Key Happenings at support.sas.com - Sharing Updates and advances in SAS Online Support

Q: One site visitor added this comment to his feedback form:

I am trying to find the answer to a simple question about getting started with Enterprise Miner 6.1.

A: Visit the product page for SAS Enterprise Miner.

What will you find on the product page?
This visitor specifically asked for a tutorial. We don't have one listed for Enterprise Miner. However, the product page does have some good information that may be helpful. The following lists a few of those resources.

• Getting Started with SAS Enterprise Miner (This book addresses release 5.3, but it will be helpful with 6.1 until the updated book is released.)


• What's New in SAS Enterprise Miner 6.1.


• Available training for SAS Enterprise Miner


• SAS Data Mining and Text Mining forum. Use this forum to exchange information with others users and learn from their experience.

I hope these suggestions help you get started with SAS Enterprise Miner.

UPDATE:
The advanced search functionality is now production on support.sas.com. It is available at support.sas.com/search. You can also access it by selecting the search button when the search field is empty. Links to advanced search will start to appear on the site over the next few days. The first link is now available as shown below.




Thanks for your comments. Based on your feedback, the Search and Reset buttons have switched locations on the page. If you have additional comments, please send them to us or post them here.
--- end of update ---

I have written about the search functionality on support.sas.com before and you have provided feedback about what you need from the search tool. If you missed those conversations, you may want to take a minute to review other posts about searching.

Based on your comments and site usage evaluations, there is no mistaking the importance of searching. Given that, we have a team of dedicated people looking at reported issues and potential search improvements. The team is proud to announce our first major update to search: Advanced Search. Below is a screen shot of the new search page.



The Advanced Search is available today on support.sas.com. However, we have not made it a production feature yet because we are still testing and gathering feedback. Today, I am offering you early access to the search features. All I ask in return is that you let us know what you like and what you don't like.

Give it a try
While we are polishing the last few rough edges, I invite you to visit support.sas.com/search/advanced.html and kick the tires on these features.

We have recently added feedback forms and short surveys on some pages on support.sas.com. We don't ask for your e-mail address or require you to log in to the site. That means that all of the comments are anonymous. We think the ease of commenting will increase the amount of good feedback we receive. It seems to be working.

I have found a downside. Some of the comments express frustration about content that can't be found. If only I could contact the person and offer some help. I can't do that, but a girl with a blog can provide answers as blog posts. The comments are usually short, so I have to guess at the detailed meaning. May I get a few right!

Here's my first attempt.

Comment: I just wanted some common sample programs for statistical analysis.
Response: When looking for statistical analysis samples, bookmark these links:

• Samples tagged as being about analytics.


• Examples that investigate a variety of analytical techniques using SAS Software.


• If these links don't deliver, visit the Statistical Procedures discussion forum.

We launched a new discussion forum at the end of August. The SAS/GRAPH and ODS Graphics forum provides a place to discuss the visual representation of data, to share your questions, suggestions, experiences, and pains regarding graphics. Join the discussion about SAS graphics.

We all love to see our data represented in fancy graphs and we love the fact that these cool visual displays can get so much attention for our data. I bet that almost every report you generate includes at least one graphic. And, I bet that you are always looking for ways to pump up the visual elements included in your reports. SAS/GRAPH software and ODS Graphics can help you in that effort. Review the list of resources below.

• SAS/GRAPH and ODS Graphics forum


• SAS/GRAPH samples gallery


• Data Visualization focus area


• Getting Started with ODS Statistical Graphics in SAS 9.2 paper


• SAS/GRAPH product page

Update, Nov 6:
This ondemand Webinar presented by Bob Rodriguez is a companion to the Getting Started with ODS Statistical Graphics paper referenced above. Watch the Webinar now.
[end update]

Here's one example that you can find in the samples gallery. Enjoy!

The following graph was produced using PROC SGRENDER. It is a Monthly Stock Price and Volume Graph [View the code in a new window]

Contributed by Kirsten Hamstra, SAS Publishing

Changes are happening at SAS Publishing with several new features being rolled out this month. The first and largest new feature focuses on our authors.

