topic Re: Your new support website in Your questions about the HPE Support Center website

Your new support website

spackard — Wed, 18 Oct 2017 15:42:37 GMT

Rating: 0/10.

The question is: How do I go back to using the old search tool on HPE's website??

Re: Your new support website

parnassus — Wed, 18 Oct 2017 17:48:58 GMT

I agree...sadly it's very difficult (if not totally impossible) to find Firmware just by searching for a product (try looking for, let me say, latest ArubaOS-Switch for Aruba 5400R zl2 Switch Series...)...and I am specifically speaking about Networking...I haven't tried myself to enter the HPE ProLiant server zone yet.

Before the switch between the old Support Site and the new one...once you know the SKU, Serial Number or Product Name (family or exact model) after just few clicks you were able to look for latest: firmwares, top solutions/issues and manuals...now it seems this reasonable way of presenting (categorizing) product related informations looks totally gone because results are mixed up and, even you filter out what you're exactly looking for, results aren't listed from the most recent to the most old (all is mixed up and results from many years ago are top on the list while results about most recent items are in between).

A way to access Firmwares is via Product List portal:

https://h10145.www1.hpe.com/downloads/ProductsList.aspx?lang=&cc=&prodSeriesId=

A way to access Product related materials is via Support Lookup portal:

https://h10145.www1.hpe.com/support/SupportLookUp.aspx

Software choice will you back to the first link above (directly on the product choosen), manuals will route you to the new support site way of presenting results...

It's unbelieveable - see above a test - that search results can't be filtered out (automatically or manually) by date, from the newest (latest released) to the oldest (first released)...make no sense to me.

Note how any reference to documentation related to latest ArubaOS-Switch 16.04 release (or, e.g. 16.02...just to name one) is not presented...cause results of past documentation (related to software releases of many years ago) is presented first. No vay to sort. Unbelieveable. Really.

Then: what's the purpose of Relevance filter if "All" selection can't be deselected? don't show to users options that don't produce any noticeable positive effect on the way results are presented...come on, let's go guys...that's basic Human Interface design.

Re: Your new support website

aGardener — Thu, 19 Oct 2017 08:08:24 GMT

Yes, ABSOLUTELY unbelievable!

The previous search, by the way, was even more worse, because it did not show the published date and it had a (stupid) dynamic scroll "feature" - you had to move the page down and then it did expand the list 'automagically'.

This previous, previous search, while it wasn't reliable, did have the tabular output with date and the date was sortable.

The current navigation is pretty much TOTAL unusable:

1. all OIDs (I guess that is short for 'object identifier' for different products or families) I have checked, have changed!
Old links don't work any longer and you are forced through this unusable interface.

2. You are always forced though this highly inefficient search result list.
You can only expand by 10 entries at a time and not expand all entries at once, like in the previous system.

As you cannot sort by date any longer, you would have to click, click, click through EVERYTHING and check ALL entries, just to find the latest additions.

3. I used to take the HTML page source and extract the link (URL) and published date to find additions with a self-written program. Highly efficient, as I have to support many products.

That, by the way, showed that sometime entries appeared in lists with older content date years ago.

This is completely impossible now, as everything is run through browser-scripts.

Also, from the list, you can't right-click an entry to extract the link.
No, you have to left-click, which opens a new pane on the right side
and the browser moves to the top of the page.
Due to that move, is VERY hard to get back to the list and continue the search.

From there you can open the document in a separate browser window or start a PDF download.

But even THAT does not work properly, because the OID gets lost:
https://support.hpe.com/hpsc/doc/public/display?sp4ts.oid=null&docLocale=en_US&docId=emr_na-c01502694

And all documents I have checked did not display pictures any more and I have checked with 3 browsers and from 2 network links.

