Support Pages

[Acorn]

Dear Xara...

I have a number of Xara Desktop applications (XDA) and Xara Cloud Pro.

In XDA > Help > More [XDAName]> Support pages, we used to be directed to Xara Support, https://support.xara.com/.
It now goes to https://help.xara.com/ such that you have to guess how to get to Magix to raise a Ticket.

Why have you done this?

In XDA > Help > XDA Help itself, if you click on the Xara Support icon you go to the first link.

Xara Cloud is "Xara's" own product and is supported separately from the XDAs that are through Magix.
Neither Xara Cloud itself or these Knowledge Base page offer any indication as to how to raise a Xara Ticket.

Your support staffs must be sitting on Xara Cloud 9.

Acorn

[webmaster]

Dear Xara...

I have a number of Xara Desktop applications (XDA) and Xara Cloud Pro.

In XDA > Help > More [XDAName]> Support pages, we used to be directed to Xara Support, https://support.xara.com/.
It now goes to https://help.xara.com/ such that you have to guess how to get to Magix to raise a Ticket.

Why have you done this?

The link you are looking for is on https://help.xara.com/ - third on the right 'How to get in touch'.

For Xara Cloud queries use the chat on xara.com

[Acorn]

Am I being played?

https://help.xara.com/ > How to get in touch (https://help.xara.com/article/151-how-to-get-in-touch) > MAGIX Support center (https://support2.magix.com/customer/) > Do you wish to contact Technical Support? (https://support2.magix.com/customer/en/request) > Photo & Graphic (https://support2.magix.com/customer/...nswer&tid=1668) > My enquiry is about Xara Designer Pro (https://support2.magix.com/customer/...nswer&tid=3660) > New request (https://support2.magix.com/customer/en/request) > Login...

Make a slight mistake and the session cookies will not allow you to backtrack.
Each click is a 10-second delay so overall it take over a minute to hunt and peck correctly.
Don't dare get it wrong!

In passing, the FAQ link (https://support2.magix.com/customer/en/customer_faq) is beneath contempt. For Pro Products > XXPS you get all of The software does not starts/works properly under Windows 10
The "Possible answers to your questions will be displayed here" is woeful. Try typing "Xara Pro".

"For Xara Cloud queries use the chat on xara.com". So how does one even guess this is the route in? It is not there in the Xara Cloud Design page.

Okay, so I try:
https://xara.com/ > Contact button or Contact Us link (https://xara.com/contact-us/).
For the Form, not only am I not a robot, I am not a Company and I do not wish to provide a Work email address. So I must be in the wrong place.
Chat Now is not necessarily convenient when you are trying to explain or capture a technical issue.
No matter, so in accessing this 9-5? service, the first thing I note is "Product update - 17th September 2019" with "Start a conversation The team typically replies in under 2h". So to engage I would have to start my conversation at 07:00 and not after 15:00 to get lucky. Oh, and hang around for two hours?

Acorn

[webmaster]

So if I can summarize: We have a contact form on the Contact Us page linked from the footer of our site, we have a chat symbol on the Xara Cloud pages on xara.com and within the service itself, we have a 'how to get in touch' link on our support home page - but you feel it is difficult to find them. And once you found them you don't like the support form on the Contact Us page, you don't like chat, you don't like being asked for your email address so we could reply, and you don't much like the FAQs either, and you find a 2 hour turnaround unacceptable. I will pass that on to our Support Team, I think it will be a good Monday challenge for them

Kate @ Xara

[Acorn]

@Kate@Xara

Please bear with me a little longer.

When I am using https://cloud.ixara.com/, whatever indication is there for any Support?
When I am using XDPX and I go to Support (pages), I am in Desktop area. I am then led a merry runaround, from https://help.xara.com/ through the Magix labyrinth, never hitting Xara Cloud.
In either of these presented paths, where is the magical route to https://xara.com/?

You, Kate, have pulled this out of the hat.
It is not anywhere a Customer, without being told, would know where to look.
Once there, I duly acknowledged that there are two links to the Contact Us page.

It is not a case of not liking your Contact Form, it is the case that the form demands a "Company name *" and a "Work email address *".
I happen at this moment to be making an enquiry that is personal and is for me.
Your form is therefore incorrect and when a visitor to your web page hits an obstacle, it is not the visitor's fault, it is yours.
I have my own company and I have a slew of work email addresses but none are relevant to this personal enquiry. You must therefore expect all Xara Cloud users to be in a company or you want them to make us a Company name or be confused as to what a Work email address actually means or, as I now posit, just give up.

