The Flexus Forum
Flexus supports a User Forum called The Flexus Forum. This is an excellent method for our customers as well as ALL COBOL professionals to exchange ideas, suggestions, tips, techniques and support. It’s the next best thing to an actual user group, because it fosters communications between our customers and the COBOL programming community in general.
Anyone can access the General Discussion, Jobs and Announcements areas of The Flexus Forum, but in order to access the Technical Support area, you must have a valid Flexus software license and must be currently under maintenance. If you have any questions regarding serial numbers, licensing issues or maintenance, please feel free to contact us at anytime and we will be glad to assist you.
What is a Forum?
The function of a web-based Forum is to allow an individual to post a message for the purpose of communicating with a group of individuals who share a common interest. The Forum will display this message for ALL subscribers of the Forum to read. Other Forum subscribers may then respond to the message with their comments on the posting.
Can I Get an E-mail Notification When a Subscriber Posts a Message to The Flexus Forum?
YES! If you SUBSCRIBE to a thread or a topic, you will receive e-mail messages when a new posting is made. This allows you to avoid having to constantly check the Forum to see if anyone has posted a message….but you MUST subscribe to the thread or topic.
What is the Benefit to Me?
The Flexus Forum will allow us to broadcast advice, suggestions, messages to the customer base as well as allow our customers to ask for and receive assistance from us as well as each other. It also allows our customers to provide feedback to us on various enhancements and bug reports. We will gladly accept both positive as well as negative feedback, but strongly encourage you to use good judgment and always be polite and professional in ALL messages posted to The Flexus Forum.
Sending Attachments via The Flexus Forum
If you have a file which you think will be useful for others to see, you can post it directly to The Flexus Forum, but please be aware of the fact that the file which you post to the forum will be available for ALL subscribers to download, so please do not post anything that you do not wish to share with everyone. If you want to send a file to only one person, we recommend sending it via PRIVATE PERSONAL E-MAIL. We can also provide you with a private common area on our Sharefile FTP Server if you have a large file which you want to share with only one individual. PLEASE notify Bob Wolfe, and he will place it in a special directory on our FTP server so that the file can be transferred.
What if I want to Send Private E-mail to Flexus?
The Flexus Forum does NOT prevent you from sending a private e-mail message. If you have questions, you will still be able to freely send a private e-mail message to any of the Flexus addresses. To minimize spam, we are not including a list of the Flexus e-mail addresses on this web site, but you can click on the image below to send a message through our Contacts Page to Technical Support, Sales, Accounting, Administration or if you need assistance with anything:
Can Anyone Access or Post Messages to The Flexus Forum?
The Flexus Forum is available to everyone, but if you are not a licensed Flexus customer under maintenance, you will only have access to the General Discussion, Jobs and Announcements areas of The Flexus Forum. To access the Flexus Technical Support area of The Flexus Forum, you must have purchased a Flexus product license and be currently under maintenance. For anyone to be upgraded to access the Technical Support area of The Flexus Forum, you must send a request through the Flexus Contacts page and include your Flexus product license number for approval:
Those who have been given access and choose not to renew maintenance or do not have a current support contract, will no longer have access to the Technical Support Area of the Flexus Forum.
How do I Subscribe to The Flexus Forum?
To subscribe to The Flexus Forum, simply click on the menu item entitled “The Flexus Forum” on this web site: (www.flexus.com). Enter your preferred Username (do not include blank spaces) and Password. If you are a licensed user of Flexus products, you must complete the process of providing your license number through the Contacts Page. You will then be upgraded to have access to ALL areas of the Forum. If you are not upgraded to Client Status within 24 hours of registering on The Flexus Forum, please contact us through the Contacts page on this web site and let us know that you have created a Flexus Forum account.
How do I Unsubscribe from the Flexus List Server?
If you wish to unsubscribe, please send your unsubscribe request to us via private e-mail or through the Flexus Contacts Page.
Rules of Conduct on The Flexus Forum
Yes, there will be rules of conduct and they WILL be enforced. The Flexus Forum is being supported by Flexus to assist our customer base and obtain feedback so that we can serve our customers better. Feedback refers to both positive AS WELL AS negative comments regarding our products, however, we do expect our customer base to conduct themselves in a professional manner when posting to The Flexus Forum. Here are a set of rules which are not necessarily an exhaustive set of rules. Flexus reserves the right to remove any customer from The Flexus Forum at any time for any reason. Customers who conduct themselves appropriately and professionally will not be removed from The Flexus Forum unless they fail to renew their annual maintenance or support contract. The Flexus Forum is for the purpose of:
- Free exchange of ideas on COBOL related topics and Flexus product related issues.
- Postings involving suggestions, advice and opinions on COBOL related topics and the use of Flexus products.
- Request for consulting services and offers of employment are acceptable so long as the individual who posts the message also posts the location of services/employment and the amount of remuneration for said services or employment in the COBOL Jobs Category of The Flexus Forum.
- Advice to Flexus on enhancements to consider as well as constructive criticism on suspected bugs or missing features in any Flexus product.
Postings Which are HIGHLY Discouraged
Flexus asks all Flexus Forum subscribers to refrain from off-topic postings. Many of our customers have limited time during their workday to review Forum messages and off-topic posts require them to devote more time to message review.
Messages which are considered “on topic” include the following types of messages:
- Messages which involve the use of any Flexus product;
- Messages which involve issues regarding the COBOL programming language or mixed language development using COBOL as one of the languages;
- Messages which involve hardware issues, operating system issues or network issues and a COBOL application running in those environments;
- If your desired posting does not meet any of the three criteria above, please use good judgment in posting your message so as to minimize any inconvenience to any of our other customers. We do appreciate your cooperation regarding off-topic messages posted to The Flexus Forum.
Postings Which Will NOT be Tolerated
The following postings will not be tolerated and WILL result in the automatic and immediate removal of the individual who posts the message:
- Inappropriate textual content in postings. This may include offensive language, off-color jokes, insults, name-calling, ethnic or racial slurs or anything else which the administrator deems to be inappropriate to the purpose of The Flexus Forum. If two or more parties wishes to engage in such behavior, it must be conducted via private e-mail.
- Inappropriate attachments to postings. This may include attachments which include offensive language, offensive photographs or graphic images, off-color jokes, insults, name-calling, ethnic or racial slurs or anything else which the administrator deems to be inappropriate to the purpose of The Flexus Forum. If two or more parties wishes to send such attachments, they must be sent via private e-mail.
- Arguments. Disagreements are not only acceptable, but anticipated. Disagreements are never a problem so long as the parties conduct their discussion in a manner which is deemed by the administrator to be polite and professional. If two or more parties wish to argue a particular point, those parties should do so via private e-mail.
- Criticism which is not constructive to the purpose of The Flexus Forum. While it is perfectly acceptable to disagree and to offer constructive criticism, it must remain professional at all times. This includes discussions of Flexus products as well as compilers and even products which are competitive to Flexus products. It is intended that the discussion in The Flexus Forum be conducted with the utmost of professionalism. Playful joking, witticism’s, repartee and friendly, good-natured “ribbing” is actually encouraged in this list server, however, because of the impersonal nature of electronic mail, Flexus strongly recommends that those posting such banter to the list server make it very obvious when they are joking. This can be accomplished with an emoticon (smiley) or an indication such as “” or “” after the humor.