – about individual articles and the Knowledge Base system itself.

Please provide any feedback as article rating and in the VoiceObjects Desktop / Developer Edition Forum in the Support Forums of Evolution – until the comment functionality in the knowledgebase is available!

Since the end of 2008, VoiceObjects is part of the Voxeo family and since this time we worked on extensive enhancements for our technical support for customers, partners and developers.

While it was planned to open up the support system for our customers and partners for some time – and the old support ticketing system used at VoiceObjects already had all ingredients to show up as a support portal and knowledge base – the acquisition made this step even more urgent.
With the necessity of integrating VoiceObjects´ Technical Support into Voxeo´s Extreme Support organization, we were facing the need of having one ticketing system for all technical support inquiries.
The solution is Voxeo´s Evolution Portal.

Now we are happy to introduce VoiceObjects Evolution – a support sortal for customers, partners and developers using VoiceObjects´ technology, based on Voxeo’s Evolution.
This portal enables you to get support for your VoiceObjects related inquiries directly. It also allows the Voxeo Extreme Support team to use one system for all incoming support requests. This makes it easier for us to help you in the most effective way.

You may be wondering: “What is it all about?”
Well, this portal is a web based ticketing system. This means that the easiest way to get support is to log into Evolution and either open a support chat for quick questions or open a support ticket.

Or visit one of the available forums and check if your question has already been answered. If not – why not open a new forum thread?

Additional features are

• You are able to see all tickets opened for your account / company – even tickets opened by your co-workers

• Get access to the VoiceObjects documentation

• Explore other helpful resources

• View global tickets (announcements)

As a VoiceObjects Customer or Partner you are able to get a personal introduction to the portal. You or your manager should already have received a mail regarding the transition to the new support portal evolution.voiceobjects.com. If not, you will receive it within the next weeks.

If you are a VoiceObjects Developer I would like to ask you to register for your individual Evolution account at http://evolution.voxeo.com. This will give you the opportunity to receive support for your VoiceObjects products. Additionally it will give you the full Voxeo Evolution feature set – including the free hosted Voxeo Prophecy IVR.
You already have an account at Voxeo? Great – Just use it to get support for all of your Voxeo products!

And – we are not done yet.
We are working on integrating parts of our internal knowledge base into this portal within the next months.

Additional features for this portal are coming soon.
Stay tuned …