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Looks like PDF manuals are going away

D_Flood
Level 6

The Support Page redesign appears to be eliminating the PDF version of the manuals.  They now open in a unresizeable view that has a ton of wasted whitespace and is very confusing to navigate.  Also gone (or at least hidden) is the really nice "here's all the manuals for your version" list.

 

17 REPLIES 17

X2
Moderator
Moderator
   VIP   

I saw one like you describe but thought it was a one off.  Can you put some links here?

RiaanBadenhorst
Moderator
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Support site is #$T^#$, use sort. It has all the docs, it doesn't take 4 years to load, and still has a link to the all pdf zip files.

https://sort.veritas.com/documents/doc_details/nbu/8.0/Windows%20and%20UNIX/ProductGuides/

Laraine
Level 1
Employee

The .zip files for NetBackup are still available. Go to www.veritas.com/docs/DOC5332 and pick your release--the .zip file should head the list of downloadable files for each release.

The PDFs are on the new doc portal as well as .html books. The HTML books are only available for NetBackup 8.0. PDFs go back to NetBackup 7.6.

Hope that helps.

The HTML reader is worthless and useless compared to reading a PDF.  Not only is the overall screen format a waste of space, the format layout and font are awful.  Not to mention, I'm willing to bet the HTML reader is not ADA compliant.

Please add my vote to "the redesign is garbage" and "ask what users need before you make changes".

 

X2
Moderator
Moderator
   VIP   

I think the main concern is: Will Veritas continue to provide documentation in PDF format as it has been till now?

I don't care much how many other formats they provide and how usable the HTML format is, a copy of documentation in PDF format is what I have used for reference till now. It looks the same on no matter which OS/device I view it and prints the same way too.

vtas_chas
Level 6
Employee

I've forwarded these comments to some mangers inside the InfoDev teams to make sure they understand our customer base still wants PDFs.

The comments I got back indicate they are not going to take away PDFs and that they are looking at a way to restore the 'all docs in one PDF' functionality.

Please keep these comments coming so they can understand your needs better.

Charles
VCS, NBU & Appliances

I will say that having separate, targeted manuals is one plus for NetBackup.  I'm in a hybrid shop and the other product has one manual...that's six inches thick when printed...so finding an answer in it (either physically or electronically) is really difficult.

 

Marianne
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@vtas_chas

THANK YOU for looking at this post and escalating our requirements to the 'right people'.

Without you, our gripes would simply be a matter of shouting into the wind.

I agree with @D_Flood -
PLEASE, we DO NOT WANT 'all docs in one PDF'.

I actually hope that we misunderstood!

Can you imagine the size of ALL of these docs in one pdf? 
https://www.veritas.com/support/en_US/article.000116412

I have not downloaded all of the manuals. The size of my NBU8 folder is 99.5 MB.

Backup Exec does not have one third of the NBU features and has a single Admin Guide.
Not only does it take a long time to download (in Dark Africa... ), trying to find anything is quite a mission...

JoeKug
Level 3
Employee

I’d like to add some information to the discussion here. The changes you are seeing on the Support site are only the first of many that will be coming over the next several months. We understand that people consume information in a variety of different manners, and we are doing our best to accommodate as many as possible. Although the usable width of the content part of the screen is small now, we will soon be changing out the framework upon which it is built. This will give us the ability to display documentation using the whole width. In addition to the online documentation viewer, which makes it possible to deliver highly relevant search results from product documentation, we also remain committed to our practice of allowing those who prefer offline reading to download PDF versions of documentation.

Lastly, the changes we are making have all started with customer input. We have conducted interviews, focus groups, and performed extensive research. Our aim is to deliver an outstanding online experience that is the result of extensive collaboration with you, our users.

Thank you for your voicing your thoughts; looking forward to more. Remember there is a feedback button on the right side of every screen on the site; feedback submitted there will come directly to the team responsible for the site.

Marianne
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@JoeKug

We need your assistance to find a one-page URL with links to all NetBackup 8.1 manuals.

My searches so far have found me these: 

https://www.veritas.com/content/support/en_US/DocumentBrowsing.html?product=NetBackup  
It seems that there should be 45 docs  :
45 results, sorted by:  Modified date
But I can only see a list of 6 docs. Where is the rest? (Unless I'm missing it, there is no option to go to next page...)

And this:
https://www.veritas.com/support/en_US/article.DOC5332
Extract: 

Note: NetBackup 8.1 documentation will be published when the 8.1 release is publicly available.

The link to '8.1 guides' is not working.
My understanding is that NBU 8.1 is already GA, right?

 

JoeKug
Level 3
Employee

Thank you for reaching out! I have forwarded your feedback to the team responsible for generating that document. It should be updated soon.

In the meantime, the full doc set is available in the Documentation Library. If you scroll to the bottom of the page, the next set of results should automatically load. Let me know if it is not working that way for you.

Marianne
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Thank you so much.

But the Documents page is currently only showing 6 docs. I am using Chrome.

NBU81-docs.JPG

JoeKug
Level 3
Employee

I am sorry you are experiencing this problem. Not sure if this applies, but we've had some reports about the loading of results failing on large screen monitors. Resizing the browser so that scrollbars appear seems to help. Can you try that?

We are working on correcting this problem. We realize this needs to work with 100% reliability in order for it to be effective.

Thanks again for posting!

vtas_chas
Level 6
Employee

@JoeKug 

8.1 is technically GA, but none of the links I've seen has had 8.1 docs on it at all.  Are we updating pages to resolve the issue Marianne was brinigng up? 

I've had several customers reach out to me today about this, and specifically been asked if we will have all the PDF files in a single zip?  Any update there?

Thanks!

Charles
VCS, NBU & Appliances

Well, we must have been doing something to the pages, or my browser was just misbehaving.

This page has all the docs on it and a zip file with all 8.1 docs in it: 

https://www.veritas.com/support/en_US/article.000127661 

This one also works if you scroll to the bottom and wait patiently for it to load some more, scroll and wait, scroll and wait, etc. (a horrible page design IMO):

https://www.veritas.com/content/support/en_US/DocumentBrowsing.html?product=NetBackup 

Charles
VCS, NBU & Appliances

JoeKug
Level 3
Employee

OK, the original problem with the link has been corrected. The 8.1 page is now posted, with links to the zip files.

https://www.veritas.com/support/en_US/article.000127661

Marianne
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I have used the 'feedback' link to request that the 8.1 link be fixed. Received an email early hours this morning (South Africa timezone) to say the 8.1 link had a typo error and has been fixed.

Signed by a person called Joe! ;)