Several years ago, Sage North America joined the Consortium for Service Innovation and started implementing knowledge-centered support (KCS) practices. If you're so inclined, you can read all about the practice on the Consortium's site here , but the gist of it is to capture how users describe issues in their words, not technical jargon, and write knowledgebase articles in the simplest steps possible so that the average user should be able to follow the instructions and solve the issue. For several years now, the Sage 50—U.S. Edition support team has been authoring the articles in the knowledgebase using this practice, and the knowledgebase is now at a mature stage. Chances are high a solution to any issue you have already lies in the knowledgebase. What's more, the customer version of the knowledgebase is by and large the same knowledgebase that the support analysts search when you call for help with an issue. There are some internal-only articles, but they are rare. We're not holding on to any secret knowledge--if we know how to solve it, there's an accompanying article. Knowing the article is likely there and being able to find it are two different things, however. Here are some tips and tricks for searching the knowledgebase that should increase your ability to find a solution. 1. Basics The knowledgebase is at https://support.na.sage.com/selfservice/microsites/microsite.do . Click the link for Sage 50—U.S. Edition on the left side of the window under Browse Products. This will set the search to only search the solutions marked for the Sage 50—U.S. Edition program. 2. Enter a short group of keywords in the search field instead of longer complete sentences As an example, searching for quarterback ratings 2014 would be better than searching for who had the best quarterback rating for the 2014 football season. The more words that are entered in the search field, the more the search will prioritize the number of word matches instead of the relevance of a few keywords. 3. Unless you have an error message... An exception to the short group of keywords method is if you have an error message. In the KCS methodology, error messages are supposed to be documented with the full text of the error message, so if you can search for the exact full text of an error, you should be able to find it. 4. Click the Show Options under the Search button, and select Articles in Document Type. Product documentation will also be included in your search results unless you specify Articles. While product documentation will have a wealth of general information on how to use features in the product, in most cases you will be better off searching just for Articles. 5. After getting results, select a likely category After you've run a search and gotten some results, a list of category links will appear to the left under a heading of Change Focus. Selecting a category's link will further refine your results to the articles that fit your keywords and fit the category. The categories will appear in descending order by number of articles in that category that fit the keyword search. 6. Search again with a slightly different tactic In support, we're trained to search early and search often. If you don't find what you need on your first search, try it again with fewer keywords. Pick a category that seems to fit after you have a longer list of results for keywords. Also, to help in searching, there are a small handful of valid operators that are available--details on how to use them are found by clicking the "KB search tips and tricks" link on the right side of the window. As always, thank you for reading--catch us again in two weeks. Follow the Sage 50—U.S. Edition support analysts on Twitter: https://twitter.com/Sage50US
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