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Help Desk Basics: First Steps to Solving Customer Problems

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Baptiste CANDELIER
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Introduction

The purpose of this article is to describe the steps that a support team (help desk) must take to manage Rainbow problems or questions reported by customers.
It will describe step by step what a support team needs to do to resolve the customer's issue and if necessary how to report the issue to the ALE Rainbow Customer Care team.

Issue analysis

The technical analysis can be broken down into different steps to help understand the problem and be able to give an answer to the customer.

These steps are of two types:

  • Identify the user who has the problem.
  • Identify the exact context of the problem encountered.

Identify the user who has the problem

Which Information do I have to look for?

The main goal here is to identify the user having an issue regarding its Rainbow role and subscription.

  • user roles (admin or user):
    • Admin type: company, operations and finance
  • User services:
    • Essential, Business/Enterprise Demo, Business, Enterprise, Conference, Early Adopter

These information can easily be found into the members section of a company.

equipment.jpeg

In addition to this you can verify if the user visibility is Public or Private and check the same on Company level. These information can be useful to analyse issue linked to contact search or invitation.

You can also collect the user's telephonic information:

  • Check if the company has a PBX (under Equipement).

    members.jpeg

  • Check the availability of WebRTC gateway (Equipment Information).

    wbrtcgw.jpeg

  • Check if the Rainbow account of the user is associated to his PBX phone and in case of issue with the VoIP call feature you'll also find here his Rainbow number used by the WebRTC gateway.
    Verify user's phone type (this can be verified in the PBX configuration too).

    userphone.jpeg

  • In case of WebRTC gateway, check in the PBX configuration if the user has:
    • a multi-device configuration
      • OXE: Deskphone + REX
      • OXO Connect: Deskphone +AnyDevice
    • a mono-device configuration
      • OXE: REX only
      • OXO: AnyDevice only

According to the above collected information you can already check if the used feature is available for this user. Consult for this our feature list.

Analysis of the issue/question

Once you have identified who has the issue you can start the technical analysis.
The goal of this task is:

  • to understand the problem or question and set the context.
  • to check if the issue can be reproduced.
  • to answer the question directly or to solve the problem.
  • and if necessary to have a detailed description of the issue and as many information as possible to analyse the problem when submitting to next support level.

Before trying to understand and solve the issue, it is recommended to first collect the logs in the state right after the user has reported the problem. Consult the article Rainbow Application Logs for the different Rainbow clients and WebRTC Gateway Troubleshooting Guide for the WebRTC gateway logs.

The easiest to understand the problem or question and set the context is to be able to answer to following questions:

  1. Are the user roles and services in line with the issue reported?
    - Does his Rainbow role(s) allow to do what he reports?
    - Does his services allow to do what he reports?
    - Does he have the correct configuration (e.g. PBX phone association, WebRTC gateway)?
  2. Does the user use the latest app version?
    - Does the issue occur with an old version or with the up to date version?
  3. What is the issue occurrence frequency?
    - Does it occur only once, randomly, systematically
  4. How many users have this issue?
    - only the user reporting the issue
    - he and his colleagues in same company
  5. On which client is the issue reproduced? *
    - has Web vs. Desktop app been tested?
    - has iOS vs. Android be tested?
    - has Chrome vs. Firefox been tested?
  6. Does the issue occur on a specific device? *
    - Only on user’s PC, only on mobile
    - On his device AND on another device with same Rainbow account
  7. Can it be linked to the network connection? *
    - has corporate vs. home LAN been tested?
    - has LAN vs. WIFI been tested?
    - has 3G/4G vs. WIFI been tested?
    - with or without VPN?
    - with or without proxy?
  8. Can it be linked to chosen call routing? *
    - has Office Phone vs. Computer (VoIP) been tested?
    - has Computer (VoIP) vs. Mobile/Other phone been tested?
  9. Can I reproduce customer's issue with my own account? *
    - has it been reproduced with same configuration and Rainbow client?
    - has it been reproduced in another context?

* For point 5, 6, 7, 8 and 9 above please ensure to collect the relevant logs and and to note the exact date and time of the test as well as the name of the user and in the case of a problem related to telephony the numbers called and/or those of the callers.

How to solve the issue.

In some cases simple actions can be taken to try to solve a problem:

  • Logout/Login from the Rainbow app.
  • When using the web app, refresh the page (F5).
  • Quit the desktop app and restart it.
  • Uninstall the app and make a fresh install.

Following actions can be taken for issues linked to telephony features (Rainbow account associated with a PBX phone with or without WebRTC gateway):

  • Restart the PBX Rainbow agent
  • Restart the WebRTC gateway
  • Deleted and recreated the association of the user's Rainbow account with his PBX phone

- You will find many other actions and checks that can be taken to solve a problem in our Troubleshooting section.
- Don't forget to check out the Help Assistance & Support section of our community. You may find a post describing the same problem or asking the same question that has already been answered.

Issue not solved ?

If none of the actions described in the previous chapters helped you solve the problem or if you could only find a workaround, you may want to take the problem to the next level.

Consult the article How to Get Support for Rainbow to know who is your next support level.

What information do I need to open a support request? 

The analysis you have done according to chapter Analysis will provide you all elements that must be provided to ensure that your request is quickly taken into account. In brief:

  • User name and email
  • User role and service level
  • Rainbow client and version
  • PBX phone number
  • PBX Release and Version + CPUid
  • Presence of a WebRTC gateway and version
  • Detailed description of the issue with screen-shots (or short video) of the issue or error message if available.
    • note the exact date and time of the issue occurrence or tests as well as the name of the user(s) and in the case of a problem related to telephony the numbers called and/or those of the callers.
    • If the issue is reproducible, then please provide a step by step description.
    • Answers to the all questions of chapter Analysis of the issue/question if relevant for the issue.
  • Provide Logs of the Rainbow clients, WebRTC gateway (and PBX Rainbow agent log if relevant for the issue, OXE infocollect) with the time stamps of issue occurrences.

  

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