Technical Support

Technical support can be contacted by telephone, email,
(or, still, by fax), but I often prefer to answer by
telephone (even overseas), so please always include:

CID Number (if known, see below)
Your Name
Company Name
Telephone Number

PLEASE ALWAYS INCLUDE A PHONE NUMBER.

Standard Hours of Coverage for MXG Software Technical Support

Phone       214 351 1966

Emails:    or

Fax           214 350 3694

We cover phones and email and fax from 8am to 7pm CST, Monday to Friday,
 (of EVERY week, US Holidays included, especially on our Thanksgiving Day
  for you Canadians who forget),
and monitor phones on most weekends and evenings, and check for email and
voice mail every 1-2 hours outside the core hours, except from 2300 to 0700!

But if I'm in the office at 3 am when you call, I'll answer:
   Early in the 80's, late one Saturday evening, I answered the phone
    to a European connection and a gruff "I need technical support".
    I replied that I was glad I was there to help, but that we weren't
    normally in the office on Saturday evenings. He replied "Neither am I,
    but your software broke, so I'm here, where it is now early Sunday!"
    (Fortunately for my author's pride, he was missing a VM PTF,
    and it wasn't MXG that was "broke").

We respond as appropriate by phone, email, or fax, and we do call back
overseas customers; please ALWAYS include your phone number.

Requesting Updates: Use the Software Download Request   frame at www.mxg.com
   to request ftp instructions.
  Your "CID Number" is printed on your MXG License Agreement, on each
  MXG Invoice, and on all MXG Mailing Labels, but it is not required
  that you know your CID number.

NOTA BENE: Search MXG.COM (Google may not be absolutely current)

 For any MXG Software Problem, feel free to email or call first,
 especially if you can't find the answer in 10 or 15 minutes,
 but be aware of these additional sources of answers:

  1.  The CHANGES frame at www.mxg.com contains the current list of
       what MXG Software Version is needed for what Operating Systems,
       etc. CHANGES also identifies all critical changes to all of
       the products that MXG Software supports.

   2.  The MXG-L ListServer email broadcast services is free, and allows
       users to post and answer one another's questions; often an early
       morning MXG User in the UK will answer a late evening Aussie's post
       while MXG support is asleep in Dallas - don't overlook MXG-L if your
       need is critical and you can't get a 3am answer.

       And the MXG-L Archives at www.mxg.com can be searched directly,
       without subscribing (logging onto the web interface with email addreass
       and creating a password is required though), to see if your critical problem
       has already been solved or discussed.

   3. Member INSTALL documents the simple process to
          replace or install a new version of MXG,
          very easy to do now, with no external changes:
           - unload and create the MXG Source Library
           - update the MXG Format Library
           - rename the MXG Source DSNAME in your MXGSASV8 JCL procedure
           - run your QA tests; you're done.

        INSTALL also lists common errors and should be
        read by every MXG user, not just the installer.

   4. MXG Technical Newsletters, NEWSLETTERS frame at
        www.mxg.com, or member NEWSLTRS, can also be
        searched to technical updates, how to use MXG
        datasets and variables, etc.

   5. If you have an error condition, PLEASE, PLEASE,
       always send the full job log (SYSMSG and SASLOG),
       so we can tell what version of SAS, what version
       of MXG, and what OS, as well as seeing your JCL.

       Especially if the log contains a hex dump of an
       input record, don't try to guess what part of the
       log we need; send the entire log so we can solve
       your problem in one iteration.

       You should normally zip that text file and email
       the zip file, so that your company's email program
       doesn't truncate or line wrap the text.

   6. MXG Support for WPS Software - Newsletter 62, Sept 1, 2013:

       a. The Current MXG Version and the Current WPS Version are required
           for any problem to be considered.

       Note that your MXG Software License Agreement states legally:

        Merrill agrees to provide continuous product support for MXG in
        the following areas:
         When error conditions
            (i.e., the SAS execution of MXG code produces either a
            return code or an ABEND)
          are the results of errors in MXG Code, they will be corrected.

        If you encounter an error testing MXG under WPS:

         You should report the error to WPS Technical Support for
         initial investigation.

         If WPS support believes the error is an MXG problem, they can
         contact MXG, or may choose to refer you to MXG Support.

         MXG Support may then request you to send data to MXG:

         - the raw data file that caused the error
         - your site's USERID.SOURCLIB (tailoring) source library
         - your program

        If the error can be replicated under the SAS System, it will
        be corrected per the above license terms.