Quite often if I send a support request that proves difficult for support to answer they seem to just wait a few days and then close the call, I think they should have customer approval to close the call like most support desks do
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Should SolarWinds support be allowed to close calls without customer agreement
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Re: Should SolarWinds support be allowed to close calls without customer agreement
Thats weird, i've been on one tech support case for almost 2 weeks... Was having a problem getting everything up and running after a failed wizard config, and the guy at SolarWinds helped me through and diagnosed everything, first meeting lasted 3 hrs, second one was 2 hrs and the last one we ended up installing the newest NPM and NCM which ended up taking 2-3 hrs on the phone, but he got me up and running again. I found the SolarWinds tech guy super patient and helpful
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Re: Should SolarWinds support be allowed to close calls without customer agreement
Generally most of them are patient and helpful. In the end though, metrics on the tickets they work factor into their performance reviews.
So they are trying to keep ticket volume up, time to resolve/close on a ticket low.
Then there is a factor of which call center took your ticket. I'd rate the people in Cork Ireland and Austin at the top. The folks in the Philippines at the bottom.
Regarding closing the ticket without the customers knowledge...bad form. I understand sometimes getting a customer to respond can be frustrating. If there
is a documented attempt to contact the customer with no response after several attempts then I can see a case for closing it. If it is a, "oh...its working now, closing the ticket", then
maybe not.
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Re: Should SolarWinds support be allowed to close calls without customer agreement
I agree with Jfrazier... Every time I have called, the people on the other end of the phone are extremely helpful and patient. (Have not experienced anyone from the Philippines to date).
As far as closing a ticket without customer approval... No way! I understand the need from tracking metrics and determining call processing efficiency, but the customer has the final determination if a case should be opened or closed. Generally, in working with other vendors, if I think a problem is fixed, I will tell the tech on the other end of the phone to keep it open for 24 hours and close it if I have not called back. They usually have not problem with it and the process works well.
One Exception: If you try to call me over the course of a couple of days and I don't get back to you... close the ticket.... I'll reopen if I need to.
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Re: Should SolarWinds support be allowed to close calls without customer agreement
Yea I was contacted by the tech center in the Philippines but I don't mind, after all I am filipino too (maybe a bit bias towards my own people? ) but yea I could understand if they couldn't get a hold of the customer and just closing the case. I tried to keep in contact via email and after a few days where I hadn't responded back he sent me an email and left a message on my phone for good measure.
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Re: Should SolarWinds support be allowed to close calls without customer agreement
I am not questioning the quality of support just the process, tickets should not be closed without customer consent, usually followed up with a rating method of some sort
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Re: Should SolarWinds support be allowed to close calls without customer agreement
I used to be in Support, and at least in the Lehi office (where most of LEM support lives) the process was the "3 contact close." Support guys are supposed to make at least 3 attempts to contact a customer before closing the ticket, whether by e-mail or phone. Usually these attempts are every other day, so you get 5 business days to respond before Support closes tickets.
In my experience, many customers would go ghost after a day or so, and then wouldn't return calls or e-mails. My thought process was if the issue wasn't important enough to get back to me for a business week, it had either stopped being an issue, resolved itself, or wasn't important. The final message usually includes that you can log into the customer portal and re-open tickets for up to 45 days, so if I closed a ticket today, you'd still have 45 days to respond and say "Hey, it's not fixed and I'm still unhappy!" After 45 days, it's a new ticket. I usually got really good response when I threatened to close the tickets explicitly ie, "I will close this ticket at the end of my shift today if I have not heard back from you." That seemed to light a fire under people, but I had many customers that vanished for 5+ business days and we closed the tickets to get them out of the queues and views so we could focus on customers who were actually responding.
If you're planning on going on vacation and you have an unresolved support ticket, let the support people know and give them an alternative person to work with. If the issue isn't important enough for you to resolve before going to Bermuda for two weeks, it's not important enough for us to keep the ticket open for two weeks. You can re-open the ticket or open a new ticket when you get back from working on your tan.
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Re: Should SolarWinds support be allowed to close calls without customer agreement
So in theory they can call 3 days in a row at any time (the "ghost" could be on another call, at lunch, taking a comfort break, on not in the USA or Philippines time zone) and then close the call?
What if the user has a voicemail system (we have one and I have NEVER had a message left by SolarWinds support) are they required to use it?
An email would be perfect, even if was just saying I called you today and you were busy being a "ghost" so I am closing the call
Once again I am not complaining about the support guys just the process
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Login failed LEM reports
i am trying to get all log messages from the LEM reports. I installed the Reports and Crystal runtime file on my computer which was not a big issue. But everytime i try to add a manager i can"t ping the connection. Gives me the error that Ping failed. I ignored the ping error and continued to run the a report. But then i get this error telling me that the logon failed with an error code.
I did some research and found a few thing about this issue. I already all those thing but nothing so far. I am still using the trial version which i don't think should be the issue.
Need your help guys.
