Messages Without Message IDs

A product family such as IBM Spectrum Protect has a great many components, each of which can have hundreds or even thousands of messages. With so many messages, the customer will need some method to find explanations.

In general, many messages are identified by a unique message ID. When a customer encounters a message for the first time, a message ID can make it easy to find an explanation. The problem is that not ALL messages have a unique message ID. Product developers who are intimately knowledgeable with the components may find the vast majority of their messages are self-explanatory, and do not need an explanation nor a unique message ID. However, the customer (especially a new customer) will not be so familiar with the product and may not understand what a message means. Therefore customer needs a simple method to locate how to interpret/understand what every message means, even the "simple" ones.

I believe the best way to do that is to assign unique message id to EVERY message. Then the customer only needs to search (or "google") for that one word, the message id, to begin to learn how to interpret/understand that particular message. Even better would be to have a message manuals containing ALL of the message IDs. Each message ID should have explanation, system action, user action, etc. The message manual should include a glossary (and not just a link to glossary on the web, because overtime those links break when that website gets its AGILE makeover or is moved to another web location).

When a message is interactively displayed, such as in a GUI environment, it may be more convenient to the customer to hyperlink the message to an explanation without needing to display the message id.