+renruts Posted March 22, 2010 Share Posted March 22, 2010 Considering that Groundspeak is moving more and more towards a near real-time service with the offering of more and more NRT apps for data access devices like the iPhone, Geocaching Live, planned Andriod app, etc. and then with the site issues as of late. Is there a 24/7/365 public user facing NOC / Monitoring that users can report issues to? If not are there plans to provide some sort of infrastructure to better monitor the services provided and receive reports from users? I know Jeremy indicated to me that a Blog / Portal to communicate infrastructure related issues more directly with the user base was planned for Summer of 2009, of which I do not think ever materialized. Link to comment
+renruts Posted March 22, 2010 Author Share Posted March 22, 2010 From surfing the itunes store I found this link for support of the iphone app and was previously unaware of this support site. http://support.Groundspeak.com/index.php Can we submit all support and perceived service related issues at this location with the Submit a Request feature? Will this get more visibility internally than posting in the forums? Link to comment
Keystone Posted March 23, 2010 Share Posted March 23, 2010 When you submit a support ticket for a feature request, the friendly customer service staff is likely to suggest that you start a forum thread. They will assist directly with account issues, bug reports, simple "how to" questions, etc. Groundspeak's presence on Facebook and Twitter are good independent ways to spread news in the event of another complete site outage like the fire last July. There are already plans in place for reporting and escalating site performance issues, rest assured. Link to comment
+renruts Posted March 23, 2010 Author Share Posted March 23, 2010 When you submit a support ticket for a feature request, the friendly customer service staff is likely to suggest that you start a forum thread. They will assist directly with account issues, bug reports, simple "how to" questions, etc. Groundspeak's presence on Facebook and Twitter are good independent ways to spread news in the event of another complete site outage like the fire last July. There are already plans in place for reporting and escalating site performance issues, rest assured. Keystone - I am not asking in the feature request sense... I would like to be able to bring issues with the services up. For example roughly the past 6 weeks the iphone GC app's backend has been unstable basically to the point of being unusable... We often see issues with the PQ generators. It would make more sense from a business perspective in my opinion to move this 10 year old company with a growing user base to a 24/7/365 supported infrastructure by engineers other than the button pushers at internap... Twitter and Facebook are you serious? I know it has gotten the word out in the past but seriously this is Groundspeak's plan for the infrastructure engineers to find out there are infrastructure issues and to pass that word to the userbase? So is Groundspeak also now requiring that all users maintain a Facebook and Twitter account to be able to get updates on the services? se my point? I can understand the presence on these Social services but not as one of your main lines for communication of issues to your userbase, that just seems assinine to me. Where is this mechanism for reporting performance issues published? Link to comment
+StarBrand Posted March 23, 2010 Share Posted March 23, 2010 Are you suggesting that 1 or more Groundspeak employees be available 24/7 to directly respond to performance concerns? .... and - I'm a bit lost by the rest of it - Do you want something like an 800 number to dial or some formal web page to issue trouble reports to -- and you expect an immediate human response? For the most part - this forum has always been a place to report issues - the developers do take the time to read threads here for any user issues. In recent weeks - they have responded directly on numerous occasions. Using appropriate thread titles (like [bug] [error] [problem]) tend to get more attention. Having several users join in the thread also gets good attention. Seems to be working well enough. Link to comment
Keystone Posted March 23, 2010 Share Posted March 23, 2010 Wow... I am stepping away from this one. I am sorry to have upset the OP. I was trying to be helpful by accurately summarizing how things work. Link to comment
+KJcachers Posted March 23, 2010 Share Posted March 23, 2010 Keystone, A simple "no, we have no immediate plans to have a 24/7/365 staff to take service requests from our users" would have been enough. Link to comment
+hallycat Posted March 23, 2010 Share Posted March 23, 2010 To the OP: You are asking quite a lot for your $30 a year imho. This is still, after all a game. Nobody's business is going down the tubes if they can't connect to geocaching.com. Groundspeak has already responded that they are taking steps to have major site issues addressed in a more timely manner. I for one am very happy about their realization that there was a need for this and then addressing it. A24/7/365 support phone line costs $$$ to man. Are you willing to pay for it? I am not. Link to comment
+renruts Posted March 23, 2010 Author Share Posted March 23, 2010 Are you suggesting that 1 or more Groundspeak employees be available 24/7 to directly respond to performance concerns? .... and - I'm a bit lost by the rest of it - Do you want something like an 800 number to dial or some formal web page to issue trouble reports to -- and you expect an immediate human response? For the most part - this forum has always been a place to report issues - the developers do take the time to read threads here for any user issues. In recent weeks - they have responded directly on numerous occasions. Using appropriate thread titles (like [bug] [error] [problem]) tend to get more attention. Having several users join in the thread also gets good attention. Seems to be working well enough. Yes, I am suggesting that with all of the worldwide users and the push from the company to have mre and more mobile Near Real Time services, there should be someone that can restart services, servers 24/7 when there are outages. I am not suggesting that they have a call center at all. A NOC that gets updates from a web based mechanism is good enough. With such a quasi automated process you can begin to build metrics for the reports being seen and have the potential to be more proactive about maintaining service levels to the end