Knowledgebase

Best practices in information technology support: help us to help you

Here are the top ten considerations for helping us deliver the best support we can for you. 

Note: when we talk about "tickets," we refer to problems/issues that you or we document by email with our support ticketing system, software we use to centralize interactions with our customers across email, website, and phone communications.

1. 1. Assume positive intent.
2. 2. Announcements. We may be working on the issue, or have already resolved it. Please check before submitting a ticket.
   https://admin.cloudiance.com/announcements
3. 3. System status. Our monitoring system may have already notified us of an issue, in which case, please don't submit a ticket.
   https://status.cloudiance.com
4. 4. Knowledgebase. Please check for an answer before submitting your ticket.
   https://admin.cloudiance.com/knowledgebase
5. 5. One ticket per issue. This allows us to collaborate more effectively. Also, tickets are historical records: help us make them easy to refer to as needed.
6. 6. Ticket title relevance.
   Good example: "Rejection notice emailing mycustomer@gmail.com." 
   Bad example: "Can't send email"
7. 7. Specificity. Our customers use many different platforms (OSX, Windows, Linux, iOS, Android...) and email clients (Mail, Outlook, web client...), so please let us know the details of how you're using Cloudiance, and what isn't working for you, so we can help you best.
   Good example: "When I try to send a message to mycustomer@gmail.com, I'm getting back a rejection notice, no matter whether I send from my iPhone, or the web client. I've copy/pasted the notice below."
   Bad example: "My email isn't working"
   Bonus points: include relevant email headers 
8. 8. Troubleshooting. Please share what troubleshooting you have already tried, if any, or who you've spoken with about this issue.
9. 9. Coincidence. Please share what changes you may have made. For instance, adding a new phone, updating software, or changing a password.
10. 10. Attachments. Please include attachments to help us understand the situation, such as screen shots/grabs. See "Attachments" below for detail.

Additional considerations

1. A. Attachments. 
   1.      i. Photos. Please do not share photos of your screens. Instead, take screen shots/grabs.
   2.      ii. Text. Please do not share screen shots of large amounts of text, such as email headers. Instead, either copy/paste the text into your ticket, or attach a text (txt) or pdf file, so we can effectively work with the text.
   3.      iii. Date. On any attachment including an event not from the same day on which you're submitting a ticket, please include a date in the title of the attachment (change the file name to include the date).
   4.      iv. Too much is better than not enough. We'd rather have too much of a screen shot than too little, so err on the side of bigger than needed.
   5.      v. Uncertainty. Not sure what's helpful to share? Please ask!
2. B. Technical knowledge. Let us know if our response is too technical! Sometimes it's unavoidable, and while we do expect you to have someone on premises who has enough technical experience to help us to help you, we can help you determine what/who you need in cases when you don't have the technical knowledge you may need to resolve a particular issue. We also expect that on some issues you will educate yourself, such as if we ask you to share a screen shot, and you don't know how, that you'll use a search engine to learn how to do it.
3. C. Collaboration. There are many issues we can't resolve without help from others, including yourself.
   1.      i. Your customers. We may ask you to work with your customers, such as asking them (and their IT helpers) to add you and us to their whitelists. We may not be able to resolve certain issues without their cooperation.
   2.       ii. Your partners. We may choose to interact directly with internal or external IT help to which you have access, or at our sole discretion, have you coordinate with them instead. 
   3.      iii. Other software service providers. We may be able to work with other service providers you have chosen, and at our sole discretion, not. We may be able to provide options that have proven to work better with our services, and support.
   4.      iv. Software developers. We're not a software development company. Sometimes we have to wait with you until an issue is resolved, bug-fixed, etc.. Also, developers often update and change their applications, which means our support documentation is often out-of-date, especially because they don't announce their changes. So, when you find some of our documentation is out of date, please try to work with it anyway, and also notify us by opening a ticket with a link to the specific document, and what's specifically out of date, so we can fix it for you and our other customers.
4. D. Support scope.
   1. i. Limited applications. Our help desk support is limited to providing you the information required to configure the applications and devices we support to use our email services.
   2. ii. Availability. We're generally available by email/ticketing system M-F 9AM to 5PM, not including major U.S. holidays. Phone and other support is provided by our help desk team on an as-needed basis, at our sole discretion.
   3. iii. Exceptions. There's no harm in asking! While we may choose to assist you with out-of-scope services, such as and not limited to unsupported software or support outside our generally available hours, we may also discontinue support for those out-of-scope services at any time, at our sole discretion. Should we refuse or discontinue support, at our sole discretion, you may the option of requesting Professional Services, at a minimum of 2 hours at our current hourly rate with considerations for any emergency, after-hours, and holiday modifiers. 
5. E. Seem like you're doing all the work? These are best practices and considerations intended to help you to help us serve you best. That some of these suggestions may seem self-serving should be expected.