• Immutable Page
• Info
• Attachments
• More Actions: Raw Text Print View Render as Docbook Delete Cache ------------------------ Check Spelling Like Pages Local Site Map ------------------------ Rename Page Delete Page ------------------------ Subscribe User ------------------------ Remove Spam Revert to this revision Package Pages Sync Pages ------------------------ Load Save SlideShow

DRAFT: this page is a work in progress. Please seek further help or check the wiki index for a complete page on this topic.

Overview

Mailing lists, web forums and IRC are great places to find help with free software. Usually, you'll find someone who can answer your question or, at the very least, point you in the direction of a useful web page.

These methods of finding and giving help have a couple of shortcomings, though:

• there's no way to track the progress of a question
• knowledge about the software is spread across different places.

Launchpad Answers helps solves these problems by:

• tracking user questions in a similar way to bug reports
• notifying volunteer support contacts of new questions
• building a searchable knowledge base of good answers.

It also serves as a simple ticketing system for tracking admin requests.

To ask for help, visit the Answers page for the relevant project or distribution. For example, if you want help with the exaile media player, you'd visit https://answers.launchpad.net/exaile

Launchpad Answers for your project

If you're a project owner, you can use Launchpad Answers to offer support to your software's users and to build a knowledge base about your software.

First off, tell the world that your project uses Answers by selecting People can ask questions in Launchpad Answers on its Change details page at https://launchpad.net/<your-project>/+edit.

The most important step, though, is to ensure that questions about your project are seen by people who can help. This is where project answer contacts come in: they receive an email to let them know each time someone asks a question about your project.

Answer contacts

As an answer contact, you have two main jobs:

• reviewing new questions
• creating stock answers to frequently asked questions.

You or anyone else can volunteer to become an answer contact for a project. All you have to do is click the Set answer contact link on a project or distro's Answers overview page. If you're the admin of a team, you can also set that team to be an answer contact.

Important: when you become an answer contact, you're asking Launchpad to send you an email each time someone asks a question about that project or distro. If you make one of your teams an answer contact, you're subscribing each member to also receive that email. You should gain each member's permission before you make the team an answer contact.

Volunteering to be an answer contact is the easy bit. While Launchpad provides the mechanism to offer help to people, each project can choose for themselves how they deal with user support queries.

To find out about any such conventions, you should get in touch with one or two of the other answer contacts. Visit any of the project's Answers pages and expand the answer contacts box, in the left-hand column, for a full list.

Responding to new questions

Email interface

Usually, you can find help with free software by asking on mailing list, web forums or IRC.

Launchpad Answers improves the way tha

Launchpad Answers take the best ele

That support is often offered through mailing lists, forums and IRC.

Many projects use mailing lists, forums and IRC to

Use the first two paragraphs to summarise all the important points about this article.

Tell the reader if this is the information they need as soon as possible.

Instructional text

Where appropriate, use step by step instructions:

Step 1: Give concise and unambiguous instructions.

Step 2: Try not to state the obvious, unless you're writing for a novice user.

Note: Highlight important information with a note.

Step 3: Use a well cropped screen shot if it will help orient the reader. Don't let the screen shot replace instructional text: not everyone can see your screen shot. Don't worry about borders or annotation for small, cropped screen shots such as this.

Warning: If you're about to tell the reader to delete or otherwise change something that would be hard to restore, warn them.

Full screen shots

Some screen shots will be better placed to the right of your text. As they're not placed directly below the text that they support, use a border and short description.

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit. Aliquam sagittis. Aliquam eros dui, scelerisque id, consequat in, accumsan vitae, pede. Suspendisse neque ligula, scelerisque ac, mattis ut, aliquam quis, odio.

Proin nunc nisi, fringilla ac, congue ac, luctus eu, lacus. Maecenas ac purus. Cras felis metus, ultricies non, euismod ac, accumsan eleifend, leo. Quisque imperdiet tempus tellus.

Ut euismod, diam nec adipiscing interdum, tortor orci fringilla nisi, vel blandit erat magna at nisi. Fusce hendrerit odio non metus. Mauris nisl massa, dapibus id, feugiat quis, blandit a, quam. Integer tincidunt feugiat nunc. Curabitur iaculis egestas elit. Nam imperdiet suscipit odio.