users. Wow... I am stepping away from this one. I am sorry to have upset the OP. I was trying to be helpful by accurately summarizing how things work. Keystone you have not upset me - the recent seemingly constant lack of being able to use a service I have paid for, for entertainment purposes upsets me... Sorry that you took me out of context. Keystone, A simple "no, we have no immediate plans to have a 24/7/365 staff to take service requests from our users" would have been enough. It absolutely would have been sufficient... To the OP: You are asking quite a lot for your $30 a year imho. This is still, after all a game. Nobody's business is going down the tubes if they can't connect to geocaching.com. Groundspeak has already responded that they are taking steps to have major site issues addressed in a more timely manner. I for one am very happy about their realization that there was a need for this and then addressing it. A24/7/365 support phone line costs $$$ to man. Are you willing to pay for it? I am not. Here we differ... All I am asking for my membership paid and then for the app that i bought is for it (the site, app, and all back end services to make them work) to work, and when not working to have a better communication channel for disseminating information and to get that information in to the hands of meaningful engineers in a more rapid and efficient way so that potential impacts can be mitigated in a much quicker way that would not have nearly as much impact on the worldwide user base. I disagree that the forums are a good place for this traffic as well. Too many things can be missed. Take this thread for example: http://forums.Groundspeak.com/GC/index.php?showtopic=244671 this was basically the 6th weekend in a row that the app was unusable, the first response form a GS employee was a day later. Now considering that most of the user base is more apt to go caching on the weekend versus the core hours of the work week, it makes more sense to me to make sure you have someone watching over the infrastructure when you have the highest potential for having increased volumes of traffic, or as stated for this past weekend the highest ever traffic. I do agree that if I was the only premium member that this would be a more unrealistic request, but collectively with all the premium members world wide we deserve the services we have paid for. It is a matter of principle... I have paid for a service for entertainment purposes that I expect to be able to use as frequently or infrequently as I choose in the advertised way it was sold to me. Link to comment
+StarBrand Posted March 23, 2010 Share Posted March 23, 2010 .... I disagree that the forums are a good place for this traffic as well. Too many things can be missed. Take this thread for example: http://forums.Groundspeak.com/GC/index.php?showtopic=244671 this was basically the 6th weekend in a row that the app was unusable, the first response form a GS employee was a day later. Now considering that most of the user base is more apt to go caching on the weekend versus the core hours of the work week, it makes more sense to me to make sure you have someone watching over the infrastructure when you have the highest potential for having increased volumes of traffic, or as stated for this past weekend the highest ever traffic. ..... If it had been in the website forum I'll bet it would have been noticed a lot faster...... Link to comment
+ShowStop Posted March 23, 2010 Share Posted March 23, 2010 Yes, I am suggesting that with all of the worldwide users and the push from the company to have mre and more mobile Near Real Time services, there should be someone that can restart services, servers 24/7 when there are outages. I know that several Groundspeak staff are on call 24/7 and can deal with critical site issues when needed. I've seen them respond to issues and reboot servers on weekends and off-hours. Link to comment
+renruts Posted March 23, 2010 Author Share Posted March 23, 2010 (edited) .... I disagree that the forums are a good place for this traffic as well. Too many things can be missed. Take this thread for example: http://forums.Groundspeak.com/GC/index.php?showtopic=244671 this was basically the 6th weekend in a row that the app was unusable, the first response form a GS employee was a day later. Now considering that most of the user base is more apt to go caching on the weekend versus the core hours of the work week, it makes more sense to me to make sure you have someone watching over the infrastructure when you have the highest potential for having increased volumes of traffic, or as stated for this past weekend the highest ever traffic. ..... If it had been in the website forum I'll bet it would have been noticed a lot faster...... You may very well be correct unfortunatly this was not as i assume ( and we know the old saying for assuming ) the OP was Trying to follow the forum posting guidelines and posted it in the iphone thread since it appeared to them to be an iphone app issue. Sort of highlights the statement i made above that I feel more can be overlooked using a forum based reporting mechanism. Edited March 23, 2010 by renruts Link to comment
+hallycat Posted March 23, 2010 Share Posted March 23, 2010 .... I disagree that the forums are a good place for this traffic as well. Too many things can be missed. Take this thread for example: http://forums.Groundspeak.com/GC/index.php?showtopic=244671 this was basically the 6th weekend in a row that the app was unusable, the first response form a GS employee was a day later. Now considering that most of the user base is more apt to go caching on the weekend versus the core hours of the work week, it makes more sense to me to make sure you have someone watching over the infrastructure when you have the highest potential for having increased volumes of traffic, or as stated for this past weekend the highest ever traffic. ..... If it had been in the website forum I'll bet it would have been noticed a lot faster...... But......it was specific to the iPhone app no? Although actually I was trying to use my iPhone Sunday as well and neither the app nor the regular browser were having much luck. I wanted to read more then the 10 logs I had loaded on my Oregon. It's not my main source of caches though and I just gave up and moved on. I should probably drop out of this now.....as much as I enjoy the game I load plenty of caches on my GPS in advance of any outing and if I want more and can't get them I don't sweat it much. Link to comment
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