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Monday, October 12, 2009

Saris PowerAgent User Experience Major Snafu $@#!

A week ago I accidentally deleted myself as a user in Saris PowerAgent.

I have the latest version (7.4.4) of the software; when I clicked delete I was prompted once "Are you sure you want to delete User?". I hit the enter button in haste and because the default option is "OK," I deleted myself as a user and also deleted two years worth of racing and training data.

Finally today I got around to calling Saris and asked if there's a way to restore the data. Unfortunately, the only way is from a system backup.

All of the user data is stored in a "repository," typically on the c_drive (in windows) under ~/documents and settings/username/.poweragent/repository

Since I do not have a backup of this directory I was unable to restore the data.

If it were up to me, the software would have an additional dialog after the "Are you sure..." question. It would say something like this: "Warning: this action can not be undone. Do you really want to delete user username and all activities for user username?"

I was surprised and disappointed that deleting the user also deleted all of the activities for the user. Saris, I hope you are reading this!

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

That is why you back up your data! How do you own a computer and not back up what is on there. So are you going to call the manufacturer of your computer when the hard drive crashes blaming them that they did not give you enough prompts for a system backup. Saris did their job by asking you a question. How many prompts do you really need!

Saris Cycling Group said...

I'm so sorry you lost your data. I'd be really upset too! I just wanted to let you know we'll be tweaking the language of the pop up window you get to make it even better understood that your data will be gone. Also, in our soon-to-be-released version of PowerAgent, the raw data will be stored in My Documents instead of the repository file. We will not, however, be adding another pop up window for a third level of security. We feel clicking "Delete User" and then getting the pop up window "Are you sure you want to delete?" are sufficient. Thank you for your input and again, I'm so sorry about you losing your data.

Jocelyn Vande Velde, Software Product Manager, Saris Cycling Group