*****

I have already told by boss that it is now IMPOSSIBLE for me to:
- keep current with information on new documents, advisories or software downloads
- support our customers (I'm doing servers+ blades, LAN + SAN and most storage arrays) in an efficient way

*****

Those "designers", project managers, programmers are COMPLETELY detached from reality!

Maybe a nice design study, but it completely fails the reality check.

This change should NEVER have been rolled out !!!

Re: Your new support website

aGardener — Thu, 19 Oct 2017 09:42:21 GMT

And another problem (besides what I have already reported - here and via feedback to HPE):

when there is a network disruption, but you don't notice and hit "[next 10 results]",

This message appears:
The service or information you requested is not available at this time. We apologize for this inconvenience and are working quickly to resolve this issue. Please try again later.(Error: [503: NetworkError when attempting to fetch resource.])

On the old system you could just hit "reload".

On this new BAD BAD BAD system
YOU HAVE TO START FROM SCRATCH AGAIN!!

Re: Your new support website

parnassus — Thu, 19 Oct 2017 13:54:43 GMT

To @aGardener I agree with you on all the line...

I tested this 5 minutes ago:

Open HPE Support portal (https://www.hpe.com/us/en/support.html)
Select HPE Support Center under Product Support (https://support.hpe.com/hpesc/home)
Digit "Aruba 5400R zl2 Switch" search suggestions point to:

As you can see no reference about the whole Aruba 5400R zl2 Switch Series / Family (If I look for Aruba 5400R zl2 I don't care necessarily about a Management Module...but I'm looking for a general access portal about that whole family/series...isn't it?).

So I added to the research string the "Switch" word...and so a suggestion about Aruba 5400R zl2 Switch appeared.

Select the proper result (in my case the "Aruba 5400R zl2 Switch" link)

Notice the quality of results:

So finally I select Driver & Software since , this time, I need to access to latest software (Firmware) related to the whole Aruba 5400R zl2 Switch Series...so what? it's simple like filtering (the only option available) to "Driver & Software"...that's the actual result:

Amazing...no softwar for Aruba 5400R zl2 Switch thus, at this point, we can't then blame HPE Community users to be lazy for not looking for and finding (easily) documentation and software about their HPE products...because also to me - and I'm not lazy at all - is impossible to reach what I'm looking for...at least with the old portal things showed up in a way or another (as I wrote above).

Re: Your new support website

Lynn-Marie — Thu, 19 Oct 2017 20:29:25 GMT

Please accept my sincere regret at the confusion and frustration!

We are working with great urgency to fix the software download links on the new HPE Support Center. While we implement a short and long term plan for a fix, you can use either www.hpe.com/networking/support or www.hpe.com/networking/software to find your software downloads.

Kind regards,
Lynn-Marie

Re: Your new support website

Lynn-Marie — Thu, 19 Oct 2017 20:30:58 GMT

Please take the time to submit your feedback using the green feedback link on the support center pages. The impact from providing feedback to the team is higher using that mechanism. That said, we are actively working the issues you've identified.

Kind regards,

Lynn-Marie

Re: Your new support website

parnassus — Thu, 19 Oct 2017 20:54:20 GMT

Lynn-Marie wrote: While we implement a short and long term plan for a fix, you can use either www.hpe.com/networking/support or www.hpe.com/networking/software to find your software downloads.

Hi @Lynn-Marie, thanks you for the note.

The links you provided are exactly the links I'm using since the new portal went online (see my first post above, URLs don't look the same but, actually, will bring you on the same - Networking Support and Networking Software - places).

Re: Your new support website

parnassus — Thu, 19 Oct 2017 20:57:08 GMT

@lynn-Marie wrote:
Please take the time to submit your feedback using the green feedback link on the support center pages. The impact from providing feedback to the team is higher using that mechanism. That said, we are actively working the issues you've identified.
Kind regards,
Lynn-Marie

Will do...but, wasn't it so already noticeable? I mean...it's not cosmetic...well, doesn't matter...I will take time to submit feedback as you advised.

