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These days at the office I'm in charge of emailing license activation keys to customers who request them if, say, their machines can't access the internet to do automatic activation after a new install.
We have a dialog box that shows users their license key, a unique machine code, and a text field in which they're expected to paste the activation key we generate for them. There's clear instructions on that dialog box that they need to email us their license key and machine code, and there's a button to copy those values to the clipboard.
Every once in a while someone will send us a screenshot of the dialog box showing the key/machine code. Which means we have to type in those values. Neither are exactly short strings, so there's always a risk of us mistyping something - this is why there's a "copy to clipboard" button, so we can copy them from a plain text source.
When interacting to customers, I always go out of my way to be a nice guy, but sometimes I'm very tempted to respond in kind, by taking a screenshot of our licensing software showing the activation key they have to paste, with the note, "now you know why that Copy button is there".
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A picture is worth a thousand wrong keystrokes.
I'd rather be phishing!
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Maximilien wrote: A picture is worth a thousand wrong keystrokes.
That's brilliant. I may actually use that one with customers I know have a sense of humor. I can't think that's too passive-aggressive.
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dandy72 wrote: by taking a screenshot of our licensing software showing the activation key they have to paste
That's like the guy who got a ticket mailed to him with a picture by one of those automatic camera systems of him speeding.
So he mailed in a picture of his money.
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I remember that one. And then the cops mailed him a picture of handcuffs. 
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And a colleague faxed a photocopy of the floppy disk with his weekly status report on to our boss.
(That was back in the 90's - I feel old now)
Bad command or file name. Bad, bad command! Sit! Stay! Staaaay...
AntiTwitter: @DalekDave is now a follower!
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excuse my dumbness, but
1. you have a button the user presses to copy the info to the clipboard,
2. and then the user creates and email, pastes the clipboard, and emails that to you,
why not have the button send the email as well?
- problem solved
- user only see magic.
next step: take it to a web api
... user presses the button, minute later everything is done for them.
= less work all around, isn't that what computers are supposed to be used for??
Signature ready for installation. Please Reboot now.
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Well, he writes in the first paragraph that it's for the machines that can't register over the internet. I would assume a mail client need internet as well.
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Jorgan has it right. This is for those people who can't have the software automatically activate itself because their machine is isolated or locked down in some fashion that prevents it from accessing the internet.
The best we can do under those circumstances is prepare all the information they need to send to us.
Otherwise, what you're suggesting is already in place. The user only sees magic, as you put it.
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I still don't understand. If their machine can't access the internet then they have to use another machine to see your instructions and email you back with numbers displayed on their machine. If you don't specifically tell them not to send a screenshot then it's reasonable for them to take a picture, so that they don't have to write down the numbers to type into to the other machine.
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Member 10652083 wrote: If you don't specifically tell them not to send a screenshot then it's reasonable for them to take a picture, so that they don't have to write down the numbers to type into to the other machine
That's why we give them a button to copy that text to the clipboard. If you've remoted into the machine that's not connected to the internet, it's even easier to paste it back (Ctrl-V) from the clipboard, than launching some tool to take a screenshot.
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A machine not connected to the Internet is not likely to allow remoting in the first place.
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Quote: A machine not connected to the Internet is not likely to allow remoting
Many of my file servers, etc are NEVER connected to the internet. They also don't have monitors or keyboards/mice so the only access is via remote desktop.
- I would love to change the world, but they won’t give me the source code.
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If that's the case, then it's even harder to get a screenshot off of that machine, unless you're taking a picture with a phone or the like. Which I've never claimed to be the case.
For that remaining 1%, fine, they can't use the button. That's no reason for us to what, take it away?
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Ah, I did not consider remoting into the machine. I assumed two unconnected machines, in which case copying to the clipboard of one machine is useless in the other machine.
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I hang around in IT troubleshooting forums every now and then and indeed, the new habit of posting screenshots as much as possible instead of text is extremely annoying. In the meantime, I go as far as to tell people to post the error message (or whatever message they get) in text.
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Most Microsoft error messages cannot be copied and pasted. I've been waiting many years for that.
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1. I just copypasted an error message from the shell, worked just fine
2. Even if there's no copypasting, copying the text manually (as in "typing it out") isn't too much to ask from any computer user
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It could be worse. I get screen 'captures' that have been taken with their phone.