Currently, most SAS Publishing titles have a corresponding companion page that features additional information about the book, including author background, recent updates and sample code. Our authors are subject matter experts, and many have published several titles with us. The author pages bring the attention back to them and their expertise. The pages feature several different areas for customers to interact and learn about SAS Publishing authors including links to their titles, news, events, podcasts and social media links to their pages on Twitter, Facebook or other channels.

To learn more about your favorite author, visit: Author Pages on support.sas.com.

Another new feature that works together with author pages allows customers to be notified when a new book is available. The Coming Soon page lists all upcoming SAS Publishing titles, anticipated publication date and gives visitors the option to receive an email when the book is available for purchase.

Finally, the SAS Publishing Bookstore has added a new section called Conversations. As SAS Publishing continues to participate in several social media channels, we want to inform our customers how and where they can find us online. There are currently links to our pages on Facebook and Twitter with more to be added soon!

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.com

My 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.

Sometimes, you just need a little help adjusting to change. We introduced a lot of change when we updated support.sas.com in October of 2007. Then, the Publications Division brought out the SAS 9.2 documentation in the spring of 2008. More change.

We hope that the changes in the SAS 9.2 documentation offer you features that you've been waiting for. The biggest change is that the documentation is now integrated with the rest of the support.sas.com content. You can use the site search to locate content across all SAS Support content; or you can limit your search to just documentation, just documentation for SAS 9.2, or even to just one book. My favorite enhancement is the Product Documentation A-Z list. If you know your product, it is easy to find the books, by title, that are associated with that product. We've never had a list like this before!

The SAS 9.2 documentation also takes advantage of the topic browse feature that was introduced with Samples & SAS Notes in October. With topic browse, you don't have to know a product name or a book title. You can find content based on the subject. For example, if you are interested in CALL routines, simply go to the SAS 9.2 Documentation page and select the CALL routines link from the SAS Reference category. You will get a list of 10 books that address CALL routines. You can select the book most likely to help you based on the book title and description. If that doesn't work, you can search the text of the 10 books by submitting a search query in the Search box in the body of the page. (See the image below.) The search you submit from this search field searches only the current results set.



Get more tips
Helen Weeks, a member of the SAS Publications Division, wrote an article to help you get the most out of the new documentation features. She created a hints table that compares how you used to use the SAS OnlineDoc with how you might use the new SAS 9.2 documentation. If you are still learning your way around, take a look at Helen's Product Documentation for SAS 9.2 article on support.sas.com.

We'll be watching this post, so share your usage tips, questions and suggestions with us and other SAS documentation users.

Contributed by Sean Gargan and Judi Rourke-O'Briant, SAS Publishing

You may not notice the crowds at the SAS Publishing Bookstore but the virtual aisles are about to see a big increase in traffic. Beginning in September, the bookstore will open its doors internationally. Customers from around the world will be directed to the SAS Publishing Bookstore to discover the latest titles from SAS Press and SAS documentation.

To accommodate customers outside the US and Canada, a link to Amazon.com will be added to each book description. This link will take you directly to the book description page within Amazon.com. In Amazon.com’s own words “Amazon.com can ship to virtually any address in the world”. In addition, a growing list of international resellers will be made available for purchasing books locally.

Using the Google book search facility also provides customers with a list of local resellers. If you’re in Spain, you’ll see Casa del Libro if you’re in Germany, you’ll see Buchkatalog.de. Try it from your own location to see the list of local booksellers that carry SAS Publishing titles.

Our objective is to make it easy (and local) for you to buy books about SAS.

Should you need assistance with your order and want to have a real-time, text message conversation with a US customer service rep, use the new Live Chat feature. It will be added to each page in the SAS Publishing bookstore beginning in early September. Live Chat will be available (in English) Monday through Friday, 9:00am to 5:00pm EST.

