Category Archives: Knowledge Base

SUMO sprint 2012.4

This is a quick update on what we are currently working on in the 4th SUMO sprint of this year, the results of this sprint will go live between February 28th and March 6th.

Our dev goals for this quarter were to get the SUMO KPI dashboard up and running, and to switch to a new search engine that would allow us to implement all the improvements suggested by the ongoing taxonomy/ux research and the usability research before that.

We have recently turned our new search engine (Elastic Search) on for 50% of our site’s users, and the early results are very promising. The Click Through Rate, our main success metric at this point, of the new engine is already better than that of the old one. Currently we are gathering more data to get reliable results, but if the final results agree with our preliminary findings, we’ll switch to Elastic Search 100% in early March and start improving our results. One big issue we’ll tackle soon is the performance of Elastic Search, currently it is much slower than our old search engine. However Will already has ideas that will hopefully give us significant improvements in this area, starting with sprint 5.

Our KPI dashboard is nearing completion, thanks to Ricky. We already have many of the metrics we set out to present and few are left. This sprint will give us the Army of Awesome numbers, the number of unique visitors we have at SUMO and our localization coverage.

One change that seems small, but will hopefully have a big effect, is the change of our font, colors and sizes. We had numerous complaints that our text was hard to read and links were easily overlooked. Bram, our UX designer, and font expert extraordinaire, came up with a new style that uses stronger colors for links, changes the gray on white of our body text to a darker black, and moves us from serif to sans-serif. The latter change is significant, there is a large body of research on what is better for readability serif, or sans-serif, and amid a lot of myths there are arguments for both sides. However it seems clear that there is only one factor that reliably affects readability: familiarity. Of the top 100 websites today only 4 use a serif font for body text. Since users today are so much more familiar with sans-serif our hope is that this change will contribute to the overall readability of SUMO.

Another thing we have been working on is several customizations of our contributor forums, so they could be used by the Firefox Aurora and Beta communities. Expect more activity in those forums very soon.

As always, there is a good number of new features and fixes for smaller bugs:

ID	Summary
730065	Allow sort by original post date
718813	let people add screenshots when asking a question
726037	Combine some of the KPI dashboard graphs
645546	How to contribute articles overview in the dashboard
724833	Change AoA signposts
625841	Reword email notifications for Questions
720226	We need reviewing rights for en-US and other locales
724483	remove en-US part from link in ‘ready for localization’ emails
725287	Use One Mozilla breadcrumb style (revert bug 716018)
726112	Allow entering a message for recent contributors, even if you approve your own revision.
722697	Show contributor sidebar in the questions app
726856
706948	In some cases, a question displays “No replies” with a reply below
722509	notification about private message has localized URL
728307	Please add {for} support for fx12, m12 and add Firefox 12 to the dropdown UI, remove Firefox 9 from the UI

Documentation Process

HOLY COW! This is a long (12 minutes) explanation of the new SUMO documentation process. Here’s the short version:

Six week schedule. The first four weeks, we’ll be drafting articles based on the Aurora release and localizing articles for the Beta release. During the last two weeks Aurora becomes Beta, Beta becomes the new release and we’ll finalize the docs we drafted in the first four weeks. Rinse and repeat. We’ll use the Article Tracking page to organize everything.

Long version

Example schedule: Weeks 1 – 4

Release = Fx 6, Beta = Fx 7, Aurora = Fx 8, Nightly = Fx 9

Localize Fx 7: Once the articles are finalized, there will be four weeks to localize before release. We’ll have marked revisions as ready for localization so they’ll show up on Localization dashboards. Also, Localizers can keep abreast of what changes are happening by following the Article Tracking page.
- Note: In the two weeks previous to this we may have also made updates based on feedback from the Fx 6 release that will also be included in this batch of articles to localize.
Draft Fx 8: We’ll have four weeks to draft new articles and updates to existing articles. We’ll be working from the Article Tracking page which we’ll have been updating since the previous documentation cycle.
Track Fx 9: This release will be on the Nightly channel. We’ll follow the Release Tracking page to identify which changes and additions will need documentation. Articles that will need to be updated or proposals for new articles should be added to the Article Tracking page along with links to the appropriate feature page and general notes about what will need to be documented. The details of this should be discussed in the Article’s forum thread also linked from this page. The tracking of Firefox 9 features is an ongoing process that will continue through it’s Beta phase but after it moves to Aurora the main changes should only be the possible removal of a feature.
Archive: Since Firefox and our documentation will be changing as new versions are released, we’ll use this time to evaluate whether there are any articles that are:
- Obsolete because Firefox has changed
- Obsolete because they get so few views as to not be of concern to the vast majority of Firefox users.