Software Zen: delete this;
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I wasn't suggesting this was the worse thing imaginable. They could've involved a printer, a scanner, and a PowerPoint file. And perhaps a fax in there somewhere.
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I routinely receive screen captures encapsulated inside Word, Excel, or PowerPoint documents, with Excel being the most popular. I've never received one in an Access or Publisher format, and only one as a OneNote file (how apropos).
I empathize with the OP, however. We have a similar scheme with dongles that are field programmable. The user gives us a serial number and we send them an activation code that is a list of 8-15 four-digit numbers. Even though we handle copy/paste nicely, we still get phone screen captures that are blurred and barely readable.
Software Zen: delete this;
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Oh, user interactions.
We gave 800 support for our cheap DOS product, and our customers got used to it. It was starting to bankrupt us. They'd call for EVERYTHING (like, hey I formatted my C: drive, your software wont run).
Worse, we actually logged EVERY support call, and wrote a help system that covered 99% of our daily calls, but NOBODY would press F1 and look up their problem.
I was a lead developer, and I took to the Help Desk as a support person for 2-3 days to get to the bottom of this. Great customers. Just lazy.
Our new process, whenever ANY client called...
- Did you press F1 and check the help?
- Lets do that now! (No, you have to... No, I can't just tell you the answer. Please Press F1)
- If you read the 15 things on you screen, which one is the best match? (Try it!), (Yes, you should feel stupid, but that's okay. Have a great day).
In 3 weeks our calls plummeted. Every customer knew that if they called us, we would force them to use F1. This was for a couple of reasons. First, most people are afraid to try new things. These were 40yr olds, not 16 year olds. Second, the simplest route is always tried first. 800#s have ZERO cost to them. Third, we NEVER made it painful. (I used this lesson with my teenage daughter, when she asks me to GOOGLE something for her, while she is doing homework on her computer!)
SUGGESTIONS:
1) Realize that they may be using another computer, and can't get copy text off of it?
2) Start emailing them back the instructions, spelled out, and wait for a proper response
3) Invest/Write a quick and dirty OCR program that works on the screenshots.
I like #3 because it would make a great little article...
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Kirk 10389821 wrote: (Yes, you should feel stupid, but that's okay. Have a great day).
I try to avoid making users feel stupid. Even when they do something that's clearly wrong, I always respond in such a way that I give them the benefit of doubt and steer them towards an alternate path. Support is far from my primary job focus and I only do it to help out, say, when coworkers are on vacation, and I perhaps haven't done it long enough to give users what others might consider to be terse answers. I'm already a cynic, g0d help me if I start making it obvious to customers.
Kirk 10389821 wrote: 1) Realize that they may be using another computer, and can't get copy text off of it?
If you can't get text, then when are the odds you can get a screenshot off of that same machine? Of course I'm ruling out (as others have suggested) taking a picture with a phone - but that hasn't happened yet. So they do directly interact with those systems, typically by remoting. Admittedly, there are cases where, with enough remoting layers (A remoting into B remoting into C), you might lose access to the clipboard, but those are few and far in-between.
Kirk 10389821 wrote: 2) Start emailing them back the instructions, spelled out, and wait for a proper response
It's not so much of a pain that I'll refuse to work with what they send us. I try to be as accommodating as possible. I only started this thread to point out that people sometimes make things more complicated for themselves than they need to be.
Kirk 10389821 wrote: 3) Invest/Write a quick and dirty OCR program that works on the screenshots.
My personal experience with OCR tells me that it works best in the context of paragraphs of text, where ending up with a few bad characters is absolutely fine, but in cases where every single character can be anything, we'll have to double-check every single character anyway. Not much of a time-saver.
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1) There are quite a few solutions that allow me to see someones screen, and NOT give me clipboard access... Meaning, they could could be hitting a limited help desk feature. Or they could have disable the clipboard sharing for security reasons. That was the implication. How are you going to find out if you don't ask?
And we never really said "Yes you should feel stupid", we said things like "Everyone Does it, that's why we walk you through it, have a great day!".. But that is what we were thinking!!!
OCR was pretty good 19 years ago. With todays quality screen shots. I would not be surprised if you couldn't get a HEXADECIMAL (assuming) response with pretty HIGH Accuracy. I would certainly try it. Also, screen resolutions these days are wonderful vs. the old scanning DPIs that created the problems!
Finally, in your response, after entering it. You should send the reminder instructions, and ASK if these did not work for you, please contact us so we can make our software better...
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