In my experience, when customers report an issue, the details they provide can sometimes be unclear and challenging to fully understand. This blog aims to help you resolve issues faster with clearer guidance and insights. Whether you’re an Intact customer or not, we hope you find it useful.
The Hubs are there to help!
If you have a general software support query, your first point of call would be to use our Hub resources. We have the Xline Hub for our Xline customers and the iQ Hub for our iQ customers. Our Xline and iQ Hubs are our dedicated online customer support portals that house knowledge base, training manuals and technical guides, educational videos, and release notes. They’re all there at your fingertips! If you’re not currently an Intact user, check with your software provider to see if they offer a similar resource.
The Hubs are integrated with the Helpdesk system. When you type a query in the Helpdesk platform, relevant answers from the Hub knowledge base are automatically displayed. This seamless integration allows you to access the Hub's wealth of information directly within the Helpdesk interface, providing contextual assistance as you write your queries.
If you can’t find the answer you’re looking for, we would then ask you to raise a ticket and provide us with as much information as possible.
I’ve compiled some questions, tips, and considerations that might help if you encounter a problem. Note that not all steps are necessary, but keep in mind that your overall goal is to provide us with as much information as you can. The more information our support personnel have, the quicker the troubleshooting can begin and the faster your issue can be resolved.
- Can you replicate / reproduce the error / problem?
Firstly, ask yourself how you arrived at the error or caused the system to crash. Here are some questions to consider:
- What data was entered?
- What fields were populated?
- Can you document the process step by step?
- Could you provide a short video demoing the issue?
All factors are equally suspect until we can find the cause of the issue. Logging as much information as you can, giving us a step-by-step record on how you arrived at the problem, and reproducing it if possible are the most beneficial steps to getting your system up and running again! Recreating an issue is often the most difficult and time-consuming part of troubleshooting but will greatly increase the turnaround time.
- Does the error occur every time?
Can you recreate the issue time after time or was this a one off? As you can imagine, an intermittent issue is the worst type of issue to troubleshoot. You can’t fix something until you know what breaks it!
- Exact error message
What is the exact error message you’re getting? Ideally, take a screenshot of the error – it’s important the exact error message is captured. Partial or incomplete error messages generally won’t suffice as they may be omitted from knowledge-based search results. Even a typo can affect these results! For Intact iQ, best practice would be sending in the full call stack exception message.
- Link to more information
Depending on the nature of the issue, we may request a log file or to see the actual issue in real time. Often there is a link which provides further information (online or somewhere on your computer’s hard drive – possibly a log file). This might sound like jargon; however, this information may be very useful to support our development staff or your software provider. Intact iQ gives the user an option to send this information directly to the Intact support and development team. You can reference the time and computer where you sent this message from. In a case where we (support) request to see the issue first hand, we may use a remote access tool such as TeamViewer. This also can greatly increase the resolution time on a given issue.
- You're not alone! Are other users having the same problem?
Here are some questions to consider:
- Can a colleague carry out the same steps successfully?
- Is the issue specific to a user or to a PC?
- Can your IT people (if available) assist with troubleshooting the issue?
- Is this a PC/network issue?
Pinpointing whether the problem is user-specific or device-specific and understanding if others can perform the task without encountering issues can provide insight into whether the problem is widespread or isolated.
- Not your first Rodeo...Has this happened before?
Was the issue something that was fixed previously? Is this something that used to happen and previously seemed to ‘fix itself’? Has anyone else in your company come across this issue before? Perhaps they have already fixed the issue or know what the cause is. Again, include all relevant information including any historical instances of the issue.
- "Have you tried turning it off and on again?"...Scrap that, what have you tried already?
What steps have you already taken to fix the problem? Have you tried changing some company/configurator settings? Have these setting been changed back, or have you left the setting enabled/disabled? Have these changes affected the error? Are you getting the same error message or has the error changed? Once again, please include all relevant info!
- What is your current setup?
Many support cases submitted have already been resolved, meaning it could already be a “known issue”. What operating system are you using? Regarding Intact iQ; What version of .net is installed on your PC? What version of SQL server is your company using?
- What's changed?
Ask yourself:
- When did this problem first occur?
- Have any system or application updates been applied recently?
- Have you upgraded any hardware?
- Have you installed or uninstalled any software?
Again, check with your IT department (if available). If something has changed on your side and we (or your channel partner) don’t know about it, the case may be forever unresolved as support personnel could be missing a vital piece of the puzzle.
- What are your contact details?
We (or your channel partner) may need to liaise with you for more information or remotely access your PC. We may request a back-up of your data/configuration etc. Communication is vital when getting to the bottom of an issue – leave contact information and specify a good contact time for your support provider to contact you.
- Further Consultancy
If you need time with one of our consultants to resolve an issue, your account manager is there to look after you and to chase up any ongoing issues that seem to be taking too long. Your account manager will also provide quotes for issues that require a greater amount of support, where there’s a cost involved.
Any PCRs (Programme Change Requests) or any new functionality or project we would usually pass over to our consultancy team to review and price up for you.
So, just to reiterate... When you’re having trouble, what’s the plan of action?
- For the best chance of solving your issue, start by checking out your relevant product Hub. If you still need help, don't hesitate to log a support ticket. Just make sure to share all the details you've gathered after going through the questions above.
- When logging a ticket on the portal, support.intactsoftware.com, you can choose the product you use (iQ or Xline) and the geographical location. We will then assign you to our Ireland or UK offices.
We have a dedicated team who assign tickets to the right members of our wider Customer Success Office (CSO). We're very proud that our team achieved 99% positive feedback in 2023... It’s safe to say, you’re in good hands!
