Company ID

jjames

Hmmm - I got a message today when I went to use the search function and it said that not all fields were filled in and that I had to correct that.

What was missing? My AMX company ID. Hopefully this is the start of the forum being for actual dealers only and getting rid of end-users here.

annuello

jjames wrote: »

Hopefully this is the start of the forum being for actual dealers only and getting rid of end-users here.

Ouch! Some of us end-users know how to search for an answer before asking. I think some forum questions come across sounding like: "I don't know what I'm doing - can someone write the code for me and I'll collect the invoice." Usually there is an "urgent" somewhere in the message as well. However, on the whole I think a bit of diversity in the forums is a good thing.

If it were not for the wisdom and support of the forums I would have had a hard time (impossible) growing our fleet from 0 NetLinx masters to 450 (and counting). This would have had an unseen knock-on effect for both "actual dealers" and AMX as a whole by a reduction in sales.

If the intent is to reduce the number of "pre Programmer 1" questions then read-only access to the forums would still be useful for people who have not completed the basic training. I'm not entirely sure when our "company" received a Company ID. Perhaps that was allocated when we sent our first staff member to AMX training over 10 years ago, before my time here.

Roger McLean
Swinburne University.

jjames

Roger - there are certainly exceptions.

What aggravates me most is when someone who isn't a dealer is trying to monkey around with stuff because they magically got NetLinx Studio or any other software that they should not have in the first place, or the ones who think the forum is meant to replace Programmer 1, or as you pointed out, the "Please give me code so I can collect the invoice." That is what I hope leaves the forum - and fast.

I've long felt that there should be a forum meant only for dealers, one where we can ask questions and not worry about an end user finding out the nitty-gritty-behind-the-scenes stuff. I belong to another forum where you must be a verified integrator in order to read and post in specific sections. It's much better when you can communicate with other dealers / integrators without the eyes of end-users.

Just my two cents.

annuello

Yep, I hear what you're saying. Do you think a "dealer only" section in the forums would also help with this? I mean, in my role I have no interested whatsoever in sales margins, etc. I can't think what other issues dealers would want to discus without us non-dealers seeing, but I suppose I don't need to know do I. There will always be the "what goes online stays online" risk. I dunno.

I think the new forum requirement for Company ID has pros and cons. On the good side, it will probably prevent the forum quality from being diluted with basic questions which are addressed in a Programmer 1 course. However I'm not sure how well it would work out for an independent programmer. Perhaps they are looked after under the VIP program - maybe they have a Company ID as well. Perhaps there is a VIP here that could enlighten us.

There are plenty of bright programmers out there graduating each year. Even with a formal computer education I found AMX programming rather obtuse to begin with. After going to the P1 course it all made sense, and I wince at the code I wrote before-hand. I didn't know about the AMX forums until after I had been to P1, but this doesn't seem to be the case any more.

I suspect that AMX "brand protection" is what has motivated this. It is in the interests of AMX to ensure that where their logo is seen, the programming behind that logo meets a minimum quality. If this is factored into their reasoning for Company ID (via passing the P1 course) then I suspect....

if(!CompanyID)
 off[dvForum,chAccess]

Enough speculating from me.

Roger McLean
Swinburne University

John Nagy

Some of us have made a side career of trying to convince AMX that reading their own forum regularly would be a plus. Despite unending push back and long explanations of why it can't be done from those in control of support and engineering, I and others counter-argued for years that even just a single employee reading NEW each day and making a note two to three times a week about a trend, interest, bug, or something interesting - without reply - would take no more on an average day than 15 minutes, often less. And every few weeks something really valuable would be caught before it explodes. I've supplied examples to the last several heads of support.

But it seems to me that we've seen a measurable upswing in AMX-badged replies here in recent weeks or months. Perhaps this means that the newer powers over support have reconsidered, or maybe just the staff is sneaking it in. I'm happy for it however it happens.

This new wrinkle about a company ID might be part of a move to make this forum less a clinic for ebay endusers and a more serious part of AMX's much marketed "social network outreach". That would be good. Now if we could get the SEARCH tools to actually find things....

However, keeping out the non-dealers won't prevent the more than occasional requests we see asking for someone to find and read the manual to a dealer who isn't into structured learning.

zerkalo

I think having public forums like this is the only way to have a healthy community. It will improve the quality of programming, the quality of finished AMX systems and I think eventually the product the dealers are trying to sell. I wish other manufacturers would make their programming forums and knowledge public as well. So that you could put a compiler error message on google and get a result.

The AV world is like a bunch of secret societies reading ancient tomes behind closed doors. Forbidden knowledge is passed on by hand copying parchments. Sacrifices are made to the elder gods who shall not be named, in hopes the project will compile again.

Who would want to program on these systems if they remain like this?

My view is that everyone - the programmers, the dealers, the manufacturer, the end users - will benefit from a healthy and open community around the product.

Disclaimer: I am an AV system programmer and not a hardware dealer. This is my personal opinion on many AV system platforms, not only AMX.