If I hit "Chat now" and am told there may be a response in two hours, how on earth is this a chat?

I understand the difference between a completed form and an interactive duologue.
With a form, I expect some email response and acknowledgement and possibly even a reference number.
With a "chat", one has no guarantee of any of this and the challenge of actually getting to the nub of the enquiry is wrapped up in the, usually, poor implementation of the technology (c.f., BT Call Handling).

For Xara Cloud FAQs, I had to discover https://docs.xara.com/en/ for myself. You didn't make it that obvious it is under Resources > Knowledge Base; it is Line 244 of the source code for the page and 80% down the presented page itself.
Try finding that with a screen reader.

I consider you had a cursory look at my Post and did not go to the Magix Support New request form and type in "Xara" - 3 hits and "Xara Pro"; neither offer much other than Windows Compatibility and mailto linking. "Xara Designer Pro" offers nothing.
Try opening one of the offerings and you have a snippet of text and a Print & Close icon. No context, no hierarchy, zilch.
For "Windows compatibility", I get to read about "Click here for instructions on how to install Xtreme 4 on Windows 7". If I follow the link, what do I get? A dead link and a -1 start page: https://support.xara.com/index.php?_m=knowledgebase&_a=viewarticle&kbarticl eid=2815.
So in despair, I backtrack and try the MAGIX Support FAQ link. Naturally, I chose Pro Products > Xara Designer Pro X/Xara Xtreme PRO. The only FAQ link is The software does not starts/works properly under Windows 10. Follow that and you hit total gibberish.

There are no FAQs!

To summarise, there is no direct route from either an XDA or Xara Cloud to a Support location. You have provided tacit information that is not available to all and in providing it, fail to actually deliver anything.

Acorn

[Acorn]

There are no FAQs!

To be clear, the FAQs I am referring to are the missing Magix FAQs.

Xara, in expecting a Customer to go into the Magix realm, you are immediately disconnecting from the modest Xara FAQs in https://help.xara.com/.
I am sorry that you fail to appreciate this.

I say modest as there are at most 400 FAQs for 8 major versions of 5 product lines going back to 2011.
For instance, Search for "Table" - absolutely nothing about CSV data. Search for "CSV", nothing. So try "data", nothing.
The "ask us" for an empty return goes to https://help.xara.com/conversation/new and then FAILs on the Send button.
I am sorry you never think of pretending to be a Customer.

I have created a play page for accessing these pages with less strain.

http://acorn.xara.hosting/XaraHelp/

I have found it quite therapeutic.

I am sorry about the Protocol not being https but that is a different issue that MagiXara needs to act on.

For those wanting to understand how the page works, here is the design file:
JS-XaraHelp.xar

Acorn

[Egg Bramhill]

Hi Acorn, trying to contact support but all the links in your last post give a
500 Internal Server Error

Egg

[Jonopen]

Isn’t that just Acorn being ironic?

[Acorn]

Hi Acorn, trying to contact support but all the links in your last post give a
500 Internal Server Error Egg

Thank you Egg. My actual Link is still working. Sadly, the IFRAME pointing to a Xara asset has gone. Whether it is a down or disconnected server, i will have to check.

My Strapline updated Report faults: Magix; Xara Cloud+/Pro+ still works though.

Acorn

[Acorn]

@Egg, it would appear that Xara no longer support the server/path to its categorised help/support pages.
All help links ow seem to land on https://help-cloud-plus.xara.com for its Plus Products.
Magix products seem to be directed to https://help.xara.com. It is the identical page content 9and HTML) but no way to get to Magix.
I can only assume Magix no longer support "legacy" Xara products. The question is who does?

The Plus links open the Xara Product manual, covering Designer Pro+, Web Designer+, Photo Graphic Designer+, Designer Pro X, Photo & Graphic Designer, Web Designer, Web Designer Premium.
No mention of anything else.

Only the Cloud links gets you to a knowledge base where you might be lucky as it allows access to the intercom Chat.

I do not know if http://support.magix.net/ still allows you to query things with Magix Support.

Acorn