Example schedule: Weeks 5 & 6

Release = Fx 7, Beta = Fx 8, Aurora = Fx 9, Nightly = Fx 10

Update Fx 7: Firefox 7 will have been released so, if necessary, we’ll be able to go back and make adjustments to our documentation based on feedback from the support forums and live chat.
Finalize Fx 8: Once the release moves to the Beta channel, we’ll have two weeks to finalize these articles that were drafted. During this time we’ll:
- Add screenshots and screencasts if necessary
- Review and approve the articles
- Mark the final Fx8 revision as Ready for Localization
Begin Tracking Fx 10: This release will now be on the Nightly channel.

More details, including information about the Article Archive and Ready for Localization features are on the Mozilla wiki.

Join the Firefox 4 for Mobile Localization Sprint today

Hey everyone,

This is a quick reminder about our Firefox for mobile KB localization sprint today , Wednesday, March 30th, from 3pm to 9pm UTC. Yesterday the latest version of Firefox for mobile was released and we have finished work on all mobile articles in the KB. They are ready for localization now.

For a first round of localizations we have selected these top 5 articles:

Of course there are more. If you are done already, and you can find more information and links to a Firefox mobile for your desktop on this page: https://wiki.mozilla.org/Support/Firefox4mobile-sprint

There is one issue with mobile: Screeenshots. Unfortunately you do need an Android phone to take localized screenshots of Firefox. So please, if you have an Android device, put your name on the wiki page and join us on IRC #sumo, to help others taking screenshots in their language. The more people with Android phones are around the better for everyone.

All info about the Firefox Mobile KB sprint:

Date: Wednesday, March 30th
Time: 3pm to 9pm UTC
Place: IRC #sumo
Website: https://wiki.mozilla.org/Support/Firefox4mobile-sprint

Thanks, and hope to see you later today!

SUMO in Ljubljana

The beautiful city of Ljubljana, shortened to Lublana by its natives (I wonder why), the capital of Slovenia, was the host to the second Balkans Meeting this year. I had the chance to represent the SUMO team this time, and ended up locked up in a cell in Ljubljana’s military prison. Read on, if you want to know why.

Last weekend was the second installment of the Balkans meeting, and this time it was much more hands-on oriented. We had the full day on Saturday to cover a whole range of subjects from SUMO, product L10n, QA to Add-on development. For SUMO this year was a year of changes in many aspects, and during my talk I used the chance to explain why we did what we did, and how we thought it would bring us closer to support each and every one of our 400 Million users worldwide.

The second half of the day was reserved for sprints and hands-on action. Since we had just released a brand new KB, this was an excellent opportunity to see the KB used in real live, and learn from the feedback. The participants worked mostly on the top 20 articles in the KB, which serve almost 50% of all visitors to the KB and have a really high benefit-cost ratio.

Particularly interesting was the feedback, most of it about the actual localization experience in the editor. Generally it was geared towards making the editor more user friendly (smaller fonts for more text, resizing of the editor window etc) and the localization experience smoother. In the latter case we are looking into a few ways to do that already, for example by providing a Google translated text as the base for the initial translation of the English text.

After a pretty solid 9 hours of work we headed for dinner in a traditional Slovenian Restaurant, with horse meat as a specialty. I didn’t try that, but my meal was delicious. There we also met our surprise guest for the evening, the new Mozilla CEO Gary Kovacs, who was adopted as a Balkan member for his Hungarian heritage

Working hard during the SUMO sprint

After the hands-on the day before, Sunday was used for the goal setting process, which involved a review of the goals from the last time and their usefulness. The goal setting itself was pretty great, we had an etherpad where we collected the goals, the document was projected to the big screen then and live edited by a dozen people, which made for interesting discussions.

I’m happy to say that the Balkan communities decided to name the localization of the Top 20 SUMO articles into all Balkan languages as one of those goals, and I think the new KB had quite some influence here. There will be follow up calls to talk about the details of each goal, but all in all they look pretty good, and will surely give everyone enough to work on until the next Balkans meeting (I heard rumors about Athens, but who knows

My cell in Ljubljana

So, how did I end up in a cell? Well, that was thanks to Matjaz, our wonderful host from Slovenia. He organize a hostel for the participants, but not just any hostel, it was a former military prison, taken over by university students and turned into a hostel, with the cells left intact and designed by different architects. It’s considered one of the best hostels worldwide, and I can really recommend spending a night behind bars, it’s unusual to say the least

Big William is watching us

I’d like to thank everyone attending this years Balkan meeting, it was a pleasure to meet and work with you all, and special thanks to our host Mathjaz and the organizers, William and Milos, it was a productive and intense meeting, but with lots of opportunities for informal talks and get-togethers. I really enjoyed it, thanks for putting it all together!

