Enterprise Guide Users Guide

[deleted_user]

There isn't one and it's a big oversight! Something like an expanded version of the 'Visual Guide to Enterprise Guide' that BISUG sell (and which I heartily recommend) would be ideal.

Any ideas on what to do when rolling out EG in the absence of a users guide?

[deleted_user]

For fans of the "Little SAS Book" series, there is a Little SAS Book for Enterprise Guide. It's pretty basic but may serve as a good handbook to accompany an initial roll-out.

http://www.sas.com/apps/pubscat/bookdetails.jsp?pc=60410

It's also specifically for 3.0, not sure if there are plans for a 4.0 version any time soon.

[deleted_user]

I know about the Little Enterprise Guide book, although I haven't purchased a copy (yet!).

However, shouldn't a User's Guide be supplied? EG is pretty unique in that essentially no user documentation exists. I've never come across this before.

[ChrisHemedinger]

In the past, there was a Getting Started book supplied with Enterprise Guide. Its content was basically the same as the tutorial supplied off of the Help menu. The hard-copy no longer ships but the tutorial does provide a good start to get a new user oriented.

In addition to the great "3rd party" books mentioned already in this thread, there are some excellent self-paced e-learning modules available from SAS:

http://www.sas.com/apps/elearning/elearning_courses.jsp?cat=SAS+Enterprise+Guide

Chris

[deleted_user]

"The hard-copy no longer ships but the tutorial does provide a good start to get a new user oriented."

It is very basic and is not suitable for reference material.

"In addition to the great "3rd party" books mentioned already in this thread, there are some excellent self-paced e-learning modules available from SAS"

I think documentation should be supplied (electronically) on every product and not rely on people either having to purchase a 3rd party book, or attend a course.

Perhaps a similar situation exists with MS-Office products, but in general you will get a user's guide with every software product. Just look at the contrast with the 1000's of pages of documentation with other SAS products.

[deleted_user]

A specific question: when EG 4.1 ships later in the month, will there be documentation? If not, how do we roll-out the new version to current users?

You have to have reference documentation!!!!

[ChrisHemedinger]

Thanks for the feedback on documentation.

I agree with you that the "external" documentation is far from comprehensive, as the product can do so much that's not documented outside of the included online help. You are not the first customer to comment on this.

However, EG 4.1 will not be accompanied by any new forms of documentation, at least not with the product.

The tutorial is updated, the administrator guide is updated, and the SAS education folks have been updating their courses. This is about the same amount of documentation that SAS has always provided with Enterprise Guide.

In addition, as Susan posted earlier, the Little SAS Book for Enterprise Guide will soon have a 4.1 edition.

I should point out though, the included online help is comprehensive, and there is even a lot of help text "baked into" the user interface of the tasks/wizards.

I'm going to share your posting with the folks in our publications group that design our documentation. If you have more details you would like to share, please feel free to submit to http://support.sas.com/contact/software_comments.html.

Chris

[SJSlaughter]

I am pleased to say that a new version of "The Little SAS Book for Enterprise Guide" is indeed being written for EG 4. In fact, Lora Delwiche and I are very close to finishing the first draft. The official schedule shows the book coming back from the printer at the end of July, but we hope to move it along more quickly.

I'd also like to say that, for people who are using EG for the first time, the "Getting Started Tutorial" that you access via the Help menu in EG 3 and EG 4, is really very good.

[deleted_user]

The link doesn't work b/c the period was automatically included in the URL. Here is the link again: http://support.sas.com/contact/software_comments.html .