Guidelines for Support Requests
The Co-op Support team strives to respond to new requests within 24 hours, excluding weekends. To manage requests (also referred to as tickets) the Support team uses ticket tracking software called Request Tracker (RT).
Submitting Support Requests
Video – Submitting Support Requests (5:47)
Thorough and consistent reporting makes it easier for Co-op Support to respond to your requests.
- Report problems as they occur. Prompt reporting may help us catch a problem before it affects other users, respond quickly to issues that impact multiple libraries, or save you time if there is an easy solution. Please report issues as soon as is convenient.
- One issue per request. Please submit one issue at a time. Emails generate tickets in RT which are assigned to support team members. Reporting each question separately helps us assign, classify, and prioritize tickets more efficiently.
- Contact information. We strive to offer friendly, personalized service. Please include your name, your library, and use an email address where we can reach you directly.
- Descriptive subject. To make tickets easier to identify in RT please provide as descriptive a subject as possible.
Example of a descriptive subject line: Circ+Full Cat login unable to edit item record
Example of a non-descriptive subject line: Editing question - What, where, when, how? Be specific about what you were doing, what results you obtained versus what you expected, and the steps required to reproduce the problem. If you cannot reproduce the problem exactly please describe the circumstances in which it occurred and the symptoms observed, including relevant URLs, and patron and item barcodes.
- Include error messages. If the problem caused any error messages please copy and paste error text or attach screenshots when possible.
- Include example barcodes, IDs, URLs, etc. A problem in circulation? Make sure you include the patron and/or item barcodes that were in use when the problem occurred. Cataloguing issues? Make sure you include the item barcode and/or the record ISBN/ISSN or record ID where the problem occurred. A problem on a particular page of your LibPress site? Include the URL for the page so we can be sure we’re looking at the same place you are.
- Do NOT send passwords. Co-op Support will never ask for patron or staff passwords.
- Troubleshooting. Spare yourself a boring or obvious email from the Support Team: tell us what steps you have already taken to try and resolve the problem.
Submitting Files to Support
When submitting files to Co-op Support please follow the guidelines below:
- Submit images as a .jpg or .png.
The best file formats in which to save screenshots are .png and .jpg. These files are easily accessed by Sitka Support and are unlikely to contain viruses. - Submit plain text files (.txt) for text changes to things such as email notification wording.
- Do not submit .doc or .docx unless absolutely necessary.
Files saved as .doc or .docx require additional software to open them and have a higher potential for carrying viruses.
