Actinic Support

[Jarvis]

It's OK roger you can take my crown, please don't feel you can't...

Take it! Good grief no, I salute it!

[cbarling]

I'll try to get a precise answer from the person who designed it, but I think that it zips all of the files ready to be uploaded, and sends them up as one. Upload happens in parallel with generation, and when the previous upload is done, it zips the next batch. So the answer varies (I believe).

If the Perl zip library isn't installed, it automatically falls back to unzipped unload.

Chris

[pinbrook]

re: speed updates in v9.0.3

does actinic zip individual files, or does it zip up all files, send and unpack on the server?

ithought within network settings/ftp you could assign the size of the zip file? or am i thinking of something else.

I haven't installed 903 beta so i am relying on memory of the testing day

[Darren B]

Jo your right

under advanced options you can specify the file size, default is 1024 i have tested with 10240 and 2048 and see no difference on a site with 2000+ products

I also understood that it uploaded the files in chunks, i also believe pl & pm files are excluded, i could be wrong on this one

[zmagyar]

does actinic zip individual files, or does it zip up all files, send and unpack on the server?

We are using size counting. I.e. we are adding files to the zip until the uncompressed total file size exceeds a certain limit. So the number of files in the zip depends on the size of the actual files being zipped.

There is a new edit box on the Ftp Options dialog to control the size limit. The feature can be finetuned editing this. Large size results better performance but risks server timeout during unzip. The default value is a good compromise which gives good performance and most likely works on all servers.

[TraceyHand]

thanks, Zoltan, that's useful info

Hey, are you going to be at the conference?!

[zmagyar]

Hey, are you going to be at the conference?!

I wouldn't miss that. :-)

[RuralWeb]

Back to the subject of support - I was looking at one of Actinics competitors today and they offer support with the basic package costing $500. For this you get email support only and then its limited to 8 requests if you want telephone support then its POA.

This really does show what a good deal people get from Actinic support when you consider that Actinic offer more for FREE!!

[pinbrook]

i oftenwonder why actinic dropped the restriction to 10 ticketswithin telephone support, i had always assumed this restriction mean support was self financing - and makes people think before picking up the phone

[RuralWeb]

why actinic dropped the restriction to 10

If they did then they opened the flood gates themselves - as you say only having 10 calls does make people think twice.

Perhaps they should make people aware of it better - offering packs of 10 calls at a slightly lower price to add to the basic package would allow people to use it as much as they want.

[RuralWeb]

from the Actinic website

Free telephone support is available during your 30-day software trial period, and for 30 days after purchase.

So you can get 2 months free telephone support which IMO is more than enough for someone who is serious to get thier site up and running.

[george]

Called support this afternoon for the first time in months. Held on from 3pm until half past, getting from queue position five to position two, ended up leaving a message on the answerphone.

Why did I hang up? It was the sheer irony of `Should I stay or should I go?` coming on whilst I was hanging on...

Actually, I'm in the wrong forum, its a v8 MU problem.

I hear the screams now... G, you anti-christ!

[jont]

`Should I stay or should I go?`.... Actually, I'm in the wrong forum, its a v8 MU problem.

That should be in the favourite album thread surely??

[leehack]

That reminded me of a golfing trip away at a difficult course some years ago, where one of my playing partners had taken 8 unsuccessful attempts to get himself out of a pot bunker, suddenly his mobile rang and started playing the 'mission impossible' tune. It was an incredibly well timed comedy moment from which point forward none of us could swing a club without cracking up for the rest of the day. You had to be there, but you get the idea....

[cbarling]

OK, here's the latest update.

Over the last few months we have lost four support people, one of which had more than two years experience, the others had between around a year and six months.

In the last few weeks we have completed the recruitment of six new people. Three have completed their training and are already on the phones, three are near the end of their initial training.

We continue to monitor performance against our SLA of answering 95% of calls within two minutes. Our performance in the last five weeks has varied from as low as 65% to as high as 81%. As the new people come online and gain experience, the speed of response will improve, which is good, because currently it isn't good enough.

There have been no new reports of dropped calls since we put the fix into our phone system that I mentioned previously.

Chris