Satchi wrote: First, let me say this loud and clear: I LOVE CB! I am an escapee from one of your competitors and can't believe I spent so much time on their poorly coded software.

WOW - THANK YOU for these comments and for supporting CB as a paid member.

That said, I'm finding as I go along, that CB has layers and layers. There are so many features, codes, functions... amazing but overwhelming.

Yup - there is awesome flexibility and unfortunately this has its cost

My Wish: Clear, detailed documentation of variables, capabilities, code options -- everything.

example: I would love a list of all the codes we can use in auto actions with really clear examples of what they each do.

Before you point me to youtube, or the documents you do have here:

I have read the primer, watched the videos etc. Training for CB is easy to find. Reference manuals with hardcore RTFM style answers are thin. Sometimes, I just want to look up one function. I have to search and search the forums, hoping some other poor soul has shared my frustration.

CB Auto Actions is a tool - a swiss knife for CB.

Technically it could be referred to as a state machine tool.

It lets you perform specific tasks (actions) when specific events (triggers) happen.

CB and its add-ons fire these triggers when events happen throught the various user interfaces and interactions.

CB Auto Actions has a huge list of triggers that one can select from.
In most cases the trigger name is used to indicate the actual event that is involved.
And in most cases this is enough.

Granted - I personally agree with you - we could describe each event in more detail and try and give people a better understanding of what is happening.

A trigger that is fired is really a php function that is called. Without CB Auto Actions, people wanting to act on a trigger would have to be able to understand and write PHP code and implement a CB plugin. With CB Auto Actions things are much easier but for more advanced situations (unfortuantely) a deeper understanding of how things (triggers) work in Joomla is still required.

We have spent lots of time (internally) discussing how we could improve on this without really identifying the killer reply. No matter how many examples we give we would just be scratching the surface as there are virtually infinite possibilities available.

I spend a lot of time trying to figure things out -- embarrassed to even post most of my dumb questions. I get where I wanted to go ... eventually. But, having more serious documentation would make the journey much friendlier.

NEVER hesitate to ask and give a detailed description about what you want to accomplish.

We respond to each post and usually even provide details and steps needed to configure an auto action to address each use case.

This way others reading the forums will benefit from replies and we will have great material for better documentation by examples efforts that I personally have the desire to implement on our new website.

thanks for your time,

Satchi

THANK you for your great comments!