OK, FWIW I will admit to once having my own experience much like
Rich's. As I recall I merely wanted to enable a vacation message
(thanks for including that feature!), which I could only do through
the web interface. So I logged in to mail.msu.edu and naturally
opened the Options category, and looked for what to do next. I tried
both Global Options, and MSU Prefs, to no avail. I *knew* that the
vacation option existed somewhere, as I had used it before, but for
the life of me I could not find it anymore. I don't know how much
time I wasted searching for that option until, exasperated, I phoned
the ATS Help Desk to make this their problem. Well, they explained
that I needed to click on the "MSU Prefs" link. I had already done
that, I said, under "Options". Only then they explained, *not* the
"MSU Prefs" under "Options", but the "MSU Prefs" out on the main
level. Sheesh! Why have two "MSU Prefs" that do two different
things! I had just naturally assumed that the two "MSU Prefs" were
just two routes to the same thing, silly me!
So here is a case where I already "knew" how to use the system, and
still found it frustratingly unusable when I went back to use it
another time. But I will admit that the ATS Help Desk did its job well.
-- David McFarlane, Professional Faultfinder
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