Richard Dudley

At work, we run a SharePoint Portal Server, which is backed up by Backup Exec with the SPS Agent.  I'm the developer/admin on the portal, but the network admins maintain the hardware and backup.  Wanting to know more about the backup (since it's my butt on the line if the spit hits the fan), I tried to download the whitepaper from Symantec's site.  As it turns out, the SPS Agent whitepaper is one of a handful of Backup Exec documents for which you must register on the site to read.  A pain, but usually not a big deal.  After the usual "who are you" questions, came a few nosy ones ("How many servers does your company have?", with no option for "I don't know--I'm a developer, not a network admin").  Then came a short survey as to our plans to buy backup software (no option for "We already own the product, now please let me read the user guide").  Finally the whitepaper opens in Acrobat Reader.  A quick skim confirms this is the document I'm looking for, so I go to save it.  Denied!  They disabled the ability to save the user guide for a product we own!  Why?  I can print it out, but I can't save it.

Let me clue Symantec into something here--SharePoint is designed for distrubuted enterprises.  I can't put a printed copy of the whitepaper into a document library.  Not being able to save technical literature sort of defeats one of the main points of having an SPS installation.

It gets better, though.  Oh yes, by this time, I felt like using the "Send us feedback" link at the bottom of the page.  So I composed my message, and sent it to the addressee.  It bounced back!  Unknown recipient!  Drilling down in e-mail support for Backup Exec, and find that you have to use the moderated forums.  Doubt I'll get a reply, but I'm posting anyway.

This is an odd approach to customer support.