Getting Started Guide

Before Creating a New Topic

Before creating a new idea, question or bug, please check the product knowledge base and search existing topics to see whether it already exists. First, navigate to the appropriate forum.

Commonly Accessed Forums

• UNIFYBroker Forum
  
• UNIFYNow Forum

From there, you will see the search box and a list of knowledge base articles. The search box will only return results from the forum you are viewing, so it's important to navigate to the appropriate forum before beginning your search. The search box will also return knowledge base articles which match your search terms, which may be easier or faster than manually navigating through the knowledge base.

If you find a knowledge base article related to your issue but which does not answer your question, consider commenting on the article to request clarification to help us improve the quality and usefulness of the documentation.

Creating a New Topic

If you weren't able to find the answer to your issue in the knowledge base or from the existing collection of topics, click the  Create a new Topic button.

Creating the header

Start by adding a short description of your topic in the Header field. Ideally the description should provide enough detail that somebody else with the same issue could read the description and identify immediately that your topic relates to them. Your description will also be used as a search query against the existing collection of knowledge base articles and forum topics to give you another chance to see if your issue has already been answered.

Creating the description

If none of the search results are applicable, click the Continue my topic button and begin entering a description. Please try to keep the description as general as possible so that it will be helpful to other users. Remember that your topic is publicly visible and indexed, so please try to keep private information out of the description. See the below on how to add private details to a public topic if you need to provide more details. Also see below for more information on creating a good bug report.

Choosing the topic type and category

Select the most appropriate topic type and category. The available topic types are:

• Ideas: Choose this for feature requests and improvements that you would like to see in the product.
• Questions: Choose this if you have a question about the product or usage of a particular feature, or want advice on how to diagnose or solve a problem you are having.
• Bugs: Choose this if you have found a genuine defect in the software, where a feature is behaving contrary to how it is documented in the knowledge base. Please note that not all errors are bugs, so please read error messages carefully before creating bug topics.

The available categories vary by forum but usually correspond to particular components of the produce suite.

Adding Private Details

If you need to add extra details to a topic that you wish to keep private, please reply to your topic with a comment and a support agent will be able to create a private thread that is only visible to you (the topic author) and support agents.

Attaching Files to Topics

You can attach files to topic descriptions and comments by dragging-and-dropping the file from your file browser into the text input box.

Keeping Topics Separate

If you have multiple ideas, questions or bugs, please keep them separate by creating one topic per item. This allows each topic to be discussed and resolved independently of the others, and makes it easier for the community to discover the topics in the future.

Creating a Good Bug Report

When raising a bug report, it's important to provide as much detail as possible to assist the support agents in reproducing the bug. Please try to address as many of the following questions as possible, and you may find that you resolve the issue in the process.

• What am I trying to do? What components and features am I using, what operations am I triggering?
• What do I think should happen? What are the inputs to the process and what do I expect to be the outputs?
• What behaviour am I observing instead? How is this different to what I expected?
• Does this behaviour always occur or only intermittently? Is there any pattern to when it occurs?
• If this process applies to several entities, does the issue occur to all entities involved or only some? Is there anything in common between the affected entities?
• Has this ever worked in the past? If yes, when did it stop working? What has changed since then?
• Does this work in another environment? If yes, what is different between the two environments, such as configuration, volume of data or frequency of operation? Can I reproduce this in another environment?
• Have I tested this in isolation? Is it possible to disable other operations or components to narrow down the number of potential causes? If the issue is triggered by a request from an external system, is it possible to replicate the request to test manually? If the issue occurs making a request to an external system, is it possible to replicate the request to test manually?
• What have I attempted so far to diagnose the cause of the issue? Are there any error messages logged? Have I read the error messages carefully and attempted to resolve any issues they describe?

As well as considering the above, please also attach any other relevant details that can help the support agents identify the problem. This may include version details, patch information, configuration, log files, error messages, screenshots, network traces, etc. If any of these extra details contain private information, please add them in a private comment thread. See Adding Private Details above for details.

Please also remember that not all errors are caused by bugs - it's perfectly normal for errors to occur during normal operation, due to things like intermittent connectivity problems or bad requests from external systems. Please be sure to read error messages carefully before creating a bug report.

While Your Topic is Open

You should receive email notifications when your topic is updated, e.g. when the status changes or when a new comment is added. Please check back regularly in case a support agent has requested more information. If you discover any new information, e.g. the answer to any of the questions above changes, please update the ticket to assist the support agents with resolving your topic.

Once Your Topic is Resolved

When your topic has been resolved, i.e. your question has been answered, a patch or workaround has been supplied for your bug, etc., please update the topic to let the community know. If your topic was a bug or a question, please describe what the resolution steps were to help others experiencing the same issue. If you are satisfied or unsatisfied with the assistance provided by the support agents, please let us know by clicking the relevant button "Good, I'm satisfied!" or "Bad, I'm unsatisfied" and leaving feedback on our service.