Reporting Problems – Ticket Guidelines

Wikis > Reporting Problems - Best Practices > Reporting Problems - Ticket Guidelines

The following guidelines will be strictly enforced by Arca Noae staff. While the Best Practices wiki page should provide a good starting point for opening a ticket and monitoring it, all reporters and contributors must agree to abide by the terms of this policy. Failure to do so may result in tickets not being addressed or, in the case of egregious or willful violation, breach of terms of use and forfeiture of privileges.

  1. No rude commentary or personal attacks. As mentioned on the Best Practices wiki page, rude behavior will not be tolerated. This extends to making disparaging remarks about Arca Noae, its products and/or services, staff, and/or affiliates.
  2. No off-topic discussion in comments. A ticket is a thread pertaining to a specific problem. It is not the place to raise other unrelated issues. If you have a separate issue (a customer service concern, another technical support item, etc.), please either open a separate ticket or visit our Contact page. Do not post in someone else’s ticket. Your post may be deleted without notice if you do.
  3. This is not user-to-user help. If you happen upon a ticket which is not yours, and think you might have a good idea, but are not affiliated with Arca Noae (an employee, contractor, member of a development or test team), please refrain from commenting in the ticket. Instead, feel free to contact us privately, reference the ticket, and simply make your suggestion. (Note that such suggestions may or may not be used in the ticket, and you may not receive a direct acknowledgement from Arca Noae staff, however we do try to give kudos where kudos are due.) Do not post in someone else’s ticket. Your post may be deleted without notice if you do.
  4. No intentionally duplicating your own tickets. While the Best Practices wiki page sets forth a policy of opening separate tickets for separate issues, opening multiple tickets for different symptoms of the same problem – particularly when the ticket assignee has advised that such additional symptoms are definitely related – constitutes abuse of the system. As an example, if your system seems to hang while booting, and you have opened a ticket for the problem, opening another ticket to report that the system hangs while booting and holding down the <Enter> key – while the first ticket is still open and unresolved – simply wastes everyone’s time.
  5. Non-disclosure of private ticket content or comments. If the ticket assignee has marked your ticket private or a specific comment as private, this is to keep the information confidential. Sometimes, this is for the protection of the reporter; other times, for the protection of Arca Noae’s intellectual property (test versions, etc.). This information, if marked private, must remain private.
  6. This is not “how to” help. The ticket system is for reporting problems with Arca Noae software. It is not for asking how to use, or how to configure the software.
  7. Only report problems you are having on a specific system. The ticket system is for reporting actual problems with Arca Noae software that you are currently experiencing personally. Do not report potential issues that “someone” might have, or things that some ominous “users” might want. It must be a problem that you personally are having on a specific system. You must be able to produce system logs of the system with the issue. If your ticket is an RFE, it must be for a feature that you personally need.
  8. Keep comment editing to a minimum. After adding a comment, do not edit the comment to update the status of the ticket. Editing should only be to correct previous information provided. Further, editing does not trigger a notification to staff, so the edit will not be seen unless support staff is actually looking at the ticket again.
  9. Add a comment when attaching files. Attaching files (requested or not) will not trigger a notification to staff, nor will adding attachments change the ticket status (if it is in Feedback state, for example). Please post a brief note when attaching requested files so that support staff is notified.
  10. Please do not add links to external file sharing services (Google Drive, Wetransfer, Dropbox, etc.) unless asked to do so by support staff. If uploading log files per our directions, these files should be of limited size and should attach properly. If uploading larger files, such as dump files, please upload using FTP to our server (see this wiki page for directions).
  11. Request updates when necessary. If your ticket has been waiting for more than two weeks without being acknowledged, assigned, or updated, and it is not in Feedback state (waiting for more information from you), please feel free to post a new comment to it, requesting a status update.

This entry last updated: by Lewis Rosenthal