The new SUMO is here, let’s put it to the test

We started working on our new SUMO Knowledge Base back in March and now, 9 months later, it’s finally here! We released our new KB to the public last night and it’s working great. Go check it out: http://support.mozilla.com. And come back for a localization sprint tomorrow (more about that below).

We are really excited, exhausted and extremely happy — this was a huge undertaking. After the months of planning and development, we spent the last few weeks testing the migration of thousands of articles to our new system. The good news is that all of that testing payed off. Thanks to everyone who contributed during the QA day, and other times, the migration went smooth, with no catastrophic problems whatsoever. Alas, no matter how much you test, you never catch all the issues. So, we are dedicating the next few days to finding and solving the little bugs we’ve found. Please let us know about any issues in #sumo or #sumodev on IRC or — better yet — file a bug so we can take care of it.

Localization Sprint

A new system always poses a lot of questions, especially for those who need to work with it. So we decided to have a Localization sprint to check our top articles and update or translate articles for Firefox 4. If you are a localizer, this gives you the chance to check your top 20 articles and report any issue to us right away. This way, we can try to solve it on the spot. It will also give you hands-on experience with the new KB for updating or translating articles for Firefox 4. And we’ll be ready on IRC to answer any questions about the syntax, templates (formerly, content blocks) or anything else. And we need your help, even if you’re not a localizer: All those newy imported articles need a search summary to show up on the search results page. Help us add those summaries.

Join us on Thursday, December 2nd. The sprint will start at 6am PST and last until 2pm PST. That’s 3pm to 11pm in Central Europe, or 2pm to 10pm UTC/GMT – yeah, we’re a global project

Looking forward to seeing you all and putting the new KB to the test!

What’s new in Kitsune

In my last post I wrote about the process of creating our new Knowledge Base but that did not answer the question of how the new KB will improve the experience for users and contributors.

There are so many exciting parts to the new Knowledge Base that it’s hard to know what to talk about first. The biggest improvement was also the most requested – speed. With our old KB it was often hard to find out why pages timed out and even harder to actually do anything about it. With the new system we know every detail and can tweak the performance, move things around and make sure that users will see a page in an instant. As has been shown time and time again, speed is the ultimate measure of usefulness. Even a 3 second response time will often lead to users leaving the site or being unsatisfied with the interaction no matter how good the content. So we’ve focused heavily on this.

The latest numbers we have show a huge improvement in response times – to be precise, a 28-fold increase in handled requests per second! That’s incredible indeed. The best part is that it will make the KB more useful for users as well as contributors. Gone are the days of timed out dashboards and slow loading pages.

What you can do!

Of course speed is not the only improvement with this new system. Over the next few weeks leading up to the release, we will write more about specific new features and improvements. But you don’t have to wait for the November 30th release to see for yourself. Take a look at the work-in-progress on our staging server.

If you are interested, help us make it as bug free as possible by joining us for a QA day on November 12th. From 8am to 5pm PST we’ll gather in #sumo on IRC to make sure the KB is ready for the release. We’d love to see you there!

Writing Awesome Documentation

Image by Roland Tanglao

For those of you who didn’t go to the Mozilla Summit (which was amazing BTW) or didn’t see my presentation, I wanted to recap it for you because it’s the basis for some of the things I’d like to do with the Knowledge Base moving forward.

Last quarter, we worked on finding ways to increase the helpfulness of our articles by 2%. We started to run some multivariate tests but found that they’d take too long to give us results that we could use. So about 2 weeks before the end of the quarter, we decided to try rewriting some of our most popular articles. Instead of running this test through the metrics team’s tools (and only sending a fraction of the SUMO traffic to each article) we just made the new articles live for everyone. This allowed us to get enough results from the survey at the bottom of each article to get some meaningful results.

What we found was that the rewrite increased the helpfulness of these articles by over 8% translating into helping about 800,000 more people each year. This is really important for us because helping more people with knowledge base articles is the only way we can keep up with our 400 million (and growing) users in dozens of languages.

So here are some examples of the techniques I used in the rewrite of the How to set the home page article. You can see the slides from the presentation here. The main idea I focused on was to use techniques that keep your brain engaged. These mostly involve trying to keep things sounding like an actual human conversation which is more difficult than you might think.

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