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 SHIP CURRENT VERSION
frame at www.mxg.com
to request shipment of tape or CD-ROM, or 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.