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Re: Should SolarWinds support be allowed to close calls without customer agreement
It's left to the Agent's discretion. Personally, I tried to vary methods, so I might e-mail twice and leave a voicemail once. Even if the ticket was closed, there's an automatic alert (outside control of the Support person) that sends a message about the ticket being closed and there's a customer satisfaction survey (or there was) attached to that message. If you're not getting those alerts, you may want to make sure your contact information in the Customer Portal is correct (I saw a lot of customers who put in bogus e-mail and/or phone information, maybe to avoid sales calls, but it meant that Support was handicapped reaching people too).
Edit: Also, if you have multiple SWIDs, make sure the SWID you open the ticket under is the one with current and accurate contact information. Good info on SWID X does no good if your LEM license and LEM support tickets are under SWID Y.
This all supposes that the ticket is actually an issue ticket. Other tickets are handled different ways. For example, with Feature Requests, Support is directed to gather as much information as they can, escalate that information to development and/or the Product Management team, and then close the Support ticket. If dev needs more information, they'll re-engage with Support to communicate with the customer. Otherwise, you'll need to wait for your new feature to show up on a Road Map or in a connector pack.
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FIM Questions
Hello all, I have recently deployed FIM on 2 servers and am a bit overwhelmed on a few things. I’m hoping someone can help guide me a bit. Currently I am getting data from the servers, but now need to tune it some and make my reports more useful. I am not a server admin but my role is LEM and its reports. My server guys will work with me to make changes if needed, but I have to guide them to what I need.
- Do I only need to enable the FIM connector on a server with agent installed to get it working? I had seen some information at http://knowledgebase.solarwinds.com/kb/questions/3454/How+to+enable+file+auditing+in+Windows indicating I needed to enable file auditing on objects and files? Is this still necessary or is this just the “old way” relying strictly on Windows auditing?
- From reading https://thwack.solarwinds.com/thread/71564 , I gather that there is no way to truly know if someone has opened a file, or simply opened the folder. I assume this is still the case? If so, is there any benefit to having the File: Read condition checked in the FIM monitor?
- Is there a use case for checking the condition check boxes for Permissions: Read, Other: Read, or Other: Write? One can assume that you have permissions to get to the share, if you get to it.
- I am having the issue that many actions are showing as user NT AUTHORITY\SYSTEM in File Audit reports, as https://thwack.solarwinds.com/message/240397 . We are using LEM 6.1 and have the 6.1 agent installed. Any ideas?
- Any other suggestions you may have concerning making my data more useful with FIM would be appreciated.
Thank you
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Re: Login failed LEM reports
The LEM web console operates on either port 8080 (http) or port 8443 (https/ssl). The reports console works on TCP port 9001 to communicate with the database on the LEM appliance. Response should look like:
Can you confirm that the credentials you're using in the Reports console match a user created in the LEM with the Auditor, Administrator or Reports role? If you're using a domain account, are you entering it the same way that it appears in the LEM web console under BUILD --> USERS? If your domain is DOMAIN.LOCAL and you usually log into Windows with DOMAIN, LEM will expect DOMAIN.LOCAL\USER.
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Re: Login failed LEM reports
Yes that is excactly what i see. I have two users in my LEM appliance:1 the swi-lem admin and 2 a user i created later. Do i have to add a user from the AD with the Administrator, Auditor and Reports Role?
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Re: Login failed LEM reports
No, you should be able to use the Admin credentials to run Reports. Maybe re-enter the password to make sure it wasn't typo'd?
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Re: Login failed LEM reports
I just added my domain account as admin in the LEM appliance and tried to run the reports, but still nothing. I don't really now where to find a solution for this issue. I don't think that it has to do with the password, because i changed the password a few times. Maybe you can take a look at my SWLEMReports log if there something missing or wrong going on. I don't see a way to attach my log file.
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Re: Login failed LEM reports
You may want to open a support ticket to have them look at it.
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Re: Login failed LEM reports
Sounds like a good idea. I will do that. Thanks for your help my fiend.
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Re: FIM Questions
- Windows file auditing isn't required to use the Log and Event Manager FIM
- That's still the case. IMHO, reads aren't worth collecting
- The "Writes" can be useful for flagging changes to permissions and ownership
- Some operations will always show NTSYSTEM, but as long as the Agent is running where files are hosted, deletes and creates ought to have user credentials on them
- Solarwinds Log and Event Manager - Configuring FIM and Analyzing FIM Data - YouTube
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Re: FIM Questions
If you want to tell when someone opened a file vs. a folder with FIM, you can change whether to look for an extension or not (i.e. *.* vs. just *). Or, you can audit the files you're interested in directly and not the parent directory with a mask. Or, if you explicitly want to know about the directory, you can configure FIM without recursion. There's a lot of noise that comes with reading a directory, though, regardless of whether it's windows or FIM auditing.
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Re: Login failed LEM reports
One note on this issue - we do have a Reports Troubleshooting Guide that you may want to check out - http://www.solarwinds.com/documentation/lem/docs/LEMReportsTroubleshootingGuide.pdf (PDF) or SolarWinds Log & Event Manager Reports Troubleshooting Guide (HTML).
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