Re: Your new support website

aGardener — Fri, 20 Oct 2017 06:02:24 GMT

Hello Lynn-Marie,

> We are working with great urgency to fix the software download links

But that is not the only problem!
The whole interface is the problem!

This also affects HTML advisories, bulletins and PDF documents (the previous "manuals" section).

-----

I have looked at the Beta quickly after it was announced.

If I remember correctly (don't have the notes any longer), I reported that dates were missing from the list view. [1]

The software was so much unusable that I planned to take a look later, but that never happened. On the other hand - from what I can see, nothing else really was improved to the software when I compare Beta and Today.

Again, this version should NEVER have been put into production.

I have reported everything I have written here so far, through the Feedback button. One time I was even promised an answer within a day...

[1] That same design error (missing published date) was present in the previous search (I wrote above) and I know I DID report this, but nothing happened.

-----

It is not that I sit back, moan and just suffer: in the past I also have reported other problemes with content.

For example: since more than 6 months, some documents like 'Overview', 'Standard Models', 'Troubleshooting' are missing space characters (" ") between words. This also happens for documents which have been updated and I DO know that the error was NOT present in the previous version!

I also told that this looks like an error in a cut&paste or conversion process, because the distances between the errors is pretty much the same taking different word lengths into account.
NOTHING has happened so far.

Other formatting errors (missing line breaks this time) in PDF files in articles like mmr_sf-EN_US000000001 , I cannot report, because I don't have a feedback link.

Reporting from me and others or not: in both cases, this should have been caught within HPE if there were more quality checks to verify the (output) result.

-----

A new descovered problem I have not reported so far, because I did not have time to reproduce, is this:

The new HPESC "search" mechanism is not a simple web page - it obviously is a stateful font-end to a backend search mechanism. (Except that it cannot "search" for article ID like "c00030203" - another feature that got lost)

This problem seems that when you wait too much time before you hit the [next 10 entries] button, it simply does not work and...

Guess what? You have to Reload and start from the beginning again!!!

-----

Honestly, I don't see how you can "fix" this.

Please roll back to the previous version and, do me a favour and roll back the "search" to the previous, previous version which used the same tabular output.

Eternally thanks.

Re: Your new support website

spackard — Mon, 23 Oct 2017 14:00:23 GMT

Lynn-Marie -

My question is still unanswered. I'm still looking for the answer. Others agree the new HPE support website is unusable. That's fine, they can agree or disagree.
The question is: How do I go back to using the old search tool on HPE's website??

Re: Your new support website

parnassus — Sun, 29 Oct 2017 08:30:27 GMT

Is only my personal view or things are getting worse and worse (instead of better and better) than ever about the new HPE Support portal...today, any simple string search (like "HPE OfficeConnect 1950" or "officeconnect 1950", as examples), is producing this error:

"The service or information you requested is not available at this time. We apologize for this inconvenience and are working quickly to resolve this issue. Please try again later.(Error: [503: JSON.parse: unexpected character at line 1 column 1 of the JSON data])"

Screenshot:

I'm start thinking - WRT to that new Support Portal - that, at HPE, someone (or an entire Team) is going to experience (or is already experiencing) very bad bad bad times...

Re: Your new support website

MargaretN — Mon, 30 Oct 2017 10:47:51 GMT

Additional information, this release was considered beta and the date filter and enhanced search algorithm will be available next month.

In the meantime, for software downloads the older display is now also available.

Sorry for the inconvenience.

Re: Your new support website

aGardener — Mon, 30 Oct 2017 21:23:10 GMT

Parnassus, I am afraid that you are absolutely right.

Pretty much whenever a change was made, it became worse.

NOW THE SYSTEM UNUSABLE!

WE CAN NO LONGER SUPPORT OUR CUSTOMERS!

It is the "HPE un-support center" !

