Friday, May 22. 2009What you don't see is right in front of you
SAS campus has this great art installation titled Frightened Deer by Richard Rothschild. (That's it in the picture below.) As you can see, this is a large art installation. I run or drive by these deer almost every day. Most days I am oblivious to their existence, but some mornings, I find myself pulling up short and sucking in my breath startled by what is about to attack me. How can I forget that these deer are there? It's easy really. They are a part of the background of my life.
 Sometimes the things we are the most blind to are the things that we look at everyday. I haven't found a trick that helps me open my eyes and mind and take in my everyday surroundings. But I'm trying. What fades into the background on support.sas.comMy team monitors the comments that come from visitors to the Website and actively solicits input from you. From your comments, I have created a list of support.sas.com elements that have faded into the background for many site visitors. The remainder of this post will introduce you to a few of the features that you might be missing. SAS documentation by product and book title
We call it simply Product Documentation. To access it, select the Product Documentation in the navigation on the left side of the home page or any Knowledge Base page. On the Product Documentation page, you can select your product, then review all of the documentation by title. This is really helpful for those users who have relied on SAS documentation over the years and have cultivated a relationship with a particular set of documentation. Note that you can still search and browse the entire documentation set by selecting the appropriate release number from the left navigation. Problem notes applicable to a specific release This one takes a little more effort on your part, but I hope these tips will help. Visit the Samples & SAS Notes page. Review the items listed under Frequently Used Links. Select the link that works best for you. If we haven't created a predefined query that meets your needs, select Search Problem Notes from the left navigation. Select the appropriate release number from the SAS Release drop list and you are off to the races. Sample code for basic SAS tasks We have again predefined some queries and categories for you. To access these samples, select Samples & SAS Notes from the left navigation. Select Browse by Topic. Review the featured links. For example, the DATA Step collection includes samples for array processing, Date & Time functions and much more. Also check out the list of samples collected by product. Conference Papers These papers are a great resource, so we made them available from a couple of locations. From the support.sas.com home page, select Papers from the left navigation, then select Conference Proceedings from the Additional Papers list at the top right of the page. Note that other conference papers are also available from support.sas.com/saspresents. If you spend time on the SAS Global Forum site, select PREVIOUS CONFERENCES from the tabs at the top of the page. Select Online Proceedings. Search and browse options are available from the top right section of the page. Don't miss the deer as you fly by on your way to your most visited spot on support.sas.com. Take a moment to be startled by the presence of some things you may have missed! My question to you: What do you think is missing? Tell me what content you look for but can never easily find. Your suggestion may be the next post. Trackbacks
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Locating the MAPSONLINE page is less than intuitive - it would be very helpful to have a link to this on the main page. Also, having all the SAS tip sheets in one place would be useful (they are in different areas of the web site currently.)
Hi Louise. I agree that Maps Online is a hidden treasure. Many people comment on the usefulness of various tip sheets, but I have found that everyone has a different idea about what a tip sheet is. Which are some of your favorites? Maybe I can create a list and collect them in one location.
Thanks. -renee Just to follow-up on Maps Online. To locate this content, go to FOCUS AREAS in the support.sas.com knowledge base. Select Data Visualization, then Resources from the left navigation. Maps Online is at the end of the Resources list.
Another way, is to subscribe to the Recent Highlight RSS feed. (http://feeds.feedburner.com/SupportsascomRecentHighlights) The feed will contain an entry each time the maps are updated. Really useful post, at least for me. I just want to point out, that the link in Sample code for basic SAS tasks is probably an intranet link not reachable from the outside.
Roman, Thank you for the note. I have corrected the link.
SAS documentation by product and book title
How to track that are new documentations available ? For example: all new docs published after 02/27/2009 ? Hi Harald,
Your questions match those I have recieved from other site visitors. A complete answer requires more than a comment. I'll make it another blog post. The short answer is to visit the Production Documentation page for documents by product (http://support.sas.com/documentation. Quick tip for updated doc: on search results page, select Date to sort from newest to oldest. Ex: I searched for PROC FREQ in the Documentation section then selected Date. There are two documents that were updated on June 1, 2009. Look for the blog post with details. i always have trouble finding the program and agendas for previous years conferences of the Las Vegas M200x shows. there are excellent speakers and while those proceedings are NOT available unless you pay for conference registration - simply finding the names and abstracts is helpful
Hi Mary,
The Web address for the M200x conferences is always www.sas.com/m200x. The Web sites for all M200x conferences are still available. You just need to change the year at the end of the URL. Hope that helps. Carrie I really appreciate all of the quality documentation available and the sheer variety of it, the electronic newsletters like SAS Tech Report, sas.com website. I particularly like the blogs available by SAS personnel also. Even if not related to a question at the moment, these are always interesting.
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ABOUT THIS BLOG Welcome to the blog about SAS online support. Renee Harper (that's me) will keep you up-to-date about new and updated content on support.sas.com, as well as support services and software releases. I'll try to include relevant examples you can use -- sample programs and information about how others use SAS. I’ll be able to do this better if you join me – this is a place to share your ideas, successes, and frustrations.QuicksearchCategoriesSyndicate This BlogThe blog content appearing on this site does not necessarily represent the opinions of SAS. Your use of this blog is governed by the Terms of Use.
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