To all our international customers who will now be using the SAS Publishing Bookstore, welcome! Accommodating international customers in one catalog is a new venture for us, if you have issues or concerns, please let us know so we can address them. Of course, if you like what you see, we’d be happy to hear that as well. Until next time.

That's a fancy way of saying that we are adding a few more RSS feeds for support.sas.com visitors. Feeds are an efficient and easy way to get information about updates made to the SAS Support Web site. Feeds let you quickly stay current on updated content. I believe that if you scan the contents of the feeds every now and then, it will help you to locate information more quickly when you really need it.

How can that be? Well, it is just a theory, so I'd love to hear what you all think. My theory is that my brain holds on to more information than I can ever retrieve. (And it seems that the older I get, the harder it gets to retrieve information when I need it.) But, when I start to search for something -- either on a Web site or in a department store -- I am encouraged to keep looking if I know that I have seen the item I need. I often find that some snippet of the memory will return just in time to help me locate exactly the thing for which I am hunting. Well, it is just a theory, so I'd love to hear what you think.

I think that content notification (RSS in this case) can serve this purpose. Maybe you see a sample that looks interesting, so you read it on the spot. But what if you see information about a problem that you haven't encountered yet. Then weeks later, boom, you hit the same snag. Maybe you remember seeing it in the feed. Maybe you even remember part of the title, which will make your Web search much more successful.

Give the feeds a try and let me know if my theory is right or wrong.

Maybe the question should be "have you noticed the toolbar at the top of every support.sas.com page?" The big yellow arrow is pointing to the toolbar in the image below.



When you select the Print link, we strip all of the outer edges from the page (top and left navigation, footer and the right informational column if it exists). Your printer window is displayed and the page is sent to your designated printer. This works great for Samples & SAS Notes because we also concatenate the content from the various tabs into one printout!

While I'm talking about the toolbar, I should mention the other two features. The e-mail link will open a new message and will pre-fill the body of the message with the page title and the URL of the page you are viewing.

The bookmark feature opens the browser window that enables you to add a favorite link. When we designed the toolbar, several people wondered about the usefulness of this feature. What do you think? Are shortcut links like this nice to have?

Keep an eye on the toolbar. New features may appear there soon. What feature would you like to see as a toolbar item?

Did you know ... that we provide a collection of frequently used links at the bottom of the Samples and SAS Notes page? We worked with Technical Support to determine what types of content is frequently requested from the samples and notes database. We have created links to this content to give you a running start when searching for information.

Updated June 02, 2009
The location of the frequently used links has changed since this post was written. New information follows.

The quick links are now on two pages:

• The Samples & SAS Notes search page


• The Samples & SAS Notes topic browse page

We also move the featured links from the bottom of the page to the top of each of these pages.
End of updated text.

Notice that we have also added search boxes for other SAS note collections, such as SAS/C and older notes that apply only to SAS Version 6.

I heard a morning deejay ask a listener "what are you about?" Before you read any further, take a minute and mentally complete this sentence "I'm about ______." Are you surprised by what popped into your head first? I was surprised by the answers I got from the people I saw this morning.

The woman on the radio responded with "I'm about 5 feet tall." The responses I heard were varied and surprising. Here are a few:

• "I'm about to get a new job."


• "I'm about to start a relaxing long weekend."


• "I'm about to scream."


• "I'm all about chocolate."


• "I'm about being the best person I can be."   dingdingding

Moving stresses me out because it means that I have to pick through all of the junk that has collected over time. It takes me days and days just to get my office prepared to move. A colleague down the hall is packing her office. She offered this tip "just tape the drawers shut and move everything as is." What? Don't mine for jewels among the garbage! Don't lighten your footprint! Then I looked around my office. Oh for sure, tape the drawers shut and never look back is a good model for office moves. But, it isn't a good model for content moves.

When we move content around, it is because we have evaluated the site usage, the comments from site users, and the content itself. Something in that evaluation screamed "move me!" As part of a content move, we also take the time to look at the individual content. Hopefully, we mine the gems, keep what's usable, and throw out the crumbs at the bottom of the drawer.

Judi and I spent the morning putting the final touches on a new location for SAS Press authors. Starting Thursday evening (EST, of course) you will find a new section in the COMMUNITY section of support.sas.com. The section name: Author with SAS. This section was moved from LEARNING CENTER --> BOOKSTORE and renamed in an effort to make it easier for current and future authors to get information about how to publish with SAS.

What's in Author with SAS? This section currently contains four subsections:
Book Topics: a list of suggested topics in case you already have writer's block
Proposals: instructions for writing an effective proposal
Author's Tools: all the information you need to complete your submission.
Under Contract: a list of projects in the works

If you have bookmarks to these pages, you will want to re-establish them. The new link will be support.sas.com/community/authors/.

Note: The Bookstore and book descriptions are not changing. These nuggets are still available in the LEARNING CENTER at support.sas.com/publishing.

For those of you who are attending SAS Global Forum in San Antonio, you are starting to hear and see lots of information about the latest release from SAS -- SAS 9.2. If you aren't at SAS Global Forum 2008, you can get this same information on support.sas.com.

If you have been around the Customer Support site very long, you know that the site contains volumes and volumes of information. This plethora of information isn't always a blessing. Sometimes it seems that the information you want is buried beneath a ton of content that doesn't interest you at the time. It can be frustrating to pick through content. It happens on every site. It makes you feel like no one understands you or cares about what you need. I know because it happens to me. When I'm shopping for pants -- why are they all petites! And when I'm trying to figure out the weather back home -- why am I getting weather for Boston! I'm not petite and I'm not from Boston. So I thought I would help those of you looking for SAS 9.2 information.

In order to help you locate information about SAS 9.2, we have created a resource page for you. Visit support.sas.com/sas92 for all of your SAS 9.2 information needs. Don't see what you were hoping for? Drop us a note and tell us what you would like to see added to the resource page.

In addition to SAS 9.2 information, we added SAS Presents papers in support of presentations and demonstrations from SAS Global Forum 2008. I have a few more to post when I return to Cary, so be sure to return next week to support.sas.com/saspresents for even more great papers. Many of these papers have also been added to the category listings for Technical Papers.

We made one last effort to help you locate the most recently updated content. Visit the Sitemap. Notice that some of the entries are highlighted in red. These areas received the most updates in the last week.

I snuck away from my demo station, so I should be heading back. If you are in San Antonio, do stop by and say "hi."

I am happy to announce two new SAS Discussion Forums available on support.sas.com. You have been asking for forums that address basic functionality and more general topics. We hope these new forums address your requests:

• SAS Macro Facility and Other Language Elements
  This forum is open to all SAS software users with general programming questions or ideas, using language elements such as the Macro facility, DATA step, date/time formats, etc.



• SAS Procedures
  This forum is open to all SAS software users to find and offer help on the most frequently used SAS procedures, such as FORMAT, FREQ, MEANS, SQL, etc.

Tips, Tricks, and Hints
Each forum is dedicated to a specific topic. This makes it easier for you to locate posts concerning your burning issue. It also allows people to watch topics in which they are interested without having to plow through content that isn't relevant to their daily activites.

You can read posts without logging in. To post, you will have to login using your SAS Web profile userid and password. The first time that you post, you will have to create a Forum ID (screen name). This ID protects your e-mail address from spamming. You can reveal as much or as little about yourself as you would like in your screen name.

You can search all of the forums using the search box just above the category listing on the main page. An advanced search is available when you select Search at the beginning of the search field. (Note that the forums posts are not part of the overall site search that is available at the top of every page on the site.)

You can receive notification via e-mail. To set up a watch on a forum:

1. Login


2. Go to the forum that you want to watch


3. Select Watch Forum from the list of options above the message listing.

To customize your watch settings:

1. Login


2. Select Your Control Panel from the options in the upper right corner.


3. Select Your Watches from the control panel box.


4. Modify settings and watches as appropriate.
   I have selected to receive my watch e-mail as a digest once a day.

Forum notification is also available via RSS feeds. If you use RSS, you know what to do. Look for the little orange square.