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Overall, the best practice is to take time to familiarize yourself with the resources available on
the product support page, especially those discussed above. Gaining experience with the
page and how to use it to your advantage before a crisis erupts will allow you to know where
to look and how to find the answers you need, without having to learn on the fly.
Read through the MustGather documents, or at least a couple of them, to understand the
methodology described in the documents to troubleshoot your own problems, and save
valuable time by knowing what to look for and where.
Subscribe to MySupport and the RSS feeds for the product support pages of applications you
have deployed in conjunction with your portal.
Take advantage of the free resources (IBM Support, Guided Activity and Education
Assistants, and the Software Support Toolbar) to learn and guide you in your portal
administration and usage.
Use the WebSphere Portal user forum to your advantage. Representatives from IBM
development, support, and test routinely monitor and contribute to the forums, as do
customers who might have encountered (and found answers to) your similar questions.
Study the Table of Contents for the Information Centers and abstracts for white papers and
highlighted TechNotes. It is often more useful to remember where you have seen some
information for future reference rather than the complete contents of the documentation.
Bookmark the pages you find most useful.
IBM online communities
Participation in WebSphere Portal Server communities, such as newsgroups, forums, wikis,
blogs, and podcasts, is strongly encouraged and highly recommended.
How do online communities help
The collective knowledge sharing and experience of online communities is a very powerful
resource for problem determination and problem solving. Participating in online communities
is also beneficial in problem avoidance. Online communities are very valuable when you need
to obtain direction and product best practices. By leveraging the vast experience of the
collective community, one can avoid known pitfalls and get started down the correct path from
the outset of a project.
How can I access the online communities
Complete information about WebSphere Portal Server communities can be found at the
developerWorks site at this link:
http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/community/
Bookmark this page, as it should serve as your main entry point into the world of IBM online
community resources.
To get started using IBM communities, begin with the page "New to developerWorks
Community". This page can be linked to from the main community page:
http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/community/newto/
Appendix A. Using IBM tools to find solutions and promote customer self-help
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Troubleshooting
