Outcomes from this year’s User Survey
 The winner of the random drawing from among the participants in this year’s user survey was Sreedhar Devanagondi of Alcatel-Lucent. Sreedhar has already received his Bose® QuiteComfort® 3 headphones. We offer our sincere thanks to Sreedhar and everyone else who participated in the survey.
Survey Outcomes
We recently circulated an email reporting back to you some of what we learned from the survey, how some of the issues users raised in the survey are being addressed and the future actions we will take to address other issues from the survey.
Several users who participated in the survey commented that we should improve the reliability and usability of ScanWorks. Our Product Development department is always working on new features, capabilities and other enhancements to improve the robustness of our products. In fact, the most recent release of ScanWorks (Version 3.9), which will be available later in August, significantly enhanced the robustness of ScanWorks, DFT Analyzer and Extended JTAG Coverage. For example, ScanWorks now has enhanced robustness for adaptive in-system programming under the IEEE 1532 concurrent programming standard in addition to support for Microsoft’s new Vista version of the Windows® operating system.
Support Issues
Several survey participants commented on improving the way we track support tickets, the timeliness of our actions in response to software change  requests (SCR) and the need to keep you informed of the status of your support requests. It is important to note that increasing the quality of our technical support operations is a constant concern of ours and one that we regularly address. In fact, we are already acting on some of these comments.
For example, the online support ticket form which you fill out to initiate a SCR was recently expanded with new fields intended for keeping you informed of the status of your SCR and the scheduled software release that could include the enhancement you requested. These fields are also monitored by our Field Engineers who update this information when they become aware of changes in the timing of a product enhancement. In addition, a link to our online support system is now contained in the ScanWorks help menu.
Initiating a support ticket has also become easier. With a single mouse click an e-mail ticket form is generated by ScanWorks and automatically populated with user data. You don’t have to go to the trouble of entering the serial number of your station, the software version, your operating system and other information that our support personnel need.
Some users may have already noticed another enhancement, the automatic new version, service pack and maintenance status notification system that was implemented with ScanWorks 3.8. Now whenever ScanWorks is started, a pop-up notification tells you whether new software updates or service packs are available for downloading. And if your maintenance agreement is within 30 days of expiring, you’ll also get an automatic notification so your maintenance won’t run out without you knowing about it. Of course, you can easily turn off these notifications if you wish to.
Stocking the Libraries
Several of you mentioned our industry-leading online model and video libraries. This indicated to us the critical role these resources play in your everyday work responsibilities. One prominent theme from the survey was the request for additions to the device model library. We’ve been conscientiously adding to our model library as quickly as we can. Since October of 2006, for  example, we’ve added almost almost 1,500 BSDL, cluster, flash and memory models to the library, bringing its contents to a total of some 9,500 device models. We’ve also noticed an increase in the usage of the model library. During the first three months of 2007 the average number of hits on the model library was 640 per month, a marked increase over the monthly average from the last year.
It was no surprise that training was mentioned by several users in the survey. Because more organizations are adopting boundary scan every day, the need for training will always be present. It is incumbent upon us to develop time- and cost-effective means to bring new users up to speed and to educate experienced users on new capabilities. To this end, we have stocked our online video library with an extensive selection of training “shorts” that function as a training-on-demand resource. User hits on the video library have been climbing steadily as well. The average monthly number of hits during the first three months of this year increased by 22 percent over the hits generated during the last three months of 2006. We shall continue adding to this valuable resource.
Thanks Again
We have a debt of appreciation to the 80 users who took part in this year’s User Satisfaction Survey. If we could, we would show our gratitude individually to each user who participated, but that’s not feasible. In any event, we hope that the actions we take as a result of the survey demonstrate how much we value your feedback. Thanks again and we hope that you will participate in next year’s survey. |
