Improve documentation and training material

[#1]

The online documentation and training material needs major improvement. Most of the training videos are outdated and the documentation is lacking key information - see attached screen shot taken from Enterprise TV for "new user orientation" - how many years outdated is this??  There have been occasions when I request missing documentation information via Client Care and the response is to pay for consultancy services which doesn't seem acceptable. The  training content and documentation available with Google is night and day versus Adobe. On a positive note, I thought the video training for DTM was very good - so more of that please.

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[#2]

Thing is, Adobe makes money off of training courses, so it's not really in CC's best interests to answer questions like that. I rarely even see Adobe employees offering help on their support forums.  

I can somewhat undersand their position on it.  It's an enterprise tool that is pretty complex, and it does take a certain amount of skill and dedication to really master, and the few who do dedicate themselves to that should get compensated accordingly.  

But having said that.. I 100% agree that definitive, up to date, easy to read, easy to navigate documentation is an absolute must.   I agree that it's pretty unacceptable for CC to tell you to hire a consultant to clarify their own product when there is substandard documentation available.  The truth is,  I have seen more often than not that Adobe certified consultants are likely to be in the same boat as you for things beyond the basics to medium level stuff.  

This is coming from someone who HAS been through several of their training/certifcation courses. It's not that those courses completely sucked; they are great for people just getting their feet wet in the analytics world.  But 99% of my knowledge with Adobe Analytics and related tools is from either fine tooth combing the documents, or doing a massive amount of QA and reverse engineering of my own to see how it ticks.  

And thing is, I like sharing that knowledge with others when I can.  On that note..  I mentioned in a separate idea-post, but if they would allow users to comment on the documentation, that would go a LONG way towards having some good documentation, because then people would comment clarities, caveats, gotchas, tips, etc.

Adobe actually does have comments enabled for some of their online documents, but not for a lot of them, which is odd, since it's pretty much the standard for online documentation.. 

BTW, if you think AA documentation is bad, it's heaven compared to the API documentation. Relatively recently they made an effort to make it look prettier, but pretty much 0 effort to actually make it more clear.  I've spent countless hours pulling what little hair I have left out trying to poke and prod at it and figure out how it really works. That doc does have one major thing going for it though: it does allow people to comment on it. 

Final note.. I know this post seems kinda harsh towards Adobe, but I don't necessarily mean it that way.  Overall, these are really good tools and well worth the investment.  But I'm not gonna lie.. the documentation and support for it could use some love.  I've been involved with long before Adobe even took them over, and it HAS gotten better over the years.  They just need to keep moving forward with that. 

[#3]

Thanks Richard and Josh for your feedback.

I'm part of the extended team that manages the KB and documentation for Adobe Analytics; if you tweet @AdobeMktgCare with specific questions on specific pages, I can make sure our doc team is aware of the gap and fill it pretty quick. Usually the turnaround for that is less than a day.

If you're looking for a more verbose area to discuss documentation, feel free to create a thread at help-forums.adobe.com. Many users, both Adobe and non-Adobe are in there daily (as well as myself) who will be able to take action on any documentation or KB gaps that are identified there.