Providing tech support to customers located all over the world isn't a simple task. Not only do you have to answer their questions, you also need to do it in a timely manner, because if they are stuck with a problem then the migration process is going to be delayed until we come up with a solution. As one of our customers has noticed, we often provide the solution in a matter of hours, which means that we are quite efficient, but ideally we'd like to provide istantaneous reply.

One way to help our users is to provide as much documentation as possible. VB Migration Partner's manual is online for all to see, as is a very complete knowledge base and a VB6-vs-VB.NET section where you can read about *all* the differences - documented or not - between the two languages. Traffic analysis shows that these sections, especially the last one, receive many visits from all over the world. Most of visitors aren't our customers, which is great because we like to offer this service to the VB community. Perhaps some visitors are using a tool from our competitors, which is understandable because we carry information that can't be found anywhere else. 

We noticed that many common questions are related to migration errors and warnings. Like the Upgrade Wizard, our VB Migration Partner produces a number of inline UPGRADE_ISSUE, UPGRADE_WARNING, UPGRADE_INFO, and UPGRADE_TODO remark. Unlike the Upgrade Wizard, the remark doesn't include the URL of a page that explains what the error means and how it can be fixed. Frankly, in most cases the Upgrade Wizard doesn't really shine in this respect, therefore we don't want to take it as a model. Regardless, it was a behavior we wanted to emulate.

It took a while (and a lot of writing), but at last we have a page where you can ask for detailed information about a migration error or warning code.  Just click here and type one or more error codes in the field at the top of the page.

We went further than that, though. In forthcoming version 1.10.02 you will be able to produce a report that explains in detail all the warnings and issues produced by the VB6 project just migrated:

 

This command runs Internet Explorer (or your default browser) and displays info on all the errors and warnings in the project. Here's an example of what you get: 



Notice that the command sends a list of error codes (and the number of their occurrences) to our website. We opted for this arrangement (instead of storing the info locally) so that we can continuously improve the documentation. Most entries are small articles or contain links to KB articles or the pages in the manual where you can find more info about the specific problem.

If you have suggestions on how we can make this service even more useful, just let us know.