MargaretN:
> Additional information, this release was considered beta

There was a "beta test" on a different URL.
HOW ON EARTH COULD YOU(HPE) DECIDE TO PUT A "BETA" INTO PRODUCTION ?????

Please, please, please wake up and realize:

THIS IS A FAILED DESIGN STUDY !!!
no amount of "additions" will fix the basic design failure:
an unreliable stateful (browser-based) client to a severly limited/broken search back-end.

It is nice if you add a date filter and an "enhanced search algorithm" (whatever that means...) later,
BUT WHY ON EARTH WAS THE OLD TABULAR NAVIGATION BY OID REMOVED??

Please drop this "EXPERIMENT" immediately and roll back back to the previous version which uses navigation by OID with tabular output!!!

And while you are it, please roll back the search function to the previous, previous version, which also provided tabular output.

Re: Your new support website

parnassus — Tue, 31 Oct 2017 02:25:10 GMT

Hi Margaret,

MargaretN wrote: In the meantime, for software downloads the older display is now also available.

Are we sure about that?

Do you mean we should go to https://h10145.www1.hpe.com/downloads/ProductsList.aspx portal? and, if so, from where if the starting point should be always the HPE Enterprise Support landing page?

I mean (as I understood your note)...if a user starts from HPE Enterprise Support landing page (https://www.hpe.com/us/en/support.html) and goes to the HPE Support Center link (https://support.hpe.com/hpesc/home) to look for, as example, the JG920A (it is the HPE SKU of HPE OfficeConnect 1920-8G Switch model) that user will receive one (or more) search result(s) related to that SKU but if, at that point, the user finally filters "Drivers and Software" he/she receives a laconic message:

"Your search produced no results for drivers and software. For Enterprise software products you can find additional downloads at the HPE Software Depot."

which is totally different from what user expects to find at that point of his/her search (especially when he/she already know what he/she is looking for, example: latest Firmware for a particular Switch SKU or Switch Series).

Different matter if a user goes directly to (the old?) https://h10145.www1.hpe.com/downloads/ProductsList.aspx portal.

There, searches are generally done without issues and related results are coherent...forwarding the user (through various choice levels, AKA "mouse clicks") to the desired software(s).

Hope to have provided a positive feedback about all this.

Re: Your new support website

Lynn-Marie — Tue, 31 Oct 2017 19:42:40 GMT

Hello Community Members,

Frustration abounds with the new HPE Support Center, and you have been heard. There are teams working this around the clock with a get-well plan firming up as we speak (type). In the interim, going to www.hpe.com/networking/support or www.hpe.com/networking/software will give you a workaround. In addition, there is a link to the My Networking portal on the support center pages.

I'll do my best to let you know a timeline for repair/improvement.

Sincerely,
Lynn-Marie

Re: Your new support website

Lynn-Marie — Wed, 01 Nov 2017 17:47:38 GMT

I am sorry, but I don't think there is a way to revert to the old system.

Sincerely,
Lynn-Marie

Re: Your new support website

doktornotor — Thu, 02 Nov 2017 15:14:24 GMT

The new website is completely unusable. Kindly revert this failed experiment which is a usability nightmare (to put it mildly) to the previous state. A bad joke really. Junk.

Re: Your new support website

Matthias Zahn_1 — Fri, 10 Nov 2017 09:58:34 GMT

Hi HPE,

are you serious to put such crap online?

Tell me how to find the following:

The latest BIOS and Array Firmware for BL460c Gen8 for ESXI 6.0/6.5 (Yes, in SCEXE-format, not rpm).

Please drop it and put the old version back online.

Do someone remember the old Compaq Proliant download pages? This was the best. HP(E) never reach this again.

I had now opened a case to send me the latest files.

Re: Your new support website

Dennis Handly — Mon, 13 Nov 2017 02:44:49 GMT

@Matthias Zahn_1 I had now opened a case to send me the latest files.

Did you ask them how to find that info on HPESC site? So they can fix it for the next customer?