With the new OpenSRS Help & Support Portal now fully up and running for a few months now, I thought it would be good to show you some of the places where we are sharing important information.
Announcements
- Upcoming Maintenance: we’ll post things like registry maintenance announcements and planned OpenSRS maintenance here. We’ll continue to provide real-time updates via OpenSRS Status.
- Release Notes and Change Logs: Starting on February 28, 2013, we’ll be posting a changelog for OpenSRS Services. This posting will detail the changes made to OpenSRS services, the API and Control Panels in the last month. Going forward, this log will be posted on the last Thursday of the month. You’ll also find release notes for things like goMobi, SiteLock and other services that are provided by third-party vendors when available.
- Service Bulletins: In the event of unplanned outages or other disruptions of service, we endeavour to provide a summary of the reasons behind the disruption and what we are doing to prevent a reoccurrence. You’ll find those bulletins within a day or two of the conclusion of the outage or interruption. We do our best to be as open and transparent about any issues as possible and we invite your comments if you have any.
Services knowledge base
Those visiting the portal on a regular basis will note that we’ve been steadily adding articles to the Services Knowledge Base. It is our intention to continue to add content here to help answer some of the questions that you might have without requiring you to open a ticket.
The search function in the new portal is pretty effective and if you create tickets directly in the portal, you’ll be given suggestions for articles that may hold the answer to your question.
Over the last couple of months, we’ve created dozens and dozens of new articles in the various categories. You’ll also note that we’ve moved content related to specific policies and documentation for certain ccTLDs to the Services Knowledge Base in the Domains category.
Community forums
Last but not least, we’re seeing increased activity in our Community Forums since moving from the old forum software into the new, unified portal. Feel free to drop in and ask any questions that you might have there. Unlike our previous forums which were primarily user-to-user, our support staff are monitoring things fairly closely and are happy to step in and answer your questions there.