iNTERFACEWARE

Email Rules

Many customers prefer to email rather than read, but our support email address is intentionally placed low in this document. Please read carefully to find it.

Our support process is designed to maximize the value of everyone’s time. Every minute we spend reading unnecessary material is a minute we are not solving technical problems.

To ensure this, we enforce strict email hygiene using automation. Messages that do not comply with these guidelines may never be seen by a human.

Our goal is simple: encourage thoughtful, concise communication so that we can spend our time helping customers solve real problems.

Read the documentation first

Before sending an email, please spend a few minutes searching our website.

Many questions are already answered in our documentation, FAQs, and technical articles. If the answer is readily available on our website, we generally expect customers to find it themselves.

Emails asking questions that are already documented may simply be ignored or deleted.

We would much rather spend our time solving new problems than repeating information that has already been published.

Ask AI First

Use any of the many AI models available to educate yourself before involving a human. AI can often help you write more clearly and describe your problem effectively. This helps conserve human time for more meaningful problems.

Keep it short

Describe your problem in plain language.

Before pressing Send, ask yourself:

Most technical issues can be explained in a few concise paragraphs.

Maximum message size

We automatically reject any email whose plain-text content exceeds 10,000 characters.

If you cannot explain your problem within that limit, you probably need to spend more time understanding the problem yourself before asking us to spend time understanding it.

Writing clearly is part of solving technical problems. Distilling a complex issue into a concise description often reveals the solution—or at least makes it much easier for us to help.

No attachments

We do not accept email attachments.

Attachments usually slow communication rather than improve it. They often contain large amounts of irrelevant information.

If you need to share source code, configuration files, or VMD files, please use Git or another version control system. This is a much more effective way to collaborate than emailing files back and forth.

Attachments are difficult to find later—placing that burden on an organization striving to be efficient is not acceptable.

We generally do not review:

If something is important, summarize it in the body of your email.

Respect everyone’s time

Please avoid sending unnecessary content such as:

We are interested in understanding your problem—not reading pages of corporate boilerplate.

Confidentiality notices at the bottom of emails are generally ignored. Modern communication tools such as iMessage and WhatsApp do not require pages of legal text each time someone sends a message, and email is no different.

Plain text only

Plain text is preferred.

Rich HTML emails often contain unnecessary formatting, tracking pixels, oversized signatures, embedded images, and other distractions that add no value to technical communication.

Simple text is faster to read, easier to archive, and easier to process automatically.

--> . <-- (hidden link to support email)

Automated processing

Our mail system automatically processes incoming messages.

Depending on the content, an email may be:

These decisions are made automatically before anyone on our team sees the message.

Help us help you

Our support process rewards customers who think carefully about their problem before asking for assistance.

A well-written email demonstrates that you have:

The easier you make it for us to understand your problem, the more likely it is that we'll be able to help you quickly.

Good technical communication is one of the most valuable engineering skills. It benefits both you and us.