iCompass Customer Empowerment Series
Reporting Problems in Software
In part three of the Customer Empowerment Series, I’d like to take a high-level look at the pieces of a computer and how they interact in hopes that when something goes wrong, you’ll have the ability to effectively describe the problem area to someone tech-savvy, such as myself.
When something goes wrong with a computer - and this is especially true of phone support - as a user you need to be able to describe the problem and the problem area in good detail. You must also use terminology that’s common to all computer users, otherwise a lot of time can be wasted trying to determine “where” something is happening before getting to the much more important “what”.
Think of yourself as a professional error reporter. In your report you need to include various pieces of information and we’ll cover how to discern them throughout this post. We need Operating System and Program Information, the type of problem, and recreation steps.
The biggest piece of software you have on your computer is your operating system. Most people have some version of Windows (XP, Vista, or 7). There are other operating systems like Mac OS X, Ubuntu, Fedora and others. Be sure when reporting an issue, you know what operating system and version you have on your computer. In Windows, you can hold the Windows Key (between CTRL and ALT) and press Break (usually on the top right area of the keyboard) and it will show you what version of windows you’re using.
Running on top of the operating system are all of your programs. Examples of programs are: Microsoft Word, Microsoft Internet Explorer and Mozilla Firefox. When reporting problems, it’s good to know what program it is, as well as the version. Most programs will show you the version if you find the help menu and click “About.” You can look at this example to see what it looks like in Internet Explorer. Here we can see that it is Internet Explorer 8.0.7600.16385 64-bit Edition.
Talking about browsers, there are a very large number of people who think that Internet Explorer is the internet. This is a common misnomer and it’s these types of mix-ups that can cause confusion when reporting issues. To clarify, Internet Explorer is a web browser and only facilitates browsing the internet. Sometimes Internet Explorer can have a problem and it has nothing to do with the internet connection. When this occurs, you can use another browser like Mozilla Firefox or Google Chrome to browse the internet.
Now let’s take a look at identifying the different types of errors that you’ll typically encounter while using iCompass services.
JavaScript Error: The symptoms of a JavaScript error is that a webpage just “stops working”, most buttons don’t work but links are still clickable. In Internet Explorer it’s easy to see if there’s a JavaScript error. Simply look at the bottom-left corner of the screen.
Double clicking on the exclamation mark will bring up the error message which you can then describe to a technical support person. Just think about how smart you’ll sound when you say: “I’m receiving a JavaScript error on this page. The error details are….”
In Mozilla Firefox there is no warning that there has been an error so you’ll have to go to the error console which is located under the Tools menu (or you can press CTRL+SHIFT+J) to see if there has been an error.
The details of a Javascript error will rarely help you solve your problems, but they can be very valuable to a technical person.
Program Errors: This is when a program (like Internet Explorer, for example) locks up, or crashes altogether. These problems can be caused by a variety of things and reporting them is usually difficult because often times, you cannot re-create them. The best thing to do is to find a re-creation scenario; otherwise it may have just been a one-time issue. Computers are incredibly complex things and sometimes just the right conditions can be met to cause a lock up or crash. Keep reading to find out how to go about retrieving re-creation steps.
iCompass Errors: An iCompass error (where our product tells you there is a problem and that you should phone Customer Support) is a little bit of a different beast. The iCompass error usually has more to do with our software than with the operating system or software on your computer. The most important information you can gather when you encounter an iCompass error is the recreation steps.
Getting re-creation steps is the most important part of reporting an issue. Maybe you clicked a specific button, changed a dropdown and clicked a save button and that series of steps produced the error. Once you get the error, you should venture onward yourself and try to re-create it by remembering what you had previously done. If you can re-create the error and report the steps you took to achieve that error, the problem will be solved with great haste. You won’t always be able to get re-creation steps or maybe you’re just not able determine what they are without help. In this case, just try to provide as much detail as possible around what you were doing at the time.
That’s all on reporting issues. Remember to try to get the three pieces of critical information: 1) Operating System, program names and versions, 2) Error type and, 3) Re-creation steps. Hopefully this will help you gain confidence when preparing for a technical support call. When you make the call, you will be equipped to provide useful information and hopefully get back on track quickly. Hopefully you won’t need to utilize this skill often but when you do it will certainly be handy to have.
- Aaron Lefkowitz, Application Developer
