LabVIEW Patch and Release Documentation Seems Broken

[Hooovahh]

So this journey started when it was mentioned on the forums that there is a LabVIEW 2022 Q3 Patch.  I went to NI.com and clicked the search button.  In Chrome this does nothing on the main landing page. (Issue 1).  I went to NI.com/Software and the search button does seem to do something there.  So I search "labview 2022 q3 patch 1" and I get 80 results, none of which are relevant (Issue 2).  So I go to NI Package Manager.  Under LabVIEW I select 2022 Q3, and under the details tab there is a mention for 2022 Q3 Patch 1 and a link labeled https://www.ni.com/r/lv2022q3rm.  If you click it you are taken to the LabVIEW Release Notes page which LabVIEW 2023 Q1 selected. (Issue 3).  If you change the version back to 2022 Q3 there is no mention of any patch.  I clicked on the Readme for Windows, and then I click on LabVIEW Manuals which is supposed to show New features. This link takes me to a search result page with 10559 results (Issue 4).

Later I found out there is a way to update to get the patch in NIPM.  But the patch appears to only be available through NIPM.  I have several offline machines.  So the only way to get this patch is to download the NIPM package on an online machine, then grab all the relevant NIPM packages, and dependencies (trial and error?) from the cached folder, then copy them to the offline machines an install them.  (Issue 5).

In doing this I see that 2023 Q1 might have been released, with a January date.  But I couldn't find any download online or in NIPM.  Just a read me that also returns a search result of nothing useful for the New Features link (Issue 6).

I know some of these issues are NIPM related, and some are the documentation related.  But since I was already reporting broken links in this subforum, I thought this would be the most relevant place to mention the issues I've been having.

EDIT: Another frustrating thing I found.  On the LabVIEW Readme page there is a section for installation instructions.  It says to go Download the LabVIEW Installer with a link.  That link doesn't take you to the LabVIEW download page, it takes you to the ni.com/downloads page where you are expected to find what you need.  Why not just have the link go where you know the reader wants to go? (Issue 7)  I see this often where there is a link to go somewhere, and instead of going there it just gives you a generic page and expects you to figure it out.

[markwni]

Thanks @Hooovahh for the very detailed report. I will be passing this along to all of the relevant parties.

Best,

Mark

[instrumento]

I've complained about NI Package Manager before, in several other posts, let me do it again here.

Compared to the old setup.exe method, NI Package Manager is not user friendly for offline installs.  We went from a method that was simple to customize, i.e. run setup in "create a config" mode, used the created config for offline installs, to a new method that forces the user to become an expert on the intricacies of Package Manager configuration, create a local depot, and good luck navigating the obscure complicated method of deciding what sub-packages to install.

And when the ISOs for offline installs (would be the same for the setup.exe method) are not visible on ni.com, and Package Manager doesn't have an option to download them, like mentioned in this thread, the process quickly gets annoying, as I'll need to contact support for them to put the ISO in some http/ftp site, creating work for me and for NI.