You have a new Sage X3 issue reported to you from your customer to deal with. Sage Support are of course here to help you, but at what point should you log a case with Sage and what information should you provide?
As to when you should log the case with Sage Support may be part of your own organisation procedures, so this blog focuses more on the information you should provide to log a “perfect case” from the point of view of the Sage Support team. The reason is that providing quality information when logging a new case reduces resolution time significantly, helping us to help you more effectively with the joint aim to assist the customer reach the best solution in the quickest time.
Before logging the case with Sage you should perform due diligence to validate the reported issue and do your own research to confirm if the issue is already identified.
- What is the real question?
“I’m trying to touch my left ear with my right elbow”
Sometimes a customer may ask a question or report a problem, but not be asking the right question and you may need to ask them the question “Why” until you understand the issue. For example, the customer may say something like “when I do this, then I get this error” Sometimes it is useful to consider the bigger picture and question why they are doing this process in the first place. Are they trying to work around another issue, or perhaps they are not following the correct steps anyway?
- What led up to the issue
“It was like that when I found it”
Quite often, on an apparently unchanged system a problem will suddenly occur. It is always useful to check yourself for any obvious changes to a system in this situation, regardless of the customer claims. This may include patches applied, new features enabled, change in business processes, or perhaps other processes running at the same time interfering.
For example, from a technical point of view you could check on the X3 Server for any Windows operating system updates or new software loaded. From functional side, you can check if any X3 hotfixes or other patches have been applied via Development, Utilities, Patches, Patch Inquiry (GESAPT) and/or Administration, Utilities, Update, Updates. You could also check the batch server queue to see if other competing processes may be running at the same time.
- What is the impact to the business
“I need it solved by this afternoon”
It is important to understand how this issue impacts the business and any deadlines/penalties if relevant. This helps us both to understand the priority and what is at stake.
- Understand the full steps needed for the issue to occur and confirm if it does reproduce consistently under certain conditions.
“When I click finish, it gives an error”
Intermittent or random issues are always the most troublesome to identify root cause. Bearing in mind that you will know your customer system and behaviours better than Sage Support, you will have more chance of identifying any pattern to the occurrences, so feel free to discuss in detail with the customers user base when and how often the issue occurs as this is often key to cracking the issue. You could also try the customers steps in SEED folder, even if it not easily reproducible, to see if it could likely be data related or not. For easily reproducible issues, you can also test on the latest X3 version to confirm it still reproduces.
- Research
“It’s gone wrong again…”
Sometimes the issue being experienced may have occurred previously and there could be a blog article, Knowledge base article or other useful information to check. If you’re not sure where to go to do your research, the blog article “Sage X3 Support:Where can I go to find out stuff?“ will point you to places you can go to research the topic of concern. This may lead you to a solution for the issue, provide some steps to help troubleshoot, or identify log files or trace files to collect, etc.
- Local knowledge
“Didn’t you know that?”
Check with your internal customer installation/setup notes, and with your local support and consultancy teams to see if:
- this customer has customisations.
- there is some special setup or other considerations.
- whether the issue has been seen before, either for this customer or others.
- your team already has specialist knowledge of the area of functionality and can give some guidance.
- You are ready to engage Sage Support!
“Is there anybody out there?”
After following the above suggestions, you may now be ready to log the “Perfect case” with Sage Support.
You can download the Sage X3 Support case template and also refer to the Case Template Guidelines to guide you when creating the case on the Sage X3 Case Management Portal.
The “perfect case” will include:
- Good clear description of the customers underlying issue
- Detailed description of the steps to reproduce the issue, or to encounter the issue. This should include any prior steps needed to setup the system and screen shots at key points to show what is on screen. NOTE: Screen shots should normally be of the full screen for the user, including the date/time to give full context.
- Confirmation if it reproduces in SEED folder
- Confirmation if it reproduces on latest versions
- Confirmation of when the issue started and any additional factors that may have contributed to triggering the issue (such as patching, implementation of new features, changes in configuration, etc.)
- What steps the customer can take to workaround the issue (if possible)
- Customer Sage X3 versions, and system architecture (where relevant to the issue)
- What research you have already completed, and any known solutions you have already reviewed or applied to the customer system
- Any relevant log files or debugging information you have gathered
- What if you can’t log a “perfect” case.
“No one is perfect”
You may find some of the above suggestions to be unrealistic or impossible in some cases. The key message of this blog is to say that Sage Support have only the information you provide us with to give you advice and assistance towards a solution. I will restate what I said at the beginning of the blog “providing quality information when logging a new case reduces resolution time significantly, helping us to help you more effectively with the joint aim to assist the customer reach the best solution in the quickest time” If you cannot provide all the information for a “perfect case” then please do your best towards the described ideal.
Hope you find this article useful. Your comments are welcomed.