Handling Errors and Support Issues
- Jason Andrew
Obviously, the main concern if there is an outage is to get the system back online. However, once this has been done it is important to find out what caused the outage. This can be the result of many possible things, some of which are:
- a network issue
- a database problem
- a hardware problem
- a ServicePower error
Finding Out What is Wrong helps to identify what has actually gone wrong within the instance and then Investigating Why it Happened helps with the follow up (Note: these steps are applicable after the system has been restarted).
Initially it is assumed that the System Administrator and Database Administrator will perform Level 1 and 2 support and carry out the investigations but, if necessary, this same data will be needed to pass to ServicePower Support so they can further help with these investigations.
Important considerations
- Environmental issues must be investigated as a possible cause of any issue as a first off. Some of the below questions will help with this process.
- Consideration must be given to whether the issue is within some other system integrated with ServicePower - ServicePower may be the end user interface showing the issue, but has some connection/data from another system actually caused the problem? Again, some of the investigations below will help identify this.
- All relevant information must be gathered as soon as possible, as lost information can hamper the progress of investigating problems.
- If at all possible, a database dump should be taken as soon as possible following an outage, it is likely to be needed for follow up investigation.