How can I effectively report an issue to Adobe Support?

Posted on by ianjustingetconnect

There are always going to be issues with technology and one of the toughest things to do is to try to track down the cause.  In Connect there are a few things you can do to try to make the tracking of an issue a little easier for everyone.

Be timely in reporting the issue

If something happened in your account a month ago, even a week ago, it is very unlikely that it can be tracked now.  The sooner you report the issue to Adobe Support or to your GetConnect, the better the chance of solving the problem.

Also understand that if there is to be any chance of recovering data (a recording or a deleted Meeting Room for example), there is a far better chance if the issue is reported quickly.

Details on how to report an issue generally are in my Blog Post here:
http://allthingsadobeconnect.blogspot.ca/2014/04/how-do-i-log-ticket-with-adobe-support.html

Be specific, do not assume that everything is obvious to the other parties

Give the basic details right away such as:

  • Account domain/URL
  • Meeting/recording/content URL
  • Meeting/recording/content location (user, folder etc.)
  • What product (Seminar Room, Meeting Room, Connect Events etc.)
  • Browser, Flash Version etc.
The more information you have at the early stages, the better it is for a timely resolution.
Be clear as to the actual issue
It is not enough to say ‘Connect crashed’ or ‘It stopped working’.  A ‘crash’ might mean it froze, I had a network error, the browser went away, the Meeting Room went away etc.  Anything that is more descriptive of the actual issue helps.
If there was an error, copy the error and include it in the report.
A picture is worth a thousand words
Take a snapshot of the issue (a corruption on the screen for example, a poorly converted PPT slide, an error, a message).  This is incredibly valuable to the support folks or to GetConnect in trying to solve the problem.
Try another browser, try another computer, try another network…
I am not suggesting you give up on your favourite browser, but if you can continue working in another browser then do so and report the issue with your initial browser.
If you find that it works in another browser you are narrowing down the issue, if it works on another computer then chances are the issue relates to the original computer, if it works from home but not in the office then you are narrowing the issue to your company network.
All of these options make a solution faster in the long run.
Check your network, check your participant’s network
If your connection to Connect is working and your attendee get’s ‘booted from the meeting room’ (I always seem to see this as a description!), think it through.  If you are still connected and others are still connected, it is very unlikely that Connect was the issue, 99% likelihood that it is the participant’s network that is failing.  If it was Connect it is likely you would all be ‘booted’ (BTW, ‘booted’ is not a very helpful description as mentioned in the earlier sections).
Check to see if Connect is even supposed to work with your configuration
The System Requirements for Connect are here:
If you do not meet these requirements then you may not be able to run Connect successfully.  It is better to know this in a hurry if you have issues.
Check the status of the Connect system
Sometimes issues are intermittent and do relate to the Connect servers and clusters, sometimes things go wrong at that level.  To narrow things down again you can check the System Status page here:
Scroll down to the Connect section and you can see if there is a green checkmark or something different.  Click on the information (‘i’) icon to learn more about any issues.
At least you will know where the issue is coming from in this case.
Create a log with the issue
You can create a log of the events in your meeting room by navigating to the ‘Help’ menu in your Meeting Room, then mousing over the ‘About Adobe Connect’ item, hold down the ‘Control’ key on a PC or the ‘Alt/Option’ key on a Mac and click ‘About Adobe Connect’.  This will give you a log of the events in the Meeting Room and you can use ‘Copy to Clipboard’ and keep this for Adobe Support.
If you can make an issue happen by logging into the session and then immediately making a log when the issue happens, it will be a lot shorter and easier to understand for the support folks.
Enable Debug/Logging in Connect
There is an option to enable an debug option for the Meeting Add-in, you can see details here:
This will also give Adobe Support useful information on tracking down an issue.  You do not need to enable this all of the time of course, but if you have a reproducible issue then this may help track it down.