Global Search

The SEARCH button in the upper right is a Global Site Search (searches our support site and all of its documentation, our Blog, Forums, etc.) and is exactly the same throughout www.rightscale.com.

Support Search

User Level

Although subjective, we have tried to categorize with the following levels:

• beginner
• intermediate
• advanced

Document Type

Each type of document contains a consistent set of elements so that you can quickly and easily view the document and make sense of it.  The look and feel of each document is consistent and repeatable, improving your learning experience.

• tutorial - Step by step procedures to accomplish a specific task.  They range from beginner tutorials that may take a few minutes, to more advanced tutorials that can take hours as you build them up over time.  Tutorials consist of a clearly stated objective, prerequisites (if any), background or overview level information and the steps required to complete the objective.
• concept - Conceptual information.  Concept documents answer the question "What is a ...?"
• reference - Reference information usually takes the shape of lists or tables.
• FAQ - Frequently Asked Questions.  Our FAQs have a basic numeric ID.  You can locate FAQs by the ID, browsing the document title, or using our Search engine.  (e.g. Show me all FAQs containing the word "haproxy")  FAQs generally answer the question "How do I ...?"  They tend to be tighter scoped than tutorials.
• RN - Release Notes.  We have designed a special templates for our Release Notes to make sure they are easy to access, navigate, and read.  Our Release Notes are split into two primary types: 
  1. Cloud Management Platform  (e.g. the Dashboard)
  2. ServerTemplates.

Note:  Most, but not all documents have been tagged with this metadata.  The effort to categorize appropriate documents is still underway.

Printer Icon 

Selecting the printer icon enables you to print the current document you are viewing.  You also have the option to save it as a PDF file.  For Tutorials in particular, you may find this helpful.  Feel free to print out a more involved Tutorial so you can mark it up with notes as progress through it.

Notification Icon

All of our documentation is open and viewable.  You do not need to create an account and "login" to view anything on our Support site.  However, there is one feature that you can only gain access to if you create a free account and login:  Notifications

When you select the Notification icon, you are given the following notification choices:

Notifications are sent to the email address that you specified when you signed up for your account.  As an example use case, you could set a notification for any time a new Release Note is created or modified.

Logging In and Logging Out

By design, we made this unobtrusive.  Most won't need to login at all, so we tucked it away at the bottom of the page.  You'll find the links to login or logout at the very bottom left of any page in our site.  When you login, you can click the "My Page" link to go to a page that is reserved for your use only. You can use this page to keep your own notes about the documentation.

Important!  Due to spam account creations, we have disabled the ability to create your own account on the Support Portal.  You will have to reach Services to get an account created.  The primary benefit in doing this is the ability to get email notifications on pages you want to track changes on.