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Transcript
Welcome to another AUG Blog Audio Post located at augforums.com. That’s A-U-G-F-O-R-U-M-S dot com. You can find this specific audio post at augforums.com/episode3. That’s audio post and the number three. This is your host, Tim Rodman, coming to you live on Monday, November 11th, 2019 from Columbus, Ohio.
And since it’s Veterans Day today, I wanted to give a thank you to all you veterans out there. Thank you for serving our country, for making it safe, and for making it possible for people like me to do an audio post without worrying about someone coming after me.
In this audio post, we are going to be talking about what is augforums.com, or what are the main things offered here? There’s two main things offered on augforums.com.
The first thing is the AUG Blog. This has been around since April 2013. It started with written posts by me, mainly chronicling my personal Acumatica learning journey, but you’ll also find some guest posts by other Acumatica users highlighting various things about their experience with Acumatica. And finally, more recently, you have audio posts, which you are listening to right now. So that’s the AUG Blog.
Second, AUG Forums, that’s the second main thing offered on augforums.com. And because the forums have become pretty popular, that’s why we changed the URL just this past summer to augforums.com. Now the AUG Forums started a few years ago, becoming more popular more recently. And what are the forums for? Well, AUG is an Acumatica User Group. And the forums are an online place where you can ask questions about Acumatica, where you can share information about Acumatica and where you can improve your Acumatica skillset.
Now, there’s separate forums dedicated to various areas in Acumatica, but everything is focused on the core functionality available from Acumatica, the product itself. If you’re interested in third party ISV products, definitely check out acu-connect.com (that’s A-C-U dash connect dot com), but on augforums.com it’s just focused on the core Acumatica functionality.
You’ll find various forums for different things. You’ll find a forum dedicated to the Finance modules, one for the Distribution modules, Manufacturing, Projects, CRM, etc. You’ll also find various forums for the different reporting tools in Acumatica: Report Designer, Financial Reports, Dashboards, etc. And then if you’re not sure where to post, just scroll all the way down to the bottom. There’s a forum called Everything Else. So if you’re not sure where to put your post, just post in the Everything Else forum.
Now I want to highlight a few ways that I’ve seen people utilize the forums. This is not a comprehensive list, just highlighting three ways that I’ve seen people use the forums.
The first way is how to solve real world business problems in Acumatica. It’s a challenge in any ERP system, including Acumatica, how to handle some specific real world business problem situations. And sometimes you have a few options, or a couple options, and each one has various pros and cons, and you’re not sure which path to go down. So it’s nice to get feedback from other Acumatica users. Have they tried similar approaches? And how did it work out for them.
Second way I see people use the forums is to discuss new features. Now of course, Acumatica releases a new major version two times a year. They release R1 in the spring and R2 in the Fall. So this year we’ve got Acumatica 2019 R1 this past Spring and a few weeks ago we got Acumatica 2019 R2. And we’ve had this cadence now for a few years, and that seems to be the way forward. But with each one of these releases, R1 and R2, each one of them are packed with new features, and it can be difficult to keep up with things. So that’s another thing I see people use the forums for: keeping up with new features, and how to use them.
And then the final example: specific how-tos. Again, not a comprehensive list here, but just an example of a way I see people use the forums. Which screen do I go to? Which button do I click on to do a specific thing? And, you know, it doesn’t matter how experienced you are with Acumatica, no one person knows everything. And I myself have experienced looking at even a particular screen for a long time, months, and never noticing a button on there. Or maybe there’s a new button hidden on another tab or a new field that was released fairly recently and I just didn’t know about it.
There’s no dumb questions here. You know, a lot of times you just didn’t know about a certain button, and you might know something that someone else doesn’t know about. So it’s a great place to compare notes and ask how to do specific things in Acumatica, including, you know, a lot of times you’re not sure if there’s a feature available for a certain thing, and you’re trying to decide “do I need to customize to get what I need?” Well, there might be a feature that you’re not aware of. So these how-to, where-to-go, what screens to go to, what buttons to click on; that’s a third area that I see people use the AUG Forums for.
Now, last point about the forums is that everything is public. And the reason for that is so Google can find it. And when people ask Google for how to do something in Acumatica, more and more you’re seeing Google take them to augforums.com, and that way they can find the information they need. And you can do all that for free, without needing to do anything special because everything’s public.
Alright, so that’s it about augforums.com, those two primary things, the AUG Blog and the AUG Forums.
That’s it for today. Thanks for listening, and I’ll catch you on the next AUG Blog Audio Post. Take care.