How to report a site problem to Connexions

The Connexions team works hard to make our site as error free as possible, but as with all software sometimes problems will occcur.   To those of you that have taken the time to report a problem in the past, thank you!  We cannot improve our site without that kind of help.

We frequently get problem reports this time of year as students are preparing for finals.  We want to provide the best tech support that we can and good error reports go a long way in helping us do that.  To create a good error report, follow these 4 simple guidelines.

1.  Use the "Report a Bug" link to let us know about the problem. The Report a Bug link creates a ticket in our system so that we have documented information about when the problem occured and where in the site it occured.  We need this information so we can recreate the problem.  If we cannot recreate it, it is very difficult to fix.

2.  Always fill out the email address field in the Report a Bug form.  Without an email address, we cannot contact the user for additional information.  We received a Report a Bug ticket today from a professor having problems with our site while the class was taking an open book final.  An email address was not included in the ticket so there was nothing that could be done other than checking that our site was working for me.

3.  Always include the Problem URL in the Report a Bug form.  Without the URL, we cannot know which of our 1200 collections or 19,000 modules the user is having trouble with.  The form will autofill the URL field with the URL where the Report A Bug link was clicked.  This is very helpful except when a user has returned to the Home page or is on a help page.  Check the autofilled URL to make sure it is the URL for the collection or module with the problem.

4.  Give a detailed description.  Let us know what you were doing, what happened, what Operating System you are using (Windows, Mac or Linux) and what browser you are using (Internet Explorer, Firefox, etc.).  All of this is very important for us when we try to recreate the problem.

These four key pieces of information can help us give you a quick response to your problem.   Even without the info, we will do our best to help.