Creating a case

• Asset: Choose what best covers the part of the ULMS affected by the issue

  • Alma: Issues affecting Alma functionality, bib/item records & holdings and other back-end functionality
  • Primo: Issues affecting search, retrieval of results, front-facing UI configuration and similar issues
  • Alma Data Services: Issues with specific electronic collections, portfolios, and other components of the knowledge base
  • Primo Central: Issues affecting article search results
  • bX: Issues with bX recommender results

• Priority: Use Ex Libris definitions to determine priority level

  • System/component down: Service or module isn’t working (also see https://knowledge.exlibrisgroup.com/Cross_Product/Support/020_24X7_Support/24X7_Hub_System_Down_Support_FAQ for more on reporting critical outages to Ex Libris Support.)
  • High: Performance-related issue, typically functionality not working at all
  • Normal: Non-performance related incidents
  • Low: low-priority issues or questions with no specific timeline

• (Only relevant for Alma Data Services) Database Collection : Report what e-resource isn’t working here

• Title: Use a brief but descriptive title here – this makes it easier to find among the crowd and makes it easier for locating like issues throughout the CSU

• Description:

  • Describe what’s happening, including what was expected and what happened instead. (Examples provided by Lauren Magnuson)
    • THIS:  
      • In Alma under purchase order lines > Search for a PO Line, if I perform a search (for example, POL) and then click the Tools > Excel button, nothing happens.  No waiting icon appears in the center of the screen and the Excel file does not download.
    • NOT THIS:
      • “Excel downloading is not working in Alma”.  Why not? It may be the case that Excel downloading is working elsewhere in the system, so you need to be very specific about how and where you encountered the problem.
    • Example of describing what was expected:  I would expect an Excel file containing all of the PO Lines to download to my computer, but no file is downloaded.
  • Describe scope and impact of the issue
  • Describe frequency- does this happen every time, randomly, or just once or twice?
  • Have you made any changes to the system that might be related?
  • Describe steps taken to troubleshoot the issue:
    • Example: I’ve already tried logging in and out of Alma, trying multiple browsers (FireFox and Chrome), restarting my computer, and using another computer with a different user account, and the problem is not resolved. To check permissions, I checked with colleagues to see if they were experiencing the same issue. They verified it is not permissions.
  • Provide a test patron or test proxy user that ExL can use to troubleshoot and replicate the issue
    • Also provide info to help reproduce the issue: Examples: provide MMS IDs of record examples, item barcode, PO line number, screenshots, transaction numbers, job IDs, permalinks in Primo, etc.  For particularly complex examples, you may want to record a quick Jing screencast to provide evidence of the problem you are seeing.
  • Include screenshots or files that illustrate the issue

• Additional Information: Tied to your Asset choice

  • Category: General system functionality related to the issue – Please choose appropriate options here as searching on category in SalesForce acts as a great filter.
  • Subject: sub-category

• Additional e-mails:

  • Add anyone at your campus who will need to track progress of the issue
  • Include CO staff to help them track the issue:
    • Brandon for Alma issues
    • David for Primo issues
    • Jessica for ERM issues
    • Mallory for CSU+ issues
    • Brandon for anything high priority or in need of careful watching

Managing cases

Things to know:

• Normal status cases should have a response within 2 business days (High = 1 business day, Low = 3 business days)
• Note that opening multiple cases for the same issue is unlikely to generate additional attention for your issue – in fact, it is more likely to split attention. Adding more examples or escalating the case is a better bet.
• Similarly, assigning a “High” priority to a case that doesn’t meet Ex Libris’ description of priority is unlikely to get extra attention for the issue. You can always bring this case to Brandon’s attention for extra monitoring.
• You request an update by adding a comment to your open case. This lets the assigned support rep know there has been an update to the case.
• If you don’t get a response to a request for an update, you can email Brandon and ask him to escalate
  • You can also ask for escalation directly by emailing almasupportescalation@exlibrisgroup.com or primosupportescalation@exlibrisgroup.com . Put “Please escalate case #XXXXXX” in the subject and a brief description of why you want the case escalated in the body of the message.

Description of case statuses (from Support Center site)

Things to look out for:

• W4I (Waiting for Information) Flag: Indicates which cases are waiting on an update from you in order to continue – should be checked daily
  • Should encompass “Pending Customer Response” and “Pending Customer Testing” statuses
  • Check and respond to these regularly to keep movement on addressing the issue going
• Clicking on header reorders your case list either alphabetically or from earliest to latest date
  • Reorder the list by “Last updated” heading to look for cases that have not been updated in some time. You should ask for updates for these cases and escalate to Brandon if no response is received
• Cases that have been resolved should be closed using the “Close Case” button. Leaving these open creates more work for everybody and takes time away from other cases that are still open.

Publishing Cases - Best Practice:

We recommend publishing your SalesForce cases in order to better exchange information with the Alma and Primo user communities. Publishing allows other institutions outside the CSU to find information contained in your case when searching SalesForce - this helps others define their own issues and even find resolutions to issues already reported to Ex Libris. You can enable this within your SalesForce account via the Publish tab:

Read the "Publication of Support Incident Reports Terms and Conditions." If you agree to the terms and conditions outlined, select an option for publishing cases and click Save Publish.

Once you decide to publish your cases, all new cases opened from that point forward will be published by default. You can un-publish individual cases at any time by unchecking the Publish to All checkbox.

Civility and tone

Dealing with systems issues is a frustrating experience. Understandably, emotions can run high after running into roadblocks keeping you from performing your work. Often, these feeling are compounded by the experience of troubleshooting functionality or data that should just work.

Understandable as these feelings are, expressing them through comments in a case is not helpful or additive to the process. Please keep your case description and comments factual and relevant to the case – this will facilitate quicker understanding of the issues and therefore more efficient actions undertaken to resolve the root issues. Not to mention, it is demotivating to assist others who are taking their frustration out on you, something we have all experienced in our lives. You can always reach out to Brandon to express your frustrations and concerns about the system.