In the Support forums hundreds of support posts are made daily. People who have a problem, or just a question they’d like to ask. It’s hard to answer all of those questions. Sometimes we need more information in order to get a better view of the problem to solve it.
What questions do we ask?
Have a look at the Support Request Template Generator. All the questions on there are useful to provide support. To give you a good idea of why we are asking those questions, I’ll give you a short summary.
Step 1:
In this first step the generator will ask you some common information to find out if your question is something we can help you with or where you can get help. You should, for example, be running the latest version of phpBB because every release fixes bugs. The problem you are experience could have been fixed in more recent release of phpBB.
Step 2:
Here are more specific question regarding your board are asked.
- The board URL – A link to be able to look at your board and see the problem in action.
- Board hosting – The generator asks you where you host your board because there are some hosts where we continue to see the same problems when you use phpBB on their servers.
- How did you install the board? – Some hosts provide one-click installations or Fantastico installations. Those installation packs edit some of the default code and have the same problems. We recommend you do not to use them, just download and install phpBB yourself.
- Fresh install or conversion – Just handy to know for us whether is board is an fresh phpBB3 install or a conversion from some other board software.
- Any mods installed – MODs can change functions of phpBB. Having many MODs can cause bugs.
Step 3:
Oh yeah, we’re coming closer to completion. This is the last step before the output of the generator is being presented. Finally, here you are asked for a description of your problem. You can also tell us of any additional languages, styles and/or modifications that are installed. Also asked for is the database scheme and your level of experience to better provide you with assistance.
I hope you understand that when we ask you to fill out the Support Request Template, we don’t do that to bully you. It only makes the support process go faster.
This blog post was written by JimA (website). Thanks Jim!
If you would like to have one of your own blog posts that relates to phpBB on this blog, please send me, wGEric, a private message containing the blog post.
Posted by narqelion on June 25th, 2009 at 6:27 pm:
First of all you do not “need to fill out the SRT” as there are dozens of break/fix support posts and generic “how do I…” that are easily answered without that information. If you do not believe me search the topics I have answered and you will find that statement to be proven 100% correct. It’s “nice” to have all the information up front but certainly not necessary. A competent support person should know the pertinent question(s) to be asked without asking for an entire dossier. During the troubleshooting process if more information is needed it is easily requested. I find it very inefficient and a huge waste of time asking users to answer questions that are irrelevant to the issue.
The bare bones information necessary is:
1. Link to your board (and not always possible in certain cases)
2. Description of problem
3. Any changes prior to onset of problem, this includes but is not limited to the installation of any MOD’s or code edits that may have triggered the problem.
Everything else is superfluous and can easily be derived from the url of the board.
JimA wrote:
“I hope you understand that when we ask you to fill out the Support Request Template, we don’t do that to bully you.”
Actually I disagree with that comment, it certainly comes off as bullying. I’ve seen topics go ignored for days/weeks or even locked because the poster does not comply with the request when the issue could and has been resolved without having the information provided. If official support is to be witheld for non-compliance then I would suggest you cut to the chase and just make it mandatory by using the SRT as the new topic template in the support forum and be done with it or stop whining when people do not fill it out.
JimA wrote:
“You should, for example, be running the latest version of phpBB because every release fixes bugs. ”
Again I strongly disagree with this statement. Unless a security patch is involved I believe board administrators need to weigh the bugs fixed versus bugs introduced before deciding to update. Some new bugs may be showstoppers for some boards and irrelevant for others. What is more relevant is to educate users about the bugtracker so they are able to research the state of a particular release themselves and decide whether updating is justified.