Sync Troubleshooting
If you are using Simple Sync and you hit a problem you will need to consider how you are going to get help with sync troubleshooting. You have a reasonably simple choice to either decide to try to solve the problem yourself or to look for assistance from a fee charging source, the user community, or the Simple Sync manufacturers themselves. In all of these cases the best chance of being able to troubleshoot the problem you are facing will be dramatically increased if you are able to provide as much information as possible in a logical and analytical form as possible.
Collect your information
- In order to be able to provide the sort of information that will help a colleague or member of the Simple Sync technical team to help you should be able to:
- Provide a clear description of the problem and what you were doing when it occurred.
- What was the consequence of the problem, did the program crash or hang or simply give an error message?
- Be ready to capture screen shots, compress them to a size in which they could be emailed or posted on a sync support forum.
- Have tools ready to take a program dump so that you or a programmer can analyze the data down to the last bit.
- Have a screen sharing tool like Skype, so that somebody who is prepared to help you can see the problem occurring in real time.
Check for help before you post
First, check for any available solutions before you go to post the details of the problem you are trying to troubleshoot. Simple Sync is used by a number of applications ranging from iPhones to Microsoft unified communications products. So the advice is to select your platform wisely, look for any similar situations where fellow users of the same platform as you had problems and see if there are any matches using your search engine browser.
Look for knowledge bases about Simple Sync, they are not always linked to the search engines to show results, it could be that you find the answer to your problem there. Should neither of these information sources come up with the info you require, post the assistance request on the sync forums and also send an email to the support team of Simple Sync.
Where did the problem occur?
Most of the problems that need to be solved are caused by communication issues on the internet network; this is outside your control, particularly if you are dealing with international connections. Those who have successfully overcome their problems are able to describe at what point the problem occurred. Where you were and what were you doing when the problem occurred. Were you doing any of the following?
- Setting up separate organizations and database lists and linking them together?
- Using a new reduced cost management system to optimize the cost performance across multiple email systems?
- Doing notes to exchange migration project when the problems began to occur?
- Trying to share data between multiple Microsoft active directories?
- Integrating an active